TW: Brief mention of self-harm
For me, going to see my therapist is like going to the gym, not like going to urgent care. It’s a habit I keep to strengthen my inner self just as I show up (and struggle) to do another burpee during circuit training. It’s not an SOS signal.
I resisted talk therapy growing up. I went to see a therapist for a while starting in middle school. Lucy tried to teach me about counting to ten in stressful moments and recommended I try to spend time with other friends (not just one). I thought that was pretty silly advice, given that I thought myself secretly in love with that one friend and wanted to spend more time with them, not less.
My second therapist, Mrs. Bloom, was a mandate from my parents after I was self-harming as a freshman in high school. The right move as a parent, for sure, but I lied my ass off to get out of those sessions as quickly as possible. When I decided for myself to change half a year later I came clean to my parents and asked not to go to therapy, promising I would handle it on my own. For the most part, I did.
I didn’t touch therapy again until my senior year of college. I was underwater, relapsed in a self-harm practice I thought I’d broken seven years ago, and feeling hopeless. It took months before I walked into the college counseling office and asked for an appointment. Another two weeks before I could see someone. When I met Patricia, I told her the truth. I told her all the messy parts and she reframed them with a kindness that let in a little light. At last, I saw how therapy could be useful if you open yourself up to it. I needed someone to question my thoughts, to ask why they had to be true, to give me permission to be gentle with myself.
When I moved to Austin after college it took me a few months to get back into therapy. Still feeling the wind-down of my depression, the act of finding a doctor and setting an appointment felt exhausting. My friend Jenna held me accountable and I’ve been seeing the same therapist for the last four and a half years.
She’s seen me through my engagement and my marriage and my divorce and all the mess that came after it. She’d learned about my triggers and my stories and connects my feelings before I do sometimes. She was the first one who let me know something was wrong when I talked about what was happening in my marriage. Who got angry for me and gave the most concrete advice out of anyone in my life: to leave. It still took me a while.
I didn’t know where my life was going to go when I started seeing a therapist. I don’t think I would have gotten into therapy in those moments I truly needed it. The time when you truly need help is when it’s the hardest to ask. It takes tremendous energy. Now, I look at therapy as accountability. That I’m working on myself. That if things go bad, that standing appointment will catch me and help me confront what I’m feeling. That I have someone objective in my life holding me true to my values.
“When we talk about our feelings, they become less overwhelming, less upsetting, and less scary.”
Fred Rogers
I have varied the cadence of my therapy. Once a week in the worst times. Every two weeks. Every month. Back to every two weeks. And on and on. This last year I’ve been going every two months and we’re extending it to every three. I am in more peaceful season in my life, strengthen by many of the coping skills I learned from my therapy. My therapist has asked a few times if I want to keep my appointments since I’m doing so much better, but I’ve insisted. It’s a safety net. I’ve vowed to make a sooner appointment if I need it, but I know how difficult that is for me.
The stigma of therapy held me back for a long time. Therapy is not necessarily fun. But exercising is not necessarily fun either. And yet we’re not ashamed to talk about the hours logged at the gym. The conversation around mental health is thankfully changing. After all, this is our health we’re talking about and ignoring mental health has real, sometimes dangerous, impact on the rest of our lives.
I preach therapy (perhaps too forcefully) to my friends. Talk therapy may not be for everyone. But I do think everyone needs to have a practice to work on their inner self, as much as we work to keep our bodies healthy or our intellect engaged. I think we need to do the grim, rewarding, fearless work of finding out who we are and what we want from our lives.
With Love,
Natalie