The One Thing I Learned In Therapy that I Wish Everyone Would Know
After a sort of breakup that brought me a world of heartache, I found myself in a very stressful position. I was going to face a huge challenge in my professional life. I was the head of a Student’s Conference while the University was on strike. With a huge part of the student body being from out of state, I feared the attendance would be minimal.
Furthermore, we were faced with budget challenges and electricity shortages that threatened the continuity of the event.
My emotional status? I found myself crying over everything. I kid you not. I once cried because someone cut in line at the supermarket. I was what you might have called “a mess”.
This is what pushed me to go back to therapy. As a family, we’d been to therapy throughout the years. However, this time I was going as an adult to see what I could learn. I was having constant ideas about dying, which took a big chunk of energy from my everyday life. I was permanently exhausted.
Last week I realized it’s been almost five years since I started going to therapy. It’s incredible how many things have changed since then. I’m now living in another country, doing something I never expected to do for a living, and I even got married! On my wedding day I sent a thank you note to my therapist. Trust me, without her, it wouldn’t have been possible.
Another change is that our sessions are now on WhatsApp Web instead of in-person since she’s still in Venezuela. And they’re every two months instead of every week.
As always, she asked me to sum up what I took away from this session. I was surprised to realize that one of the things was something that I’d said in our very first session.
Have more compassion with yourself.
And please, let’s not confuse this with self-pity.
I’m a very self-demanding person and, as my now-husband noticed on our first date, a type-A personality. Although I’ve improved on the self-demanding greatly, sometimes I bring it to the mental health arena as well.
I want to be successful at feeling good about myself, the things I do, and how I feel at all times.
And frankly, this is simply not possible. There will be days in which I’ll find myself having negative thoughts, days in which I’m simply sad because I miss my family. And that’s ok.
It’s ok to mourn for broken dreams even if you’ve landed on your feet in their aftermath. You’re not a failure for not being happy even when everything is ok.
Instead of trying to hurry my emotions, I should just embrace them, feel them. Only then can we truly let them go.
And I wouldn’t be able to realize these things if I didn’t look at myself from a place of compassion instead of judgment and self-demand.
Compassion, not only for others but also for yourself.
