Have You Considered Therapy?
There’s a meme circulating that says something along the lines of: When I tell you to go to therapy, I don’t mean that I think you’re crazy. I mean that I think you deserve someone to listen to you, without judgment, and help you process your feelings.
The shame and stigma inherently found in seeking help for what ails us is strong — so strong that often our first reaction is “I don’t NEED therapy!” Let me assure you, if you immediately flare up like that, chances are you need some therapy. How do I know? Because I’m not only the “I don’t need to go to therapy” club president. I’m also a client.
I was in my mid-thirties when I realized that the foreboding sense of doom I carried around like an anvil all day, every day was depression (with a side of anxiety). Deep into the throes of family trauma and grief, I went to a therapist because I thought, “Well, I don’t really NEED therapy, but things are getting bonkers right now and I can’t sleep and I am drinking a bit much, so I’ll check it out.” Isn’t it weird how life-changing decisions are usually wrapped in a pretty mundane cloak?
What started as me seeking a kind of brain “oil change” — because “I needed to go ahead and deal with this grief and trauma shit and get on with my life” — became a much deeper shift. I would love to say I over came all the baggage of the past and stand on the mental health mountaintop wiser, more peaceful and free of the burdens that have weighed me down. But victory doesn’t look like that. It’s an imperceptible shift happening inside my body and mind each and every day. It’s the complex dance between chemistry and biology, environment and stimulus, signal and noise.
On my very best days, it’s the moment where I go, “Huh... this would have tripped me up before, but I see where my initial reaction is this and I CHOOSE my response to be this instead,” without my heart rate going over 85. It’s not having the feeling that an alien has vacuumed my consciousness out of my body and I’m just floating there above myself going, “WTF?”It’s accepting who I am and where I am, not leaving myself behind in body or spirit. It’s being able to stay with discomfort and uncertainty. I have a peaceful life now. While my trauma will never go away, it has been put in the appropriate place — in my past— and when it bubbles up again I know how to cope with it. Mainly, I can tell when things start to slide downhill a little bit quicker so that I can reach out for help before I’m at the (metaphorical) bottom of a ditch.
Which brings me to you — how are you doing? Are you getting enough sleep? Enough gentle movement? Do you have someone to listen, without judgment, to what’s going on in your life? Because you deserve to. Everyone does. Especially right now when everything feels so hard and there are so many ugly, scary things bubbling up from every corner of our world. If you’re feeling bad, seek help. There are options for everyone — from therapists that work on a sliding scale to nonprofits that can support your healing to virtual platforms that connect you with a real therapist at an affordable rate.
One important note: It’s not always as cut and dry as being depressed, getting treatment and getting better. Sometimes the very society you live in is traumatizing and the mental health treatment provided needs to take into consideration the way that people from marginalized or oppressed groups are bombarded. There are culturally competent, trauma informed therapists who specialize in issues specific to Black people, Indigenous people and people of color as well as support groups that can help people cope with the trauma of living in our current reality.
If you are feeling overwhelmed right now, you are not alone. Let this year's World Mental Health Day be both a celebration of those invisible milestones and a reminder that help is out there and there is no shame in seeking it out.