Price can be a significant barrier to our mental well-being. For example, according to Verywell Mind's 2022 Cost of Therapy Survey, 40% of Americans require financial support to afford professional care.

The researchers also found the average cost of a therapy session to be $178 per month. Considering that working on ourselves usually takes a fair amount of time, that figure can quickly add up.

The good news is that people are also increasingly open to discussing their mental health and sharing their experiences. This is also illustrated in a recent Reddit thread started by platform user AnonyMiss0018 asking, "What is a little bombshell your therapist dropped in one of your sessions that completely changed your outlook?" Here are some of the most popular answers.

#1

He said, “Claim the right to your space in the world.”

My self-esteem and self-worth was nonexistent. I didn’t believe I deserved the oxygen I was breathing. He was saying that being a person, being born, gives you the right to exist. You don’t have to earn it. You’re here; claim your space.

Image credits: OhCleo

#2

Anger is the brain reacting to fear. If you’re feeling anger, take a quick pause to ask what you’re afraid of.

Image credits: tptman

#3

"stop trying to get everyone to agree - when you need everyone to agree the least agreeable person has all the power"

Really changed my outlook on planning family events.

Image credits: freef

#4

“Anxiety lives really well in the past and in the future. But has no place in the present. Bring yourself back to the present.”

#5

You are not responsible for your parents' emotional wellbeing. They are independent adults who have been on this earth for many more years than you.

Image credits: SmokedPears

#6

My counselor said to imagine myself as an orange. Then, consider that not all people like oranges. That doesn't mean that the orange is flawed in any way, not rotten, just that everyone has preferences. That helped ease my insecurities and need for people pleasing dramatically.

Image credits: chainedtothestove

#7

“Is it your anxiety, or hers?” ? drop!

Background: I have an overbearing mother who needs to know as much as she can about what I’m doing on my own time to sleep well at night (according to her). She basically treats me like a rebellious kid in a teen movie from the 90s, when I’m an independent, grown ass woman approaching my mid-30s.

At the time my therapist said this, I was 28ish and panicking about an upcoming business trip. Not the trip itself, but her reaction to me leaving the state for a few days. As I was going down the list of texts I knew she’d bombard me with, my therapist dropped this ? .

She gave me permission to opt-out of managing her fears like I had been doing for years.

End result: I went on the trip without telling her a thing and have established a few more sanity-preserving boundaries since : )

Image credits: PeligrosaPistola

#8

“Don’t think of the relationship as over. Think of it as complete.”

Fundamentally changed how I was processing a tough breakup. So helpful.

Image credits: kasssowary

#9

"they literally do not give a s**t about you, so why do you care about them". Letting me know it was time to move forward from some hurt that I held onto for a long time. And understand vindication and atonement doesn't always come.

#10

He helped me understand grief in others better. That it was my own anxiety that made me want to fix and improve things for them. Instead I should just follow them on that ride and listen.

#11

When you use the words “I should…”, you’re silently finishing the sentence with “…in order to be worthy of love and respect.”

“Should” is a much smaller part of my vocabulary now.

Image credits: DerAlliMonster

#12

“There’s nothing wrong with you, you are just picking the wrong people to be friends with” I got some new friends and my life changed pretty dramatically after that.

Image credits: Wonderful-Weather507

#13

It was so simple, yet something I hadn't heard before.

"You didn't deserve that."

Image credits: splithoofiewoofies ·

#14

Also, “Your partner should enhance what you like most about yourself”.

It made dating so much easier! No need to settle for less than that.

Image credits: Own_Natural_9162

#15

"You are not special"

I was having some very strong anxiety at the time, specially in regards to other people, I felt like I was judged everywhere, like, I couldn't go to the store, take the bus or even go to a walk because I felt people were judging my every move, how I dressed, how was my hair, how I talked, even how I walked.

Every stranger was thinking bad of me. It was scary as hell.

