The truth hits, after several years of ‘the talking cure’ that requires one to take oneself very seriously and ruminate on very long-ago events that are, of course, unchangeable and all the potential reasons why you seem to be intent on, and increasingly good at, ruining things that are good in your own life- all the people you could blame, all the ‘whys’ behind all your ‘issues’, all the theories concerning the possible antecedents in your past that could pose as explanations for your present day behaviour that has, for whatever reason, been evaluated as misguided, or maladaptive, or malicious, or masochistic- after all of this furrowing and finger-pointing and finding that your life has been full of reasons for you to be a fuck-up, and that knowing this doesn’t do anything to fix you or fulfill you, eventually, the truth hits. The truth is that there could be a real reason why there is a problem- why you are a problem- or there could be thousands of potential causes for these problems, but there could also be absolutely no reason at all. Either way, it doesn’t matter. The truth is that you can talk for hours about your past but that any ‘breakthroughs’ in therapy, where you confront (by talking about) the ghosts of your past that seem to still be haunting you, can’t mend anything. The talking cure can’t clean up the messes that you’ve made. Sure, you can get some things off your chest. If you’re walking around with a secret that’s eating away at you because you haven’t shared it, it’s healthy to talk about it. Or if talking is what it takes for you to finally give voice to things about yourself you’d rather not admit, it’s beneficial to say those things aloud so that you can fully realise them, because it’s only in realising them that you can see to change them. The problem, and the sad truth about talking therapies, is that no one is going to push you to say the words you really need to say. If there is some self-knowledge that you don’t have, if you are not ready to know it because it’s not what you want to know, or you’re not brave enough to see it because it’s ugly, then you won’t gain it, and all the talking in the world isn’t going to help you acquire it. It seems that all the theorising and re-thinking and re-living and finding fault that is accomplished in talking therapy sessions is to identify what was wrong, or who else might have done you wrong, and how that made you feel, how it still does make you feel. That would be a great thing if those things or those people could suddenly cease to have ever existed. Because that’s not possible, and because you can’t wipe your slate clean and if you haven’t realised it yet then you soon will realise that you don’t want anything wiped because your past is also responsible for whatever is good in your life and for whatever is good about you, all that you have gained and everything that you love, and have loved- you stumble upon the understanding that whatever meaning you think you have found is worth nothing to you. You are still exactly the same person as you were before the talking began. Your life looks the same, feels the same, and the problem remains. Being armed with reasons to explain why there’s a problem does nothing to protect you. The truth is that no one cares. Your therapist doesn’t care. You are their workload. They say that talk is cheap. In talking therapy, talk is worthless.