Therapists can suffer too: my journey through anxiety

I don’t know about you, but before becoming a psychologist and psychotherapist, I thought that therapists were a group of people who never suffered and had all the knowledge to manage and even disappear “bad” emotions. I wanted to become a psychologist to understand how to perform this “magic”. I think I’ve never been more wrong in my life.

I think I have suffered from anxiety my whole life; I can think of stories or memories about my childhood that include feeling anxious in front of new experiences. I was not very adventurous as a child; I remember that I acted reluctant when facing activities that involved some type of risk such as using the handrail. As any person who has suffered from anxiety, I used to try and avoid at all costs the thing that I thought was provoking it.

When I started studying psychology, I was still very anxious about trying new things and I had developed a little bit of social anxiety. Speaking in public was an exceedingly difficult thing for me to do and I even remember having a mild anxiety attack during an oral exam. I’ve never been through a therapy process and I tried to solve my anxiety by myself or by following random tips or listening to other people’s experiences and trying to apply them in my life. Sometimes this worked, but as I didn’t understand what I was going through, it only worked for specific moments or for small amounts of time.

As I advanced in my degree, I finally decided to start therapy when I could afford it. I thought that I needed to know myself better and to learn new strategies with a focus on getting better long-term. My first therapeutic process was Psychoanalysis, and I found my therapist through a teacher’s recommendation. I was in this process for a year, two sessions per week. The most significant session for me was once when I cried, trying to understand my feelings and just letting them be, it was significant because I hadn’t cried in years thinking that would make me stronger, but it was exactly the opposite, it just made me feel more anxious.

I left the Psychoanalytic therapy process after a year, because I felt that I wasn’t moving forward, and my train of thought started to accelerate by overanalyzing which might be the exact origin of all my issues. I needed a time out, and also I didn’t want to keep spending all my money on therapy.

I went a couple of years without therapy, but I still needed work to be done. During that time I had some relationship crises and I didn’t feel quite comfortable with myself or my feelings. I was still searching for my professional goal and I had started working as a psychology teacher in a local high school. I asked my friends if they knew someone that could help me.

I started going with a Systemic therapist because I realized that a lot of my problems were with others (partners, friends, family) and that I needed to work on nurturing my relationships, especially the relationship with myself.

At that time, I had started running regularly, and my new therapist could notice the difference in my anxiety from when I went for a run and when I didn’t do any extra physical activity. We started noticing that not only was running a healthy exercise, but it also helped me disconnect from my anxious thoughts, and my internal monologue became positive — I started thinking “you can do this”. The perfectionist and competitive sides calmed down because I knew when I started running that I was never going to be the champion of the world, so I never made it my goal. I started realizing that exercise and physical activities have always helped me feel this way, except when there was a competition involved.

That therapeutic process helped me notice that I already had some tools to manage my emotions. I needed guidance to learn more tools and to be more conscious about the ones that I already had. I ended this process after two years — when I was 23 years old — because I was getting better at managing my emotions.

I was still fighting to find the right way to manage my anxiety, but I was feeling a lot better about myself, my relationships, and my mistakes. I was comfortable with my therapist, but I was still stuck with my thoughts and I thought I needed a different approach. That’s when I found REBT. To learn more about REBT read this blog post of mine: Learning about psychotherapy: what is REBT?

I found my master’s degree because of a friend. She saw the program and immediately recommended it to me. And as soon as I started the program, I started therapy with this approach, because I needed to practice what I was studying. I finally found myself in the therapeutic