bpcyclist, I am sorry to hear you cannot afford therapy. You make an interesting point about therapy in the future. I agree in a way that long-term mental health support could be useful for a lot of people, even if it's not traditional therapy as we know it. We seem to look at mental health as something to treat when there is an issue, but it's tough navigating the human mind, relationships, etc and I see a place for it being more incorporated in society, in the form of one-on-one or group therapies, trainings on practices like mindfulness, etc. I definitely did not feel I had a great role model for it growing up as almost everyone in my immediate family seemed to have difficulty with mental health and also did not learn how to deal with things in healthy ways. So, I have felt like I have tried to figure it all out on my own for awhile and didn't have a sense of my emotions, healthy ways of interacting with others, cognitive distortions, etc. All of which, with earlier intervention, probably could have been improved even if not fixed.