Healing begins when we learn to take our hopes as seriously as our problems.

Very often people are resistant to getting relationship help because they're afraid of being emotionally cut open and facing their vulnerabilities. They also think that if they don't get emotionally cut open and they don't face those demons, they don't face those vulnerabilities, then how are they ever going to heal? So they stay stagnant, they stay frozen, and they just let life take its course. Here's the thing. You can heal by facing hope. You can heal by facing the best version of you. And when you do that, you don't have defense mechanisms because that's a version of you that you're proud of. That's a version of you that actually produces real lasting