Isn't Psychotherapy Just For Psychos?

No: For many people, the word therapy or psychotherapy has a negative connotation - and they avoid using the services of a therapist as if doing so would either get them committed to a facility, or label them as sick, weak, stupid, immature, childish, fruitcakes, nutbars, or wackos.

No: If you're shackled by this mistaken belief, fear not. Most people don't give a rat's ass where you go or what you do, just so long as you don't get in their way. Answer me this: do you care all that much if someone comes to me as a client to get their marriage fixed? How much time from your life are you going to devote to thinking about that?

A Thousand Times No: Therapy is concerned with understanding oneself, and guiding self to a new life. Making use of a psychotherapist means empowerment, self growth, new skills, expansiveness and a new tomorrow. 

History: While we're on this subject, let's talk about the words that are used such as therapy, treatment, and patients which perpetuate the belief that psychotherapy means something negative. As allopathic medicine evolved technologically in the 1900s, people who were ill were seen to be victims. Victims of germs, victims of genetics, victims of dysfunctional body systems. They became patients. Those who needed treatment or therapy, had something wrong with themselves. Meanwhile, individuals who worked with emotional, mental, and psychological issues that people presented were not having the successes and breakthroughs their drug treatment based colleagues were having. In an attempt to be seen as equals and peers, and to be taken seriously, these doctors adopted the philosophy and vocabulary of the organic medical model. Clients became patients. Consulting became treatment or therapy. And people who wanted to change themselves emotionally, mentally, psychologically were now referred to as the mentally ill. Ouch.