I was telling her about this, and how I started avoiding going out, which was a problem because I had to go to college soon. And she looked me straight in the eyes and told me "(name), I'm telling you this with all the care of the world, but you are not special, there is nothing that would make me think twice if we crossed in the street"

Is harsh, and is exactly what I needed, all the anxiety didn’t let me see that until she said it, ofc she helped me some other ways but this really really changed my life when she said it, I could go to college and be out because of it.

Image credits: so_yellow

#16

“You always talk about not wanting to do to your daughters what your mom did to you. You worry about it so much in every interaction you have ever had with them. But your children are 19 and 21 now. They are happy and healthy and they trust you because you’ve never abused them in any way. So I just want to validate for you that you really have broken that cycle of violence. You did that. And you should be proud of it. I’m proud of you for it.”

Image credits: puppsmcgee74

#17

We judge ourselves by our intentions, and everyone else by their actions.

Image credits: DoodMansky

#18

Your mother was an absentee mother, so why would you think she would be anything other than an absentee grandmother to your child?
It made me lower expectations of the type of relationship my child would have with my mom. So now she’s the fun grandma on FaceTime who sends presents but never shows up, and I’m perfectly okay with that.

#19

“Will worrying about it change the outcome? If the answer is yes, go ahead and worry about it.” I suddenly realized that I couldn’t think of a situation where the answer to that question was ever yes. Really short circuited the worry cycle for me.

Image credits: smallfancypants ·

#20

How we deal with difficult situations is deeply rooted in our first social relationships which are usually with our parents.
Anger has become my default mode that I switch to when reasoning becomes difficult. I think realising that and accepting who I am and being conscious of the progress I've made has helped me a lot in terms of becoming comfortable in my own skin for once.

#21

“How was anger expressed in your household growing up? Were you allowed to show anger?” At which point I realized I wasn’t allowed to show any negative emotions whatsoever, especially not in reaction to negative emotions from my parents.

Image credits: subliminal_knits

#22

“Why do you make people more comfortable when you are uncomfortable”

When talking about people pleasing and fawning

Image credits: ERsandwich

#23

For context I had a major TBI, seizures, strokes, and all around not a fun brain time when I was 28. "you have to grieve the loss of yourself" Most people wanted me to go back to how I was. The f***ed up truth is that part of my brain is dead. The person everyone (including myself) knew died. I needed to grieve the loss of myself.

Image credits: squeaktoy_la

#24

"Your mom is never going to be the parent you want or need, so stop expecting her to be and being mad that she isn't."

Also:

"People who are addicts tend to get frozen at the time they started abusing drugs or alcohol, because their focus is their addiction and not developing as a person. So a person who started drinking heavily at 13 and quit at 30 would behave a lot like a 13-year old."

Image credits: weenertron

#25

I don't work as a therapist. I'm an ESL (English as a Second Language) teacher in Japan. But my classes are one-on-one, so I do spend a lot of time on consultation and personal conversations. Something I said to a client once seemed to really change his outlook.

A lot of my company's clients are focused on learning English for international business, and this man, as many of them are, was concerned about making mistakes and looking like a fool. I asked him if the English-speakers he works with sometimes try to speak Japanese, and he said that they do. I asked him if they ever make mistakes, and he said that they do. I asked him to name one, and he couldn't. And I told him that his mistakes will be forgotten, too.

#26

I had been getting tans, my nails done, and shopping regularly, and I told my therapist that it felt really good, but it’s weird because I’ve never been high maintenance. He said

You’ve always been high maintenance, you’ve just never been in a healthy enough position to maintain yourself.

Kinda crushed me and completely changed my perspective of myself.

#27

“You may just be graduating highschool and you’re going to be a legal ‘adult’, but you’re just a kid. It’s not your responsibility to take care of everyone. It was never your responsibility. Because at the end of the day, you were just a kid wondering why you had to be the marriage councillor and shielding your brother from everything.”

