Most people who start therapy are sane, and the most sane stick it out.  The reasons are obvious:  It takes insight and intelligence to recognize you've got a problem, courage to admit you need help, and fortitude to stick with it.Psychotherapy is work -- hard work.  Perhaps the hardest work you'll ever do in your life.

You'll be expected to confront things you would rather forget, continue to work when it seems you're getting nowhere, make changes for "the better" that initially might make you feel worse, and keep the faith that some day it will all pay off.

Your role is to present the therapist with as much information as possible about yourself and your problems -- to lay open the thoughts, fears, expectations, fantasies, anxieties and feelings that constitute your existence.

The therapist's role is not that of a doctor but of a teacher who acts as a catalyst and guide in your efforts to understand the ways in which you hinder your own development and avoid possibilities for growth.

The therapist must help you expose the ways you flee from your own affirmation and also help you gain control over your existence.  The psychotherapist must not validate your fears of helplessness and powerlessness by doing things for you that you can do for yourself.  Any process in which you relinquish responsibility for growth to the therapist is not authentic psychotherapy.