For me, one of the big things therapy has taught me is that there's a huge difference between knowing something cognitively and feeling the truth of it emotionally. I'm someone who has always intellectualized many things as a defense mechanism (as in: I refuse to feel feelings about this, I'll just analyze it to shreds instead). It turns out that all the analysis and intellect and reading in the world can leave the emotional pain just sitting there like boulders in a river, unmoved.

I honestly think the most helpful thing in therapy was that when I would explain to my T why I was picked on, ostracized, etc (I was bullied at school in certain years) he sat there quietly refusing to agree with me. Eventually because he seemed to refuse to see my child self as horrible and disgusting no matter how much I explained it, I started to think, hmm, maybe I wasn't actually that bad, maybe some people are just cruel? Trust me, I'd really rather that the answers had come out of books on therapeutic models, or better still, from research papers, but it wasn't that. It was something that took time and happened mostly non-verbally I think. For me -- and I know there are those here that dislike this idea pretty vehemently -- but for me I think the therapeutic relationship is where the healing occurred. So I don't think that having "already read all the books," so to speak, is any cause for losing hope.