Therapists are taught that when a new client shares their “presenting problem,” it’s not the real reason they are there. It’s not that they are withholding the truth, but that “the conscious mind is the last to know.” We all think we know why we do the things we do, but do we really? Freud thought our personality was in place by the time we were five. I don’t know about you, but I don’t have a lot of clear memories from back then and have little clue how they are related to my day-to-day activities. Now it is totally possible that the reason you ate that bag of potato chips had nothing to do with how you were raised. Maybe you were just hungry. But why did you eat more than you needed to be satisfied, why did you allow yourself to get so hungry, why those particular chips? There are the obvious surface answers and then there are those deeper hidden reasons that may reside outside your awareness. No one wants a therapist bothering them about their junk food habits unless they want to curtail them and need some help. But what if you wanted someone to help…