Impact?

If you're feeling broken, what does it take to change you?

I had a problem at one time and every morning I would look in the mirror and know that I knew I had this problem, but that just for today I would continue to keep it a secret, hope that it would go away by itself or that there'd be some kind and gentle intervention that would mean I didn't have to worry about it anymore.

Neither of those things happened - there wasn't an easy way through, but I did find a way and now I don't have that problem any more.

We're often told that the first step to dealing with something is acknowledging it to ourselves. In my experience it is that AND acknowledging it to someone else, admitting there's a problem and hearing what someone else thinks. That's hard. It was hard for me. With smaller things now, it's still hard - sometimes I wonder why something's not working the way I want it to and then suddenly realise that it's because I'm trying to work it out all by myself. Self-reliance is deeply ingrained in me.

So I'm always glad to hear it when someone opens up about what's really going on for them, even if it's something that I have no direct experience with, because I know that the least I can do is to encourage them to keep admitting it and keep asking for help.