How I Overcame the Guilt of Wanting Therapy
There are few things easier in life than talking ourselves out of things we don’t think we deserve.
Here in the United States, we celebrate the self-sufficient and the independent. We posit the ultimate life as one we built for ourselves, one that is free of burden to others. We dream of being debt-free, mortgage-free, and free to pursue our own personal goals.
With a life of self-sufficiency portrayed as the ideal, it is instinctual to avoid asking for help. We are told that doing so is an indication of weakness and that we should be embarrassed for even considering it.
So we don’t and continue to struggle in silence.
It was with this mentality that I approached the idea of seeing a therapist.
After three years of studying toward a marketing degree, it became very apparent that marketing for my career would be a miserable existence for me.
I couldn’t imagine myself encouraging people to buy things for a living and being happy - but I also couldn’t reconcile that distaste with all the effort I had put into my studies.
Before then, I had only ever envisioned my professional life as a marketer; I had never considered another career path.
I attempted to cope with this uncertainty by just assuming things would work themselves out on their own, that an answer to my woes would hit me and I would be free from all the doubt that plagued me.
As you can guess, after a certain point, all of these feelings I had pushed away eventually bubbled to the surface and demanded I do something to resolve them.
I found myself unable to escape an intense hopelessness and fear of the future, with existential worries consuming my days and nights.
What am I supposed to do now that I’ve wasted all this time and money on something I don’t want?
What if it’s too late for me to reroute my life?
What am I even supposed to do in life?
These questions proved far too difficult to answer on my own, so I began looking into seeing a therapist to sort through the predicament I had found myself in.
Even as I searched for therapy options, though, I found myself constantly thinking that I didn’t deserve to get help.
I got into a habit of downplaying my own issues: I was doing well in school, had a lovely family life, great friendships, and had plenty of experience and network power to get a well-paying marketing job post-grad if I wanted one.
I told myself, “I’m just a little uncertain — since when does that constitute needing therapy?” I was drowning, but I lied that I could breathe underwater.
Having many close friends with mental illness that weren’t getting therapy for it only exacerbated this guilt. It’s not like they hadn’t tried; they either couldn’t afford it or couldn’t find a good therapist to meet their specific needs.
Given that career uncertainty is hardly uncommon and I have great insurance through my parents, I was certain that I would be able to find a fine therapist if I wanted one. But knowing people who were more “deserving” of help that couldn’t get it made me feel even worse for considering it.
After months of mulling it over, though, it hit me — delaying my own mental health care was helping no one, and especially not myself.
I realized that my understanding of therapy was far off from how it actually works and what benefits there are to gain from it due to misguided societal attitudes about it.
Therapy is generally understood to be a space where you sit in a chair and confess your life story to a complete stranger while they tell you to think happy thoughts until your problems go away. People also think that therapy is reserved only for “crazy” people, which not only reinforces the stigma around having mental health issues but also dissuades people who would benefit from it from getting it.
These dramatized ideas of therapy couldn’t be farther from the truth. Therapists provide their clients with an open ear for their issues, a safe space to open up, and tools to resolve issues in their lives, regardless of what brought them there in the first place.
A good therapist listens to what you have to say and helps you resolve your problems at your own pace, gently prodding you along to an understanding of your pain that’s almost impossible to achieve alone.
When I told my friends I started seeing a therapist, I was shocked to hear that even the ones who seemed the most emotionally stable admitted to seeing therapists at some point. These friends reiterated my own misconceptions, telling me they didn’t talk about it because they too didn’t want to look weak for getting help.
Fears of what seeking help communicates about us and our well-being are salient in our society, but we cannot let those fears come before our own well-being.
In the four months since I started seeing my therapist, I feel as though my life has completely changed.
I see now that my degree does not at all define my path and that I’ve learned countless lessons from pursuing a life that wasn’t right for me.
I now believe that I can build a life for myself that will make me happy, and I am taking steps in the now to make it a reality.
I would never have realized these benefits if I continued to wallow in guilt for considering therapy; hell, I never would have started writing had my therapist not told me that I could.
The ways society construes therapy, compounded by the fears associated with getting it, are enormous barriers to happiness in our lives and the lives of others. It is our duty as human beings to deconstruct these forces that shame us for wanting help and learn to let ourselves ask for it when we need it.