I didn’t know how much I needed to be reminded how I was a kid until that moment. It made sense though on why I often feel like time went by too fast and i didn’t get to enjoy being a teen in highschool, because I was too busy being an adult when it was never my responsibility.

#28

If you literally laid down and let people walk all over you, someone would complain that you're not flat enough.

#29

"You don't feel your feelings, you intellectualize them."

I now try to feel stuff in real time which makes me much lighter.

#30

"Why do you think you're lazy?"
Then she listed off all the things she knows I'm doing for my family, my job, and my life.

It kind of blew my mind when I struggled to come up with an example.

She also described family dysfunction as water. Some families are messed up in a way that everyone can see the huge waves across the surface.
Others are better at hiding it, but there's still a riptide that you can't see unless you're also in the water.

Made me realize that trying to keep the surface from ever rippling doesn't erase what is happening underneath.

#31

I was having nonstop panic attacks and derealization that lasted a month. It was like my brain was stuck in panic mode.

I decided to find a therapist. In our first session she said “You know you don’t HAVE to suffer, right?” Meaning I should schedule an appointment with a psychiatrist and get on medication. I scheduled one ASAP and it truly saved my life. I don’t know what I had been waiting for or delaying.

#32

That being selfish is ok, but being self centered isn't. Being selfish is recognizing your needs and taking care of yourself, but being self centered is ignoring everyone else. Oh another one that a commenter reminded me about. Most men only know two emotions happy and angry because we're told that's all we can feel. That sometimes your body and mind are reacting with anger, but that's not what you're feeling. In those moments you need to take a break and ask what emotion you're feeling. I still struggle with this one.

#33

After I beat up my middle school bully, my therapist congratulated me for standing up for myself. I thought she would chastise me like every other adult in my life, but she was encouraging. Obviously, she told me that violence like that wasn't the best way to handle it, but that making a stand was important either way. No one had ever told me that it was okay. I always got a lecture about not acknowledging bullies and telling the teacher instead, but we all know that never works. Having an adult validate me, even if I wasn't entirely right, was a huge boost.

#34

"Anger is a blocked wish." Whenever you're angry, try to find the wish that you can't reach and then try to come up with a plan to reach it.

#35

I've never really had friends. I've had colleagues and classmates and housemates and people who have hung out with me, but I never really felt close to any of them. And I did that thing you see on here sometimes - I stopped reaching out to see if I would be reached out to, and I wasn't, which I took as confirmation that they didn't really want me around, or at the very least, that they wouldn't mind my absence. I was talking to my therapist about people I'd been close to in college, and she told me to pick one and talk about him. So I did. And after I shared some basic stuff like his name and his major etc., and a couple anecdotes, she asked me what else I knew about him. And I couldn't answer. It wasn't really a broadly-applicable bombshell, but she said "what else" and I started crying because I realized that for as simple as the question was, my inability to answer spoke volumes. I've never had good friends because I've never been a good friend. I'm withdrawn and reserved and I always made others do the work to drag me out, without ever extending my own friendship in a meaningful way in return. If I wanted to have meaningful relationships with other people, I would have to build them. I'm still working on this, but I'm trying to make more offers and extend more friendliness to others in my daily life.

#36

“I don’t want to take meds because I don’t want to rely on drugs to feel ok.”
“Don’t you already do that?”

My therapist in the session before I finally saw a psychiatrist and got officially diagnosed with bipolar 2. I was heavily self medicating at the time but of course didn’t see it that way because it wasn’t a prescription.

#37

"Wow."

I was talking about my mother's behaviour through my life and my upbringing in general. I often use it as a joke that I made my therapist say this. However she followed it up by telling me that, considering all that had happened and the stuff I had been through, I was doing really well in life. I shouldn't be so hard on myself and needed to focus more on my positive achievements rather than letting my remaining flaws hold my focus. It's a moment I keep coming back to.

It was also very cathartic to have a professional pretty much agree that my past life was nuts.

