Emotionally proactive Redditors are sharing the biggest therapy bombshells that ever changed their minds and lives. In response to an Ask Reddit post, thousands revealed the best that their therapists had to offer when it came to good advice or movie-worthy one-liners.
Featured VideoTherapy never works like it does in the movies—one simple statement repeated by Robin Williams until you cry won’t fix you. However, these professionals can occasionally drop a bit of wisdom that makes your brain feel like it’s doing a hard reset. This may have been what inspired u/pottipenguin to ask their question.
“What’s a small bombshell your therapist dropped during a session that completely shifted your perspective?” they wrote.
AdvertisementSometimes humans can get caught up in a stubborn belief or thought pattern that they don’t realize makes them miserable. Therapists are cool because they’re trained to pinpoint these issues and dispel them by offering a different way of thinking. It might even hit you like a brick.
Even just realizing that you do, actually, deserve the same kindness you show others can be enough to blow your mind. Also, sometimes folks just don’t understand what depression or anxiety are and need to be straightened out.
Therapist shout-outs like this, and a new willingness to talk about going to therapy to the world, may be fueling the steady increase in new patients each year. According to a study published in the American Journal of Psychiatry in May 2025, the number of Americans accessing psychotherapy rose from 11.5 percent in 2018 to 15.4 in 2021.
Statista backed this up with similar numbers, including a serious jump from 2021 to 2022. In 2024, the number of U.S. adults who took advantage of mental health services reached 60 million.
AdvertisementIf you want to join the rest of us, this is the kind of wisdom you can look forward to:
1. Honesty and kindness alone aren’t enough
“Honesty without compassion is cruelty. Kindness without honesty is manipulation.” —u/darker_skies14
2. Seize the day
“24 hours can start at any time. If you feel like you’ve messed up instead of looking at the day as a failure, just decide it’s a new day and make this one better.” —u/tambam1015
Advertisement3. Don’t wait for happiness
“Your brain is there to keep you alive, not happy. You need to do things that make you happy not just expect it from your intellect.” —u/Misfit_somewhere
4. Don’t assume what others are thinking
“I described what another person must have been thinking/feeling when they did X. My therapist described an alternative version of what they may have been thinking/feeling, which was immediately completely plausible, and was a much kinder interpretation than mine.”
Advertisement“It was then that I realized my interpretation of reality could (potentially) be really flawed, and cause me unnecessary strife.” —u/whynotthebest
5. Rest is good
“Rest is not something you should have to earn. It is a basic need like air and water. Without it we die. My workaholic brain needed to hear it, too.” —u/deepstatelady
6. Act based on your beliefs
“The reason you feel the way you do is because your actions/decisions are not congruent to your values.” —u/Strong_Emphasis_9632
Advertisement7. The problem is stress
“‘You’re not crazy. What you are is stressed. The situation you live in is causing you immense stress.’ And then two sessions later when I accepted I wasn’t crazy: ‘What do you plan to do to get out of this situation?’” —u/Unhappy_Plan8323
8. The worst is passed
“When talking about my really f*cked up childhood, she told me, ‘you’ve already survived the worst of it.’” —u/Karmadillo123
Advertisement9. Parents should support you
“That my parents DIDN’T spoil my little sister. Going to parent teacher conferences, getting new clothes that weren’t for back to school, being willing to sign you up for a sport and take you to practice isn’t spoiling, it’s basic parenting.” —u/GlassCharacter179
10. You deserve kindness, too
“He asked what I liked most about myself. After a long pause I said I was kind. He asked for examples. I told him about cooking for ill friends, staying sober purely to trip sit some crazy parties, being vegan solely for ethical reasons, working with disabled and sometimes violent kids for minimum wage, picking up stranded friends, volunteering for animal charities, being the house that everyone came to when they had a problem.”
Advertisement“He nodded thoughtfully. Then asked, but are you kind to yourself? Just the idea that I was worthy of my own kindness completely blew my depressed little brain.” —u/shiftyemu
11. Anxiety means worrying about things too much
“‘I don’t think I’m an anxious person.’”
“‘You just said you were worried about 10 different things in 10 minutes.’” —u/Ok_Chemist6567
Advertisement12. Being an emotional crutch is a self-esteem issue
“During my first session with a new counselor, I was telling her about an emotionally draining situation I was in and how I have a tendency to take on everyone’s burdens to my own detriment. She pointed out that it was a lack of self-esteem—feeling like I’m worthless on my own, so I might as well be of use to others. A whole lot of things clicked into place after that.” —u/_ser_kay_
13. Depression isn’t a personal failing
“’You are allowed to be depressed.’”
Advertisement“I have an issue with having to constantly be productive and organized, this helped me allow myself to just be depressed and bed rot once in a while.” —u/SurvivalK
14. Thoughts are just thoughts
“‘Thoughts are not facts.’”
“That phrase almost certainly saved my life.” —u/yearsofpractice
Advertisement15. Lighten your load, figuratively
“‘You’ve been wearing a backpack your whole life and filling it up with all your traumas into it. You’ve worn your backpack for too long, it’s too heavy for you. It’s time to start unpacking and lighten the load, one thing at a time. We can start with writing on cheap glass plates what you’re letting go and then breaking them.’” —u/Mentally_unstable91
16. Sometimes you just need someone to hear you
“She said, ‘That sounds really hard.’ Nobody else in my life was even there to listen to me, so this was amazing.” —u/Hopeful_Meringue8061
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