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.”

Here’s a navigating tip to ensure that you don’t wander around in the desert for 40 days like Moses did because he was like every other man … afraid to ask for directions: It’s almost always better to go through the heart of an issue than around it.
Because no shortcut is without its share of construction.

If you disagree with me, spend a year in Chicago. There I learned that it is possible to repair every street at the same time, making it damn near impossible to arrive at work on time.

During my two suicidal years, my therapist must have pulled out her GPS navigating system two or three times a session.
“Through it, not around it,” she’d repeat.

I appreciate her logic now that I’m on the other side.

Because if I had looped around some of the issues that were tearing me apart inside, then I would have bumped into them somewhere in my future, or be trapped in a traffic circle like Clark Griswold in “National Lampoon’s European Vacation.” By going through the intense pain, I eventually surfaced as a stronger person ready to tackle problems head on. And the pain eventually lost its stronghold over me.

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