Therapy

One of the greatest acts of self love that I ever gave myself was seeing a therapist.

I remember the first time therapy was suggested to me was by my sister back in 1990. I had just ended a physically and emotionally abusive relationship with my first husband. This relationship was my first love and although it was extremely toxic, I was missing the attention that I received from it; regardless of it being negative. It was a heartbreaking time for me, and in desperation, I relented and made an appointment with a therapist at a local Women’s Center.

At 19, I thought I’d go to a session and tell the therapist what my issue was and they’d have an answer or exercise for me to do and I’d be cured. What I didn’t realize was that this therapist was going to ask common questions like family history, upbringing, etc. When it came time for me to reveal that my mother abandoned me at 1 year old; showing up just a couple times in my life until her suicide when I was 13, I knew I didn’t want to talk about this. Nonetheless, my therapist pressed on, almost shocked at my apathetic and emotionless response. Luckily, my session was about up and she ended with “I think we need to talk about your childhood. That’s where I feel we’ll have some success in getting to the root of the problem.” I told her I agreed. That I’d go home and see when I could schedule another appointment and call her back to set that up. I never did. I was petrified of opening up the vault I had created around my childhood experiences. All my life up until that moment, I was told that my mother was an alcoholic, mentally ill, weak woman who chose to leave her children. She couldn’t handle life, so she took the easy way out. I had such an anger toward her but didn’t show it because in my family you were only allowed to show happy emotions. Crying, sadness and anger were unacceptable and I was quickly shamed, so I just refrained from feeling any of these. I became numb.

Fast forward to the Fall of 1996 when I remarried a wonderfully decent man. He was kind, family oriented, stable and safe. We both wanted kids right away and after a miscarriage in 1997, I was able to give birth to my son, Sean in the Spring of 1998.

Having my son brought me so much joy. A feeling of love that I’d never experienced before. I remember looking at him and thinking to myself, “How in the world could a mother ever leave her child?” I just couldn’t wrap my brain around it. It also exacerbated the anxiety I felt all of my life. I was clueless at how to be a good mother. I was so afraid that I would do something detrimental to my son, from the lack of not having a maternal role model. This is when I decided to give therapy another chance.

I decided to go back to the same Women’s Center I reached out to before. The therapist I spoke with years previously had retired and I was given an appointment with someone who took her place.

This therapist changed my life. I will spare you all of the details where she helped me over the next 10 years. Ten years I spent on/off with this therapist. That may seem like an incredibly long time, but there were many times I only went a few times a year, I’d go for tune-ups, as I called them, and when issues would arise where I needed assistance, I’d go back.

When I moved away from Pennsylvania to New Jersey, I stopped going to therapy. It was an incredibly stressful and busy time in my life that I just felt I had no time for myself anymore. I had just bought a home and was trying to sell another, started back to work full-time after being a stay at home mom of 2 kids now for 10 years, and a lot of my years were just consumed with just being a mom who was in constant motion. Being busy allowed me to avoid many personal issues that were going on. One of which was that I was miserable in my marriage because I knew I was gay.

So what I started doing was applying band-aids to these issues. I started drinking. Binge drinking specifically. Drinking made me forget why I was sad. When I was drinking with friends, I was numbing out. Always laughing about anything in the moment and just having an all around great time…until I’d get home. Then I was miserable again. Several years of doing this took it’s toll on me. What turned into one night on a weekend drinking, turned into 2-4 days a week. I knew I had a problem. And I wanted to change.

I wish I could tell you that I went back to therapy right away when I had this realization, but I did not. What I did do was go back to old journals I’d written, books I’d read previously and realized I needed to change. I stopped drinking for a while, started working out, and eventually came out. Although I was caring for myself in some ways, I was neglecting myself in others.

I suffered from extreme guilt at breaking up my family. My kids were displaying signs of depression and anxiety that I thought was the direct result of my actions, and I was in a relationship with a woman who turned out to be abusive and controlling. I thought it was time to try therapy again.

I saw a different therapist this time. And she really made me start to work on loving myself. Putting me first didn’t mean I was selfish. It meant I wanted to be the best version of myself so that I could offer that to others. I have read so much over the years about self-love that I really didn’t have an exact definition or understanding of what that meant until recently. I work on achieving this daily. It’s a very tough task for me and I fall of the wagon from time to time. I understand the term people-pleaser all too well. Especially when it would come to relationships.

Because of being abandoned, and my subsequent needs not being met by my father throughout the remainder of my childhood into adulthood, I have brought these fears with me into other relationships. It has also made me select partners with whom I tend to form trauma bonds. I felt needed by those who made me their savior, and rescued by those who swore to be the things I never received as a child. This lead to me denying myself of my own wants and needs at the expense of theirs.

This. Does. Not. Work.

Getting back to therapy made me explicitly aware of this once again. I need to love myself. And I need to surround myself with others who have this same mindset. Those who can not love themselves enough to face their fears, make significant changes that will better their lives or those of their loved ones, will never know how to fully love another. We must first show ourselves this empathy, compassion, and forgiveness before we can ever offer this to another. I know there are some people out there that say therapy does not work for them. In all honesty, I believe it’s not that therapy doesn’t work for them, but that they haven’t found the right therapist. Sometimes it takes seeing some different ones, before you find the best fit for you.

Therapy is difficult. You are asked to talk about uncomfortable things. Things that you purposefully avoid. It breaks down walls that you’ve so carefully constructed over the years. No one really wants to go to therapy or enjoys it, but I believe it’s an important part of growth. A therapist will hold you accountable…something that we can’t always do for ourselves.