Can it be explained like this?

"If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you", *Gospel of St. Thomas.
Now, don't get me wrong... I've never read the Gospel of St Thomas, and the quote was cherry picked from a Vanity Fair article I read on an airplane. The thing is... it's true, and it absolutely can be appropriated to describe one level of the fundamental process of therapy.... the discovery and uncovering of the unexpressed feelings, and then the soft examination of those feelings as they get translated into language. Think of it as an existential sliver being removed from a paw. The sliver causes pain, the pain causes a limp, the limp inhibits mobility, the loss of mobility inhibits one's range, and the loss of that range reduces the scope of one's life.
That's one level of therapy. There's more.... but that's what I was just thinking about. 
If it stays at this place it becomes self indulgent naval gazing and perpetual woundedness... and it kills the therapy (people often get mired in this part and confuse it for the whole thing), but you can't get to the other parts until you get through this one. And this is a big one, because if you don't get through... it limits the scope of your life and then the wound is your life.