A Little Bit of Therapy

I have been in therapy for at least six months. Maybe a little more, maybe a little less. It took me forever to get there. I have no idea why. But I was really ashamed to go, to sign up, to knock on the door. Whatever the starting point is. I have a super supportive family and sisters that listen to everything, a best friend that is well versed in psychology and my family history and all things of me that are neurotic, so I guess I thought I was good? Question mark…. Question mark?

I wasn’t.

I also hated the thought of finding a therapist and then not clicking with him or her and having to fire said person. I am such a people pleaser, I think I would have stayed with that person, unclicked, for months and months. Luckily, I found mine on the first go. Let’s call her Lisa, to protect her identity. I don’t really care about my identity. I have become so open about therapy, I literally walk around work saying things like I was just having this conversation with my therapist, or I can’t go to that meeting, that is my therapy time etc. I only need a t-shirt, that reads a little screwed up, but always working on it.

Long story short, Lisa is a bonafide God send. She is wonderful. We only meet through the screen, but she has solved a whole list of issues and unearthed several more that need some fixin. She is real, she matches my pirate mouth, sometimes we swear at the same time. I could not love her harder. At first, I treated her like a best friend, like she was a best friend listening, but she very gently and openly has shown me therapy is not your best friend listening and it shouldn’t be.

This winter I was at my lowest of lows. Probably around Christmas I would say. My husband and I were making the decision to put down my chocolate lab, work was so incredibly difficult and and my anxiety and depression were just always at a volanic-like state. My husband went out to visit a friend in Chicago before Christmas and for several reasons this put me in total systems failure. No choosing the red wire or the blue wire. Both wires were frayed and short circuited. By the time he came back, I was physically unwell because I had worked so hard to hold it together while he was gone. During a therapy session, I am telling my Lisa this feeling. I am relating to her my dinner out with my husband and how I began to cry into my greasy burger and when he asked me what I would like to do for a trip and I told him a nap, he looked baffled and I just stood up and left him all alone, to pay for the meal I had not eaten.

She looked back at me. I was giddy with excitement. This would be the time, Finally, I would get a partner in crime. Lisa and I could make I hate Joe posters together and munch popcorn, maybe even watch the opening of Love Actually Together.

“Why did you do that” she asked me? ” Does he not want you to go on trips of your own, or take time away?”

This really shocked me into silence. I put down the posters and stopped making the popcorn. So we aren’t doing that, I told myself.

It really forced me to hold up the mirror and I had to admit that no my husband has never got in the way of anything that I wanted to do ever in our marriage or relationship in general and that basically I was so miserable and depressed, he was puzzle piecing and holding me together and I needed a new strategy that involved more than taking an extra nap when I could and praying for school vacation weeks.

While this was shocking and humbling, it was soooo good. I got to a place with her, where I was able to say, I am hurting, I am only operating in survival mode at school and when I’m not at school, I’m following my kids around to their sports and surviving behind sunglasses. She asked me what a joyful day to me would feel like and I described it unabashedly. I told her all the things and people that bring me joy and how certain food and nature can make even the hardest days feel right. She has helped me so much at work. Whatever I spend in a co-pay isn’t enough.

One of my largest struggles this year as a teacher has been when students are defiant, or not empathetic or repeatedly disrespectful. I told her how I feel in my body every time this happens and my blood pressure goes up and the cortisol dump begins, not to mention the general weariness of the day. We have worked on strategies, on self care, on boundaries. We have done work on me too, because I am a weird introverted alien that recharges by herself, but also loves her people to the fullest. We have strategized in gaining independence, mindful independence in my marriage, with my high school sweetheart, and trusting my own knowledge and intuition that I have always had, but lost somewhere along the way. I have lamented my terrible parenting woes and she has listened and at the end, she reasons and tells me I think you actually did a pretty good job right there and my shoulders relax, because deep down I actually know, I mother as hard as I can, even if it isn’t always perfect.

This summer, I’m going to continue my therapy, even outside of work and the deep stress of the school year, because the work and the progress is just so powerful. I used to think therapy meant paying for another friend to listen, or dabbing your eyes with tissues the whole session, but it doesn’t, it isn’t. Sometimes it sounds like, why do you do that? Followed by an uncomfortable silence, followed by a place of reflection and maturing that you didn’t even think you had in you. Don’t be afraid to find your Lisa, to carve out time, to pay for visits that aren’t for your family and just for you. Not only will it help, it will heal, old deep wounds that you had placed so many band aids on, you didn’t even know they existed and by the time a few sessions are done, you won’t need those band aids at all anymore.