Women Reveal The Best Questions Their Therapists Asked Them That Actually Helped

Sometimes, you have a really good therapy session. One that just helps you figure out a difficult situation or come to a realization about yourself or the people in your life. Of course, not every therapy session is filled with incredible revelations — much of therapy is hard work to arrive at these insights. But a good therapist will guide you along with way.

On Reddit, women are sharing the best questions their therapists have asked them.

And how they helped them move closer to achieve their mental health goals.

1. The Stories We Tell Ourselves

“Do you think that story you’re telling yourself is accurate?” — searedscallops

2. Negative Self-Talk

“In regards to negative self-talk: ‘the things that you say about yourself…if your closest friends were depressed and going through a hard time, would you say the same things to them?'” — vanillaladiee

3. Grief

“Do you think your grief is about the relationship ending or is your grief about what you think could have been and how you thought it was going to be? It was the latter.” — donner_dinner_party

4. “I’m Trying”

“‘At what point does trying become doing?’ I was having a rough time and felt like nothing was going right despite how hard I was trying, and I said just that: ‘I’m trying, I’m trying.’ And she asked when does ‘you’re trying’ become ‘you’re doing?’ You’re trying and you’re doing this this and this, so are you ‘doing’ or trying? Basically I needed to give myself more credit and stop being so hard on myself and recognize what I was doing right.” — wanderlustliz

5. Family

“If you weren’t related to your relatives, would you be friends with them?…if no, then why does it matter so much to you what they think?” — auntiefood

6. “Is That Working For You?”

“‘And is that working for you?’ She says it all the time. It’s really helped me understand that there are reasons I’ve thought about or done things a certain way and that isn’t bad, but now that my life is different those ways are not working for me anymore.” — Blush_and_bashful

7. “Anger Issues”

“‘Why do you keep referring to yourself as having anger issues and emotional issues?’ It was the first time I had even considered that the ‘anger’ issues I was told I had from when I was a small child were just my family not wanting to deal with my emotional needs. I’d been gaslit my whole life to think that all of my emotions were unreasonable and ‘extreme’, when they actually weren’t. I recently ‘graduated’ from therapy (my choice, with the door always open to go back). It took me 1.5 years to relearn emotions, how to express myself, and not ‘protect’ people from my emotions. I do feel emotions strongly (was diagnosed with ADHD), but none of my reactions are extreme.” — WrackspurtsNargles

8. “This Should Never Have Happened To You”

“Not a question, but a firm, supportive comment. She got my eye contact & said, ‘That should never have happened to you.’ — OiWhatTheHeck

9. Survivor’s Guilt

“‘You say that, statistically, you shouldn’t be alive. Do you believe that you don’t deserve to be alive?’ Really hit me. Thought I’d dealt with my issues around self-worth a long time ago, but I never realised they partially stemmed from survivor’s guilt and therefore hadn’t addressed that source in previous therapy.” — nzkfwti

10. Too Little Experience

“It wasn’t a question but I was supposed to have 4 covered sessions with him and at the end of the 4th session, before I told him myself, he said something along the lines of ‘I think I have way too little experience with the things you are dealing with to be helpful for you.’ Really appreciated that.” — Special_Koala_1093

11. Gaslighting

“‘Why do you gaslight yourself so much?’ I wasn’t even aware that you could gaslight yourself. Coming to terms with my trauma was difficult. Somedays I still tell myself I’m still just overreacting or remembering it wrong…” — DarthCach

12. Trauma

“I was in an abusive relationship that left me severely traumatized, I’ve been in therapy for a year now and recently we were talking about responsibility, and how I felt like I should’ve done more to protect myself and see the warning signs, talking about the first time he got frustrated with me for talking to another man. And my therapist asks, ‘When he got irritated with you that first time, did you know in that moment that he would end up throwing you against a wall and you’d have to flee his house in the middle of the night in the dead of winter with no shoes on?’ And when I chuckled and said no, I had just expected that to be normal jealousy that we could work out together, and she says, ‘Exactly. You couldn’t have known. Nobody expects their partner to abuse them. You need to be kind to your past self, you have experiences now that would help you if this sort of thing happened again, but you didn’t then. You couldn’t have known, and that’s ok.'” — DarthMelonLord

13. Eating Disorders

“Why aren’t you allowed to be happy right now, instead of when you’ve lost weight?” — darkhorse2803

14. Domestic Abuse

“Therapist: ‘You realize you’re describing domestic abuse.’ Me: ‘Oh no, he’s never hit me.’ Therapist proceeds to explain emotional, psychological and financial abuse.” — UnBulky_Jellyfish

15. Power In Relationships

“She said (not a question but it was powerful for me): You choose who you are in a relationship with. You don’t get in a relationship because they chose you. You are solely responsible for deciding who to be with. And you can decide at any point that you don’t want the relationship anymore. You should be in a relationship because you chose them, not the other way around. It’s your life, not you serving their life. I felt so dumb to have realized this, with her help, so late… but it’s totally changed how I approach relationships.” — amelialouise429

16. Negative Thoughts

“’Whose voice is saying those things?’ She recently told me at the beginning of our sessions I made a lot of negative statements about myself and she asked me that question. I said it’s my voice saying that to me. It’s 16 sessions later and I said something negative and she asked the same question. This time I said the voice is my mum’s. It really helped me realise that all the negative thoughts I have about myself are a product of what I’ve been brought up with. It was completely eye-opening.” — fizzingwhizbeez

17. Caregiving

“Wouldn’t it be nice if for once someone would take care of you?” — mokkana

18. Self-Image

“She asked me to come up with one thing I physically liked about myself and I just couldn’t do it. Couldn’t come up with a single thing. I broke down and cried and that was when I realized I had a problem with self image and self hatred. All of my self talk was negative. (I’m fairly pretty and I was a healthy weight, but I thought I was massively overweight). It sounds superficial but it kind of broke down a lot of walls for me and helped me realize I had more problems to work through than I thought, and not just surface level ones. It helped me realize I needed to change my self talk drastically and learn to love myself. It’s what has stuck with me most from therapy. That was ten years ago.” — 911pleasehold

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