Dear Daring Reader,
It’s been a year. I have been in therapy for a year. While it seems like our lives revolve around the reopening that might or might not happen, depending on where you live, there are other achievements and goals to be celebrated (Side note: I finally got my first shot!!! Yay!) I am proud of myself for sticking to talk therapy, and I feel compelled to share how it has helped me because I think you are, like me, often listening to mental-health negative comments dismissing it as an inconsequential waste of time. Those messages might not only annoy you, but also influence your actions and perceptions. Whether you are already persuaded of its value or don’t see it at all, I hope this can help you appreciate its potential role in people’s lives, maybe even your own.
The very process of looking for a therapist made me consider what I needed, something I never really contemplated, and opened up many possibilities I hardly ever thought about in this context or in others. Who would I talk to? What kind of person would easily gain my trust? What matters to me? I found a person who had a profile I liked and things became clearer. My main goals were releasing shame, dealing with trauma, and feeling validated, which meant that having things in common with a therapist was key. Later on, I actually found out we had more things we could both relate to than anticipated!
It takes time to open up, and unveiling past events that elicit emotions you have tried to repress is hard. I am really tired of dealing with people who have never tried it and feel the need to dismiss it. Strength is necessary because, by being in therapy, you choose to think about what hurts and verbalize how you feel about it now, and how it felt back then. There’s something very raw about this aspect which is painful, yet healing; it releases the pressure accumulated by bottling things up over the years. Although I started my unlearning of patterns and ideas way before therapy, I can say that giving up on that urge to numb feelings and cheer myself up has been a tremendous step towards better mental health.
Sitting with the heaviness of it all and crying it out might feel like losing control at times, but practice builds trust: I know I can handle it.
There is so much freedom that comes with this space to share with another human being who has been trained to support you. It is not just my emotions that are on display, it is the most vulnerable parts of me that are finally heard and seen, and without the filter of a performance. My love for spoken word is partially based on the need to feel seen, yet I know that is a space for sharing that is inherently performative, and as such, not as liberating and unfiltered as therapy. It just doesn’t allow for the messiness of it all.
For the longest time, before I started writing, I have kept a lot of me under wraps and believed there was no other way to live. I believed I couldn’t open up and be held (literally or figuratively) unless I wanted people to fix me. That is the beauty of working through this with someone who can relate to my struggle: she knows I hold shame by the bucket load! Her lack of judgement and zero pressure to change anything makes my situation one I can fully inhabit without shame, and gives me room to ponder what I want to do, if anything, on my own terms. She doesn’t take away my agency or self-determination, she is there for the telling of the story, and looking for notes my intuition might be leaving me, that I, alone, can’t trace.
I used to give unsolicited advice and try to cheer people up because I thought that was my job as a witness of distress. I now know it makes the person shift from a state of distress to one of relative calm out of the desire to comply with expectations and social rules. That means repressing feelings and urges, and ultimately having a sense that some signs of discomfort and symptoms should not be shared with anyone. Out of your desire not to cause distress, you hide your own, thinking you are doing an act of service or something.
The truth is, being there for someone often means letting the person move through the feelings and offering assistance in the form of a cup of tea, a tissue, listening, sometimes advice, or a hug (depending on the preferences of the distressed). Listening shows acceptance, rejects denial, and represents a comforting way of holding and being held just as we are. Going to therapy can change how you relate to others and make you a great person to hang out with, rain or shine.
So much of our despair stems from feeling that we are in a bad place mentally and we can’t be seen or found by others, we are alone.
In 2019 I decided to perform a set that was all about loneliness and depression at an event that was about mental health. I made people uncomfortable, and I am glad I did, I want to challenge ideas, but their reaction made me feel… lonely! Having a place to talk about all that, without worrying about how it might be received, is freeing. There is so much shame attached to it, and I literally feel like it is chocking me sometimes, the need to release it is very, very real.
Another dimension of me, that was tiny and has recently expanded and released its pressure, is the one that minimizes the pain, on one hand to make it more palatable, and on the other so that I can ignore it myself, and keep going as if nothing had happened. When something bad happens I blame myself, whether it makes sense or not, and resist validating my feelings. My intuition becomes something to be feared, based on things blown out of proportion, not reality, according to a mean voice in my head. I now have a therapist that helps me with validation of needs and feelings, so that when I get ready to minimize and silence them, there is someone who is not in my head ready to validate me. It feels incredibly affirming to know someone has your back, especially if you lack that kind of person in your life. Breaking patterns is hard, and stating my needs and wants instead of making them pocket sized requires help. Challenging ideas from a stage, using stories you have decided to share is one thing. Feeling validated by someone, no matter how inconvenient your story might be, is much more personal and empowering. Instead of constricting in the presence of others, you can expand!!!
Seeing that someone is able to relate to your struggles and experiences cultivates a sense of shared humanity loneliness robbed me of, and makes me feel more fully and wonderfully human. My therapist shows me compassion in a way I can only practice with others but not myself, and leads me on a path to self-compassion, one I would love everyone to be on in an ideal, more just, world.
Years ago I thought I could deal with trauma and shame alone, and to give myself credit (my therapist would be thrilled!) I think I did a lot of the work I needed to do on body issues, especially alopecia, mostly on my own. However, one of the things I kept bumping into in books and podcasts is that healing is relational, interpersonal and community centered.
You can only get this far without involving others, imagine what you could do with more spaces to be your whole self, without masking, pretending and people pleasing. Even if those places have nothing to do with talk therapy, they can still be therapeutic and make you feel held and free.
Engaging with others in an authentic way will challenge our thoughts and expand our narrow definitions that need broadening to make sure we fit them, so that we don’t leave ourselves outside in the rain, while others seem to be having a completely different, and seemingly separate, life. I believe that opening up to others through therapy, with the right therapist, of course, can lead us back to our shared humanity. It’s definitely doing that for me.
Thank you for reading!
Hugs,
Dare to be b@ld
P.S. If you are looking for a podcast that is heartwarming and heartbreaking at the same time, sometimes funny and clever, give We Can Do Hard Things a try. Glennon Doyle is a deliciously awkward human being.
Dare to be b@ld 