In all my years of dabbling in therapy, and I’ve dabbled on and off since high school, I think the saddest thing is this little fake potted plant in the waiting room of my current therapist’s office.
All joking aside, therapy has been a Godsend for the past two years, when adulting and grown-up concerns have made life difficult to manage. I wish I’d seen the light sooner, but I just wasn’t ready, and as much as I think absolutely everyone could benefit from a few good therapy sessions, I realize not everyone is of a similar mindset. For myself, I went through a number of periods when I would feel the vague need for a therapist, but derail the process by trying to find the perfectly attuned person who instantly ‘got’ me and understood what I needed/wanted without me having to say a word. Basically, the antithesis of therapy. I didn’t see the error of that for many years.
From my very first therapy session in high school, when I sat across from a male therapist and interrogated him about his earring, wondering how the fuck some middle-aged guy with an earring could possibly be qualified to help me run my life, I was a challenging disciple. Part of me knew that therapy would be a great help, but my perfectionist tendencies were in full effect for most of my life, during which I would occasionally attempt another round with a new therapist, all of whom failed to help me make any breakthroughs, and all of which was because I simply wasn’t ready to properly engage in the process.
What I didn’t see until two years ago was that it wasn’t the perfect therapist I needed, it was the will and desire and drive to take the therapy and work through it. I had to be honest with myself about what work needed to be done, and then honest with a stranger who was there to facilitate that work and help me see things in a new way. When I reached that place of openness and humility, as much out of desperation as out of genuine maturity, it didn’t matter that my therapist didn’t appear as the perfect person to solve my problems – and that wasn’t the point of therapy anyway. It worked because I was finally ready to work. In the ensuing two years, I felt good about my therapy sessions, and the way they improved my life.
So if you’re struggling with the idea of talking to someone, I totally understand. And I would suggest not giving up, just expanding your mind and opening up to the idea of trying to work through the process. If I’d understood that earlier, or just planted the seed of such a possibility, I could have saved myself years of difficulty.
As for now, my therapy takes place about once every two months, and it’s become more of a chance to re-align and examine how the process has progressed, discover what more I may need to work on, and check in on how far I’ve come. All good things.
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