The reason a lot of people describe therapy as self-indulgent, unnecessary, narcissistic, masturbatory, etc. - and thereby avoid going - is that therapy is a challenge to the way you think, the way you behave, and the choices you’ve made in your life.

Which can be unpleasant. I got sort of an inkling of this when I read Freud for the first time; in “The Interpretation of Dreams,” he says (and this is a huge paraphrase) that analysis can never take the form that the patient wants it to take, because the patient has been determining the form that his or her life has taken thus far, and that hasn’t worked out.

Basically, everything you think about the way you think is suspect.

Now, I have a lot of issues with Freud, but one thing I do believe in and respect is realizing that you’ve fucked up, and that it may be because you are fucked up, and undertaking the commitment to examining and picking apart each and every factor of how you’ve fucked up, with an eye to changing it.