Very often you can hear from people who have been trying for a long time to deal with their psychological problems and, as a result, improve their lives, that they are already everyone understood. About yourself, about the nature of your psychological problems, about all the mechanisms that trigger these problems, etc. That they really want to change, they have been ready for this for a long time, but things are still there. And the question is, what to do next? Let me clarify once again, I am now talking specifically about those situations when a person already has a decent amount of experience working with a psychologist and, it would seem, has already figured out what he could figure out, but for some reason there are no qualitative changes in the personality. To answer this question , let's take a break from psychology for a moment and imagine a situation from another area. Let's say a certain Masha firmly intends to become an artist. She approached this issue seriously - she studied all the artistic directions, chose the one she liked, bought brushes, paints, pencils and paper, found an excellent art teacher and even paid for classes six months in advance. Question - has she already become an artist? And if not, then why? What is missing? In this case, the answer is obvious - Masha lacks drawing skills. Everything she has done is only preparatory measures, and if she does not start studying, she will never become an artist. And it is quite obvious that she will not begin to succeed immediately, but over time, with each new sketch, her skill will become stronger. About the same thing happens in the sphere of the psyche. But, besides this, everything is complicated by the fact that we already have some kind of skill, and are not just trying to develop a new one from scratch. And, as you know, relearning is much harder than learning from scratch. And it’s not so easy to discard old skills, because we formed them quite a long time ago, lived with them all our lives and became convinced of their validity. It's like walking. After all, all people somehow walk, but few people learned to walk by specifically developing a certain manner of movement. We walk as we feel comfortable, as we are used to. But have you tried to start walking differently, even knowing exactly how? Or write differently, or speak? Anyone who has tried it knows how difficult it is. But those who were patient and put in enough effort for this succeeded. Let's look at a specific conditional example. Let’s say Dasha lives and lives, and her relationships with men do not work out. She goes to a psychologist to figure out exactly why. After all, there are no obvious reasons for this - Dasha is smart, beautiful and an excellent housewife. And so, in the course of work, it turns out that Dasha herself does not give way to relationships, that she has this because of her fear of the opposite sex, and the fear was formed, for example, thanks to her mother, etc., etc. And here she sits Dasha is enlightened, full of insights and self-awareness, and doesn’t understand where she should take it all and what to do next. And then she will have work no less difficult and important than what has already been done. She will have to develop a new relationship skill. That is, try to behave in a way she has never behaved before. And this is precisely her task - no psychologist will do this work for her. At the beginning, she will gain new experiences, and later new connections will be formed in her brain to replace the old ones. Yes, it is difficult, but this is the only way to change something. Yes, it’s not a fact that it will work out the first time, but this is the essence of the skill - it is formed as a result of repetitions. The most wonderful and necessary knowledge will remain only knowledge if in practice you do not turn it into experience and, in the long term, into a skill.