It is surely better to cope with a label applied in ignorance by some members of society, if this must be, than to live an unsatisfying and painful life. You must not manage your life just to avoid the potentially critical judgment of people who are ignorant of, or who refuse to acknowledge, the realities of human psychology. You can feel sure that among well-informed people, if you have had to deal with alcoholism, drug abuse, a difficult {16} marriage, job depression, or any other "psychological" problem, you will be thought to be just as "respectable" as if you had coped with major surgery after an automobile accident. In fact, since overcoming a psychological difficulty demands a great deal more of your own voluntary effort, coming up a winner will increase your own self-respect and the respect, and even admiration, of those whose judgment is meaningful. The first step to freedom from pain is to become aware of the walls of the prison that shut you in. Only then can you begin to tear them down. {17} 2 PATHS TO HELP To wrench anything out of its accustomed course takes energy, effort and pain. It does great violence to the existing pattern. Many people want change, both in the external world and in their own internal world, but they are unwilling to undergo the severe pain that must precede it. Rivers in extremely cold climates freeze over in winter. In the spring, when they thaw, the sound of ice cracking is an incredibly violent sound. The more extensive and severe the freeze, the more thunderous the thaw. Yet, at the end of the cracking, breaking, violent period, the river is open, life-giving, life-carrying. No one says, "Let's not suffer the thaw; let's keep the freeze; everything is quiet now." Mary E. Mebane, _Mary, Wayfarer_ If you decide to enter therapy, your therapist will probably ask you to think about two interrelated questions (they may be expressed in a variety of ways): "Where are you now?" and "Where do you want to go?" Your therapist or counselor will, as he comes to know you, often be able to help you to answer these by sharing his perceptions of you. One of the main tasks of the counseling process is to help a person gain improved self-understanding that embraces both present problems and future goals. {18} Yet if you can gain a certain measure of self-understanding and self-direction _before_ entering counseling or therapy, it will be easier for you to choose an approach to counseling or therapy that more closely fits your problems, values, objectives, available time, and even your financial needs. You should find in this book a basis for preliminary _self_-counseling that will give you a sense of how and where best to begin therapy.