How do I know if therapy or marriage counseling is really helping?

Rabbi Landau explains that the goal of therapy is healing, not dependency. He points to a common problem: “the more you go to the therapist, the more you need to go to the therapist.”

If a couple has gone to marriage counseling for twenty years and they still need it to stay in the same marriage, he says, they have never been with the right counselor. A good marriage counselor “should be able to make you two live together.” If he has to stay involved in your marriage, he is not the right one.

His measure is simple: “You should be able to get help by a therapist,” and not the other way around. A real therapist, as he puts it, helps you build peace, not babysit your pain.

Going deeper: Rabbi Landau's teaching, level by level

Surface claim

If therapy makes you need more therapy, something is wrong. Its goal is healing, not dependency.

Underlying need or longing

A couple wants to be able to live together in peace on their own, without someone permanently in the middle.

Deepest human truth

In A Soul at Peace, Rabbi Landau writes that a real doctor's goal is for the patient to walk out and live a healthy life without him. The true measure of help is that you can stand on your own feet.