10 March 2021
I went to therapy and discovered a lot of things I don’t like about myself. I entered my therapist’s office knowing that there were numerous reasons for me to be there. But, Jesus, I didn’t quite realize just how many reasons there could be or that would arise along the way. When my therapist, then a stranger to me, asked why I had come, I didn’t know where to begin. So, verbal diarrhea poured out of my mouth. And I didn’t get to everything before I paused, and noticed the overwhelmed look on her face. Or maybe I had only imagined that look. Perhaps, I was simply mirroring how I felt in my head and projecting onto her. It’s a year later and every Tuesday I’m still looking at her from across my screen. I guess I didn’t scare her enough to suggest a different therapist. Thank god. We both keep showing up and even when talking about my issues is the last thing I want to do, she’s figured out how to coax me into sharing. And then I feel better. Well, usually.
Therapy is a lot of fucking work. Some weeks it feels like a full time job. Instead of getting paid to show up though, you’re paying to be there. I keep asking my therapist when it’ll get easier. She says to be patient, that it takes time. All I’m really looking for is an estimate. It’s like being on a slow moving ride, sometimes you feel like you’re getting nowhere and sometimes you feel like you’re riding around in circles. But when you have a moment of clarity, a breakthrough, no matter how little, you know it’s worth it to stay on the ride. If we’re being honest, I’ll probably be on this ride for years.
Things that take a lot of work usually pay off. That’s definitely true of working on yourself. Change doesn’t happen overnight, or even week to week. Sometimes the further I dig, the more shit I tap into that I didn’t know was there or still there. It feels never-ending. I’m told this feeling is normal. It sounds crazy, but then again isn’t this the reason I’m doing all this? To reign in my craziness by untangling all the depression and anger and organizing it so that it’s no longer front and center, continuously attempting to stifle me and keep me from moving forward.
Like I mentioned, I’ve been in therapy for a year and I’m wondering how long I will have to keep this up. Will I have to keep going until I’m on my death bed? Is my therapist as frustrated about hearing the same set of issues on repeat as I am telling her about them? Why haven’t I gotten over some of this shit? Why do I keep circling back to the same issues over and over? Why does everything seem to correlate? Therapy isn’t black and white. It’s a vast canvas of gray that needs to be explored and re-explored, until you’ve explored it to death and finally you can leave it in the past where it belongs.
This all sounds fun and easy, right? Please sign me up, said no one ever. I find it grueling to talk about myself. I’d much rather just skip over that part in any setting. It turns out that a good therapist won’t let you sit in silence for fifty minutes. Sometimes I find myself asking her questions, simply because I’m tired of the sound of my own voice. I love when it takes a few minutes for her to formulate a question. It’s like bonus time. I ask her to explain what she’s asking because sometimes I’m not sure, but more often than not, I’m just buying myself some more silence.
In case you haven’t picked up on it yet, I am someone who really needed therapy. Is there any person who can truly say they have everything figured out? I doubt it. Everyone can benefit from talking to an unbiased person who has no real involvement in their everyday life. No matter how sane they feel. This country would be a much different place if people were not only encouraged to go to therapy, but if the majority of us could also afford to go. It’d be nice if it was universally understood as the necessity it is and made a priority for all.
A lot of things that truly stink still exist. I think we can all agree on that. One of them is the lack of understanding of how important it is to take care of your mental health. Even finding the resources and being able to afford something that feels like a luxury, a painful luxury at times, to me shouldn’t have to feel so out of reach. It took me weeks to find a therapist that was in my preferred network for my insurance company and then it took another few weeks to track one down who was taking new clients. These weeks of searching were critical in more ways than one. My depression was all consuming that even the thought of actually finding someone I felt a connection with was tiresome. But I also understood that staying on the path of doing nothing would be the worst thing I could do, no matter how overwhelmed I felt. Luckily, when I finally found someone my insurance company approved of, I also approved of her.
The stigma surrounding mental health is still with us. We need to undergo a serious makeover for how we talk about, think about, teach about, and treat mental illness. It’s 2021, so things aren’t as bad as they once were, but that doesn’t mean we’re where we should be. If someone claims to be normal and denies ever having felt remotely crazy, I excuse myself from the conversation immediately. This person doesn’t exist. What is actually going on with this person? It’s the craziest ones that try to hide their mental state and some of them do it really well. I should know. I used to be one of those types of crazies.
I haven’t watched the Woody Allen and Mia Farrow documentary on HBO yet, and I know that Woody isn’t someone that we can point to and praise any longer for some very serious reasons, but he was a pioneer in regards to mental health. I can recall multiple movies where his character had a therapist, or as he referred to them, an analyst. This was back in the 1970s. He even encouraged and paid for Diane Keaton to see her own analyst in Annie Hall. Where is this kind of boyfriend now? It’s hard for me not to look at him with a renewed skepticism and less respect, but he was way ahead of his time when it came to normalizing therapy.
