Therapy Is Like Looking for Your Glasses (When They’re Already on Your Face)

By John B. Midgley, LCSW

We’ve all done it.
You’re running late. You’re stressed. And suddenly—you can’t find your glasses.

You look on the counter.
You check the bathroom.
You lift up couch cushions with the desperation of a person trying to avoid a $300 replacement bill.

But the longer you search, the more frantic you get… and the harder it becomes to see the obvious.

Until someone walks by and says,
“Hey… aren’t they on your face?”

At first you don’t believe them.
You might even argue—“No, I checked there!”

But then you pause, reach up, and boom—there they are. Right where they’ve been the whole time.

This is therapy.

When Problems Are Too Close, We Can’t See Them Clearly

Human beings are terrible at seeing the things closest to us.
Cognitive science even has a name for this: cognitive bias, especially attentional bias and emotional reasoning. When we’re stressed, our brain narrows its focus to immediate threats, not clarity or strategy.

Research on emotional arousal shows that the more emotionally activated we are, the less access we have to our prefrontal cortex—the part that handles logic, planning, and perspective-taking.

When emotional arousal increases, cognitive flexibility decreases. (Arnsten, 2009, Nature Reviews Neuroscience)
Under stress, people revert to habitual thinking and “tunnel vision.” (Schwabe & Wolf, 2013, Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews)

In other words:
The more upset we are, the less likely we are to notice that the solution is already on our face.

Therapy Isn’t About Saying “Your Glasses Are Right There.”

If therapy were just pointing out the obvious, people would fix their problems in five minutes.

But when someone is overwhelmed, they don’t believe the obvious.
They’re locked in a narrative:

“It can’t be that simple.”
“If the answer were there, I would’ve seen it.”
“I’ve already checked everything.”

So instead of saying, “Your glasses are on your face,” a good therapist starts with curiosity:

“How is your vision right now?”
“Can you read things you normally can’t read without your glasses?”
“What have you noticed that feels different?”

These questions interrupt the anxiety loop.
They create a momentary pause—what psychologists call a cognitive reappraisal—which helps clients shift from emotional reasoning to reflective reasoning.

This pause is therapeutic gold.
It’s where possibility sneaks back in.

The Art Behind the Questions

Therapy looks simple from the outside.
Just two people talking, right?

But behind those questions is a framework built on decades of training and tens of thousands of hours of clinical reps:

Developmental psychology – how people grow and why problems often trace back to earlier patterns
Cognitive restructuring – how thoughts shape feelings and behaviors (Beck, 2011)
Behavioral activation – how small steps reduce depression (Jacobson et al., 2001)
Systems theory – understanding the dynamics around a person, not just within them
Attachment theory – why emotional responses are often relational, not logical

Therapists aren’t guessing.
We’re tracking patterns, micro-expressions, contradictions, metaphors, and emotional spikes like detectives of the mind.

And sometimes—quietly—we know exactly where the “glasses” are.
But you’re not ready to hear it yet.
So we help you get there yourself.

Because when you discover the glasses, you trust the discovery.
You integrate it.
You grow from it.

Therapy Helps People Recover Their Vision

When someone comes to therapy, they’re usually in a heightened emotional state: overwhelmed, stuck, or confused. Their internal “vision” is blurry. They can’t find what they’re looking for—clarity, direction, motivation, healing—because they’re too close to the problem.

A therapist’s job is to help them slow down enough to:

Pause
Recalibrate
Shift perspective
Notice what’s already there

Often, the answers were never hidden.
They were simply too close to see.

Therapy isn’t about giving someone a new life.
It’s about helping them see the life they already have more clearly—and helping them move toward the life they want.

And sometimes?
It starts by saying,
“Hey… before we go searching the whole house, humor me. Can you read that sign across the room?”

Sources (Accessible but Academic)

Arnsten, A. F. T. (2009). Stress signalling pathways that impair prefrontal cortex structure and function. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 10(6), 410–422.
Schwabe, L., & Wolf, O. T. (2013). Stress and multiple memory systems: From ‘thinking’ to ‘doing’. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 37(7), 1160–1170.
Beck, J. (2011). Cognitive Behavior Therapy: Basics and Beyond.
Jacobson, N. S., Martell, C. R., & Dimidjian, S. (2001). Behavioral activation treatment for depression: Returning to contextual roots. Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice.