My journey with therapy has been erratic at best. It began in earnest when my family participated in group counseling while my brother was in rehab. He was spending a lot of time in therapy, so we decided to give it a go ourselves. I think we went to four or five sessions.
A year later, I was doing some serious soul-searching and landed on another therapist’s couch, by myself this time. I really enjoyed my time with Jane. I talked, and she listened. Of course I was paying her to listen, but it was refreshing to have someone in the world who was only interested in helping ME. Her sole aim was to support me and how I handled what life threw at me. I went to see her a lot at first, and then I slowly scaled back the frequency of my visits. By the time I met Zach in March, I only went to see her one more time.
I remember vividly my last session with Jane. I was beside myself giddy. All I did was gush about this man that was turning my world upside down. This was in June of 2018. In just about three more months, we would get engaged. I would quickly plan the wedding that I’ve been dreaming about for the last ten years. We would then go to Disney World on vacation, very quickly call off our wedding, and end our relationship. There is no other way to describe this nightmare than a whirlwind. It happened so fast.
March – meet.
September – engage.
November – end.
September – engage.
November – end.
We actually were in the middle of pre-marital counseling when our relationship crumbled. I guess that’s the point, right? To figure out BEFORE you get married if it’s going to work or not. We figured out that it wasn’t going to work. I wish I could say it was some beautiful yet tragic realization where we looked at each other and silently acknowledged the truth, put our heads together, cried, hugged, and said goodbye. It wasn’t like that. It was ugly and childish and basically the worst break-up story ever. I hate telling it to people because they just go, “Really? That’s it? So what actually happened?” The truth is that I don’t know what happened. I’m still trying to figure it out. Closure may or may not be a myth, but not having any is a bitch.
When I called our pre-marital counselor to cancel our last session (because of course I got stuck with cleaning up the mess that was our shattered relationship and canceling everything to do with our wedding), she offered to see me individually if I wanted. I thanked her for the offer and told her I’d keep that in mind. I never called her back.
Fast forward six and half months later… I felt ready to talk about it.
I didn’t go back to Jane, even though she knows. I didn’t go back to our pre-marital counselor, because that felt like too much salt in the wound. Instead, I put out an all-call on my Instagram Story for any therapist who sees adult women in the greater Nashville area. It felt extremely vulnerable to do this. I was basically choosing to broadcast to 913 people that I struggle with my mental health and that I needed help.
The response was the very definition of unexpected.
Names came pouring in. People that I haven’t talked to in years sent me the name and phone number of their therapist. People who don’t live here sent messages of solidarity and encouragement for being so brave. I received story after story of successful therapist relationships – stories of how lives were transformed by therapy. Friends who had no names to offer asked me to send them a list of names that I received after the fact. 27 recommendations rolled in. I was shocked.
After carefully researching every single therapist’s name sent my way, I narrowed the list down to three. I decided to call them all, see if they were accepting new clients, and talk through what therapy would look like on their couches. I called Miller first, simply based on her office’s location. It’s literally on my way home, halfway between my office and my house. Yes – she was taking new clients. Yes – she took my HSA debit card as a form of payment. Yes – she had basically immediate availability. We spoke on the phone for almost 30 minutes just getting to know each other. I asked her what her theory of therapy looked like after giving her a basic breakdown of my life situation. She explained a few different tools that she uses and what her style of traditional therapy looks like. Her style aligned with what I preferred, so we chose a time for our first session just the next week. I didn’t call the other two.
I’ve now been to see her three times in three weeks. I go back tomorrow for session number four.
In our first session, I basically unloaded 30 years of tragedy and pain on to her. I ran through the timeline of my life, which is not short. I told her that I had recently seen a post on Facebook referencing Queen Elizabeth II’s annus horribilis – her horrible year, where everything seemed to go terribly wrong. The post asked if you had ever experienced an annus horribilis, which made me burst into tears. The last seven years have felt like a consecutive annus horribilis. That kind of weight on a person is soul-crushing.
Miller has been helping me focus on answering the question, “Who is Elizabeth?” These are some of the first things that came to my mind: selfish (my number one character flaw), jealous (my number two character flaw), maternal, caring, responsible, protective, single, lonely, sad, resilient, easily affected by shame, tough as nails, brave… you see the mounting list of contradictions?
Sure, people can have positive and negative character traits, but what I was experiencing was a constant tug-of-war. Most often it presented itself in this way: do something for someone else’s benefit at the expense of my own physical or mental health, which resulted in an internal battle of which is more important.
Hear this Biblical truth:
“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
Jesus replied: “’Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
Matthew 22: 36-40
“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
Jesus replied: “’Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
Matthew 22: 36-40
Have you ever caught that little wisdom nugget in the second greatest commandment? Love your neighbor as yourself? The truth here is that you HAVE to love yourself BEFORE you can love others. This is why they tell you to put the oxygen mask on yourself before you help other people on a distressed airplane. You cannot help other people until you have taken care of yourself. Actually, that’s not true. You can. But you know what eventually happens? Burn out. That’s where I am right now. That’s what I am actually working on in therapy. I don’t want to go through life burnt out and exhausted. Trying hard not to!