#38

You can't control other people's crazy, but you can control your proximity to their circus.

#39

My therapist traced me on a big piece of paper, so I could see how big/small I was. I thought him and I were about the same size. I got him to lay on top of the paper, and “I” disappeared. Seeing my size that way made my brain begin to think differently. It helped me realize I was not fat. At 5’2 and 110 pds…I needed to realize that! Years of bullying f***s with ones brain!

#40

At the time I was into getting tarot card readings and seeing psychics. My therapist told me he has psychic clients who come to him ashamed about the excessive amount of lying they do every day. Haven’t been to a psychic or tarot card reader since.

#41

That my job/career is just a way to make money, it's not my life or identity. Took a lot of pressure off me.

#42

I used to say a lot of things I wanted to do and then follow up with "but it's hard." My therapist asked me one time how it would feel to say what I wanted to do and then say, "And it's hard." I can't believe I hadn't considered that myself in four decades, but man, did it change my mindset on certain things.

#43

I was at a high-stress time and I asked her how people live like this. She replied “often times they have cardiac events.” She said it as an urging to care for myself as much as possible.

#44

Emotions are not bad, even the unpleasant ones. They all have an appropriate place.

#45

First session, going over history, talking about how sad I am and how it affects my marriage and after describing our relationship the counselor said "wow, you're really going through a lot of mental and emotional abuse."

w a t ???

Honestly I didn't know it was a thing. She was right. It took me a few years but I was able to get out.

#46

“If you don’t have these problems with any other person in your life, why do you think you’re the problematic person in this one?”

#47

I wanted to reach out to my ex. My therapist said, “you’re feeling a loss of security because your family is moving away from your city. Don’t reach out!” Soooooo insightful, I didn’t reach out and I’m better for it

#48

Once in college, I was talking about a friend of mine, and the therapist asked me if I thought he would live to adulthood. It completely took me aback. He did not.

#49

I have a few! "If one of your loved-ones had this problem, what would you tell them?" Boom! Self-compassion unlocked! Another one is regarding buried traumatic memories. "If you buried some s**t in the yard, then later thought 'oh I wonder what that was' and dig it up, all you're going to find is some s**t."

#50

"Your urge to self harm is perhaps a desire to tell those around you something that you don't know how to articulate."

#51

I was constantly bringing up how I felt like a completely different person after my mom died...like there was a a marked difference between before and after her death. But once, she was asking about my hobbies, I got really into describing all the things I loved to do or at least used to do before I got into a deep depression.

She was like "Wow, you seem very passionate". And I just sat there like, well I mean I can't change what I like to do, they're still fun to do. And its like she knew when to take a step back, cause it was like, wow, I may be super depressed about my mom passing, but I'm still me. I'm still my passions and those don't go away.

IDK, maybe it only makes sense to be, but it really started getting me back on track.

#52

"It's sounds to me like you are trying to convince yourself to stay with your girlfriend. I'm not so sure it should be so difficult."

At the time he said this, I remember it was like he said "the earth is flat." I thought he was crazy when he suggested relationships don't need to be difficult. But eventually I started to realize I was trying to change myself in order to stay with this person rather than just being who I am. It took me 3 more months to finally break up with her but from that day on, I vowed to never again abandon myself just to be with someone I had convinced myself was better than me.

#53

When I started to realize I was transgender, I was really afraid of taking hormones. A lot of people had tried to scare me into not medically transitioning, claiming it was "dangerous" or would "ruin my body." My therapist asked me to make a pros and cons list about taking hormones, and also do the pros and cons of not taking hormones "because not medically transitioning is also a choice that will affect you." It helped me realize that all the things I was afraid of were fear mongering and not actual side effects. I started HRT a few months later and it literally saved my life.

#54

“You know too much to go back, you’re too scared to go forward, and you’re in too much pain to stand still”

#55

She asked how I viewed men, and I said untrustworthy and protectors. And she goes, So men should protect you, but you don't trust them.