(Image from The Dark Manson Tarot)
I am the most pro therapy person you may ever meet. I truly believe that everyone should spend at least some time working with a good therapist. I’ve been in therapy off and on since I was 15. My current therapist I’ve been working with for almost four years now. While I’ve been jokingly saying he’s firing me that’s not what is really happening. What’s really happening is that I don’t need him right now. I’m doing so much better than I have been doing for a very long time. But there’s more to it than that. There is plenty of mental health work that I could be doing right now but I think I’m getting ready for a break. I’m feeling two very contradictory things at the same time right now.
On the one hand I’m tired. I’ve been in therapy once a week (or more on the bad weeks) for four years. This is the longest continuous stretch of therapy I think I’ve ever done in my life. Similar to when you’ve been working out really hard I feel like I need a break from working on my mental health. My therapist has been suggesting that I try DBT (Dialectical Behavior Therapy) but that would mean two group classes and one individual counseling appointment every week. While my health is vastly improved I don’t feel like I have the capacity to do that much work right now and maintain everything else I’m currently doing. For the moment I don’t feel like I need it which is a pretty rad way to feel. I don’t know how long that break will be but I want to just exist for a while rather than digging up old pain and examining it.
On the other hand I was saying yesterday that I’m shocked and confused by how well I’m doing. There’s this piece of me that feels like I went to sleep four years ago when I started getting sick and now I’m just waking up and I’m a different person. I think about who I was four years ago, where I was in my life, what I was willing to accept, and I’m not the same person any more. So I have to challenge the feeling that this change just happened without me doing any work. How can I feel tired and need a break from doing no work?
When I told my therapist about feeling like everything just fixed itself and I did none of the work gave me a long list of the work I’ve done over these years. I was surprised that there was so much to it. I also felt embarrassed by my continuing inability to give myself credit. (See, there’s something I can work on in therapy), but I also felt proud. It was an amazing feeling to see my own personal growth and feel like I can take most of the credit for it. That is not a feeling that I am used to or very comfortable with. Even in the discomfort I find pleasure in feeling like I can say “I did this, I created this, I kind of kick ass.”
It will be slow, for now we are transitioning to every other week and then we may still meet once a month. We slowed down to once a week a while back and I fell apart and came back to once a week. But that decline was directly related to a steep decline in my physical health, as they usually are for me. I’m apprehensive and hopeful in equal parts.
As I’m writing this I find myself thinking “what comes next?” both in terms of this post and in terms of my healing and my mental health journey. I really don’t want to follow up my last post with another inconclusive conclusion.
Maybe instead of looking at this as an ending I should be looking at this as a new beginning. I’m doing well enough to actually step into the next phase in my life. I’m feeling confidant enough in my ability to work more hours that I’m starting to take on new clients. I just had a conversation with a potential new client today. My husband and I are traveling more, not big trips just weekends out of town, and I’ve really been enjoying our connection and that time together. I’m writing this blog and so far I have been loyal to posting every day. (If some of the dates don’t show that it’s because I always write late and night and sometimes I post before midnight… and sometimes I post after.) I’ve been sewing a lot (one of my first great loves) and cooking more. Who knows, maybe I will start baking again. I used to be an amazing baker and I can’t even remember the last time I made something with yeast. In the good moments I feel like I’m standing on the edge of something great. Like if I just chose the right direction the possibilities are endless! So I’m going to hold onto that limitless feeling while I do all the things that I love and have missed over the last few years of being unable to do anything.
Screaming in the Dark 