I have decided to dedicate a post on Thursday to therapy, and offer you the many tips I have learned on the couch. They will be a good reminder for me, as well, of something small I can concentrate on. Many of them are published in my book, “The Pocket Therapist: An Emotional Survival Kit.”

Most people speak their first word at about 8 months old. If you’re an adult child of an alcoholic, you said your first difficult word at about age 80. Because every time you opened your trap to voice your opinion growing up, you either got shot down or the silent treatment. I don’t know which I preferred. So my mouth didn’t really learn to say anything but “sorry” until I miraculously landed in therapy.

I suppose I could call my weekly counseling sessions “speech therapy,” because that’s where I learned how to articulate the hard stuff: to ever so tactfully (not a strong suit of mine) express my feelings, concerns, resentments, opinions … all the things I kept inside for the first quarter of my life.

Now I know how to use “I statements” (“I’m sorry that YOU CAN’T HEAR A BLOODY WORD I’M SAYING, IDIOT) and other tools taught in Communication 101 for Persons Raised in Dysfunctional Homes.

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