This forum helped me escape therapy as I was on here from the very beginning when I started therapy (under my previous account). Well, actually it was better than escape, more like prevention: it helped me to remain critical, to not buy into the superficial and (for me) useless parts of therapy, and to not get enmeshed. I am not generally prone to those things but reading PC played a big role in getting many different perspectives and it very easy as I did not need to learn from my own experience in overly painful ways.