Yup, gotta agree with you there. I HATE asking for help...I can do it all on my own, always have, always will. Until I realized I really couldn't and decided maybe I should pay someone who's had actual training to help me with the mental/emotional stuff. My therapist knows that I'm super independant and that I'm going to research things outside of our sessions. She's willing to discuss anything that I've read about or thought about, and she's helping me to see that sometimes it's okay to lean on others for things.

The financial side of the relationship bugged me at first. How can I practice asking for help, and dealing with relationships when I'm paying someone. Ya know, though, it still works. I let myself stop thinking about the fact that I'm paying for it, and just went with it. It took me a while to get to that point, though. However, the therapy relationship DOES translate to real life stuff. Once I learned how to ask my therapist for help and be honest and authentic with her and trust her, I was able to start doing those same things in my real life. I recently got laid off, and the whole process of finding a new job (which I started last week) was made so much easier by being able to ask others for help, and accept their help. That's not something I would have been able to do even 6 months ago.