First Round of Therapy in Ten Years

If you’re wondering about therapy, this is your sign to go.

(TW)

I arrived early, halfway forgetting to remember my new patient paperwork at home. After cursing at my steering wheel, I swallowed my anxiety medication and went in anyway, observing the inception like staircases on my way to the bathroom. I checked in, fingers crossed. The receptionist was nice enough, in a better mood today, but she informed me I had to complete the paperwork again, nonetheless. Moving quickly now I leafed through the various stages of medical stories, family history, abusive experiences and consent initials just in time for my name to be called. At the door I was greeted by a warm and lovely woman, a woman old enough to be my grandmother, a woman that gave me high hopes that her wisdom would be greater than my own. After winding down the disorienting black and blue hallways, I made my way to her sunken in couch adorned with frayed and clearly cried on pillows, evidence of those who had come before me.

I explained in detail that I didn’t want to spend too much time meandering in the past, although it has no doubt had an impact on my present pathology. I elaborated that I felt addressing present day concerns would be more pertinent and she kindly agreed. She asked about my previous psychiatric history and subsequent hospitalizations, which I thought was nice of her to acknowledge. Revisiting these things can be triggering, but that’s also what makes them important. I explained that like most people I sustained a largely useless hospitalization the first time and left with nothing more than crisis intervention, a less than revealing personality inventory, medication and a misdiagnosis.

In the ten years that passed I struggled greatly with my sexual orientation, and sustained the blow of suicide that fractures a family in ways you only know if you’ve lived it. I explained the litany of maladaptive behaviors that followed for every poor soul dangling in my family tree and how leaving was the only way to heal. She told me I was very articulate and made me promise to keep writing. She asked if I had been here before, swearing up and down that she recognized me. I don’t believe in coincidences and took this as a good sign. We later determined we had passed in the hallway once or twice six years ago. She recalled me on my way to another practitioner who I later had to break up with on the basis of facial recognition alone.

We moved then to present day symptomology, the things that challenge me the most, the things that break my heart on a day-to-day basis. She was engaging, validating, and compassionate during my telling of my late cousin – stolen too soon by a drug overdose, my total hysterectomy – stolen too soon by endometriosis, and my sweet kitty girl Sibyl – stolen too soon by her own vet.

I cried and she empathized, telling me of her own fur babies while I reached for the inevitable nearby tissue box and did my best not to judge the situation. I told her my medication was helping but also changed my demeanor so I apologized if I didn’t seem interested. She engaged with me anyway, turning to her nearby bookshelf and soon sitting beside me on the pressed in couch. As we flipped through the pages, she identified tools and defined the word “homework” that we both determined would be helpful in our journey together.

She spoke of her own family and offered praise in my progress as a spiritual being who is deeply invested in self-healing, no matter the consequence. We touched on relationships, boundaries, and she offered some additional community resources once she learned I am a lover of the peer support model. She touched on the idea that this is a relationship and she wants our communication to remain transparent, to which I couldn’t agree more. Post-therapy sniffles came to a slow and our time was up. In some strange way I didn’t want it to end. There is so much to unpack, so much work to be done, but I am confident we will arrive at the goal we set to be met by January of next year – namely giving my adrenal gland a break and giving me something tangible to hold onto.