For this week’s article I’ve decided to tell you guys about my time in therapy. I’ve been in and out of therapy/school counseling since 7th grade. And let me tell you I’ve always hated it.
Through the years I’ve been seen by many different people and they all have focused on one issue of mine and it always made me uncomfortable. They would give me these “solutions” to my issues yet it was always the same thing, and guess what, it never worked.
It made me push therapy away more and more as time went on. Even though I knew I needed it, I felt like all the therapists were the same and I couldn’t get over that unsettling feeling it gave me.
When I came to SBU I thought I would try it again, I mean hey, it’s free here so why not. It did not go well at first.
My new therapist, though different from all the rest I’ve had, began to focus entirely on my eating disorder. This was a new way for a therapist to help me, so I gave it a chance. But things still weren’t right.
I didn’t feel comfortable talking to her about things, and every time she talked it was always about my eating disorder. I didn’t feel free to talk about the things I wanted, and felt I needed, to talk about. She would also give me a grocery bag of snacks at the end of the session to “help” my issue, that was just not it for me.
I didn’t give up though, I came back this semester with the mindset to try again, but with a new therapist. And let me tell you, I am so appreciative and thankful I found her.
From the moment I walked into her office for our first session, the room was so warm and welcoming and it made me feel extremely comfortable with opening up. And normally I’m not one to open up right of the back, it usually takes me a few sessions to get to the deep stuff, but that first session, everything was out in the open, down to the darkest parts of me.
When I’m in a session with her it’s not just me spewing out everything either, it’s a conversation. That’s exactly what I needed, I can’t do the one sided talking, I need someone else to engage with me or else I’ll shut down. She makes it so easy to get my feelings off my chest and work on the things I need to work on so I can feel better about my past, present, and future.
We also don’t talk every session. That’s something else I didn’t realize I needed.
Sometimes I’m just not in the mood to talk about how I feel, or I’m so overwhelmed I can’t even think straight to be able to talk about it, or I’m in a good mood and I don’t even know what to really talk about. That doesn’t mean I can just skip my therapy lessons. So something my therapist does is keep different activities in her office.
She has coloring books, supplies to make slime, bracelet making materials, and other things. Some sessions that’s what we do. I will sit either coloring or making a bracelet and we will listen to music, specifically the “Bridgerton” music, and it gives me a moment to just take a breather and relax my brain. We still talk during this time too, once I get my hands moving and my thoughts begin to clear we begin to have our normal session conversations. It is a great feeling to find a therapist that actually fits what I need from a therapist without even knowing what those needs were going in.
So, shout out to my therapist. She’s a real one for real.