Back at the beginning of my depression I could have been nominated for an Oscar for my skill of pretending. If I mentioned to people that didn’t know me well, or even some that did, that I was depressed or had been depressed in the past most of those people had trouble believing me. But you’re such a happy person they’d say. Just because depression takes up a lot of space in my life, that doesn’t mean that I can’t also experience happiness. It’s not as if you can’t have one, if you have the other. The two aren’t exclusive. Sometimes I’ve even felt both in the same moment.
Now I can’t shut up about how depressed I am. I literally went from one extreme to the other. I was a person with an invisibility cloak covering my depression and now I have zero problem with admitting to people that I am a complete looney tune. I feel a sense of freedom now that I am flying my crazy flag in tandem with my freak flag. I mean a lot depression can be genetic. So, basically I was born this way. Shout out to genetics! And I can’t change who I am at the core, plus I don’t want to. Imagine how much work it would be to start all over again from scratch. No way in hell do I want to do that.
I can make my craziness my own little bitch now. I call the shots. The anger, anxiety and depression don’t own me. I’m the puppet master pulling at my own strings. And now with the help of therapy and prozac the strings are more in line than they’ve ever been. Sometimes when I’m overwhelmed by how exhausting and draining therapy is, I remember how drained and lifeless I felt for so many years. The depression was exhausting, but trying to pretend I was just fine was equally and sometimes more exhausting.
Every week I cross my fingers and allow myself to believe that this will be the week that I’m cured. Just kidding. I don’t know much, but I know this crap isn’t that easy. Maybe this will be the week I’ll finally run out of things to talk about and my therapist will suggest I come less often. Well, that hasn’t happened yet and I don’t see it happening in the near future. It turns out that I always have something to talk about. Sometimes it’s the same subjects over and over again. Each time I think I have exhausted a subject I plead with all that is holy, if anything like that exists, that this time will be the last. Whatever we’ve discussed will finally stick and I can finally let some shit go. Should be any day now.
It’s one thing to know that you need to change certain behaviors, but it’s another thing to put that thinking into action. I can understand some of my issues on an intellectual level. Like I understand why I need to figure out certain patterns or ways of thinking. It’s putting the changes into practice where I get hung up. The process of actually changing takes the form of baby steps. A really young baby. One that moves mere inches at a time. It won’t happen all at once. And while I’ve learned it’s okay to be disappointed with myself when I feel like I’m moving at a snail’s pace, or backtracking, the disappointment doesn’t have to control me. When I feel like I’m back in the same place I’ve worked relentlessly to get out of, I have to remind myself that I won’t always be here in this emotional state. There’s a gate that I can see, and hopefully will eventually walk through and close on my way out.
Anger and an aggressive panic attack is what ultimately brought me to my therapist’s door. I was a walking volcano, ready to blow at any moment. I was a nightmare in the car. My road rage was at an all time new high. I completely lost my shit when some jerk cut me off or didn’t understand the concept of staying in one lane at a time. The panic attack occurred while I was driving home one night. In an instant I felt like I was hyperventilating. I broke out in a sweat and the tears came in hot and heavy. So heavy, I had to pull over because I couldn’t see the road anymore. I sat in the car beside the road desperately trying to slow my breathing. I don’t remember how long it took to be able to feel comfortable enough to start the car again and continue driving home.
My anger scared the shit out of me. I didn’t want to be ready to blow at any moment. I didn’t want it to eat me alive or dictate how I functioned, or more importantly didn’t function. Anger can be a good thing. I learned that letting go of anger, a process all its own, doesn’t mean that you have to excuse or accept what made you feel anger in the first place. Anger itself isn’t illogical and can actually be useful. When it goes unchecked and gets buried it can fester and turn to poison. It doesn’t take a genius to know that poison of any kind isn’t good for you.
There was plenty to work on, change, and figure out when I first started therapy. That became evident quickly. I also realized I’m a lot more resilient than I knew. Everything I had done in the past, every choice of how to deal or not deal with what I was experiencing has led me to this place. It may have taken awhile for me to get here, and this is by no means the final stop of my progress, but it sure feels nice to be in this place. I can honestly say that looking at myself under a microscope each week has been worth it. You have to look at the whole picture and all the pieces that make up the whole. I can’t think of anything more up close and personal. It never fails that the pieces I desperately want to skip over are the exact things that I need to sit with and examine. When you find the right person to break yourself down and build yourself back up into a fuller, healthier version of yourself that’s half the battle. The other half is to keep showing up week after week.
HALF FULL DECK 