What I’ve learned from 10 years of therapy - and why it’s time to stop

Therapy was like finding a key for a door that had been locked my whole life. Here are the nine things it's taught me

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I am standing outside an ordinary house in a tree-lined street on a midsummer afternoon, about to change my life. I glance through a window and see the reassuring domestic ephemera of books, a computer monitor, a child's drawing. Next to the front door is a small, typed sign with the details of a psychotherapist. I draw myself up, feeling both grown up and childishly nervous, and ring the buzzer.

It is June 2012, and I am nearing 38. The country is preoccupied with whether the Olympics will be ready on time and if England might crash out of the Euros. I have other things on my mind. A few weeks earlier, I made a call. The woman on the end of the line was polite, warm and to the point, and we agreed to meet. Waiting for her to answer the door, I start to sweat: will I like her? Will she think I am a time-waster? What am I going to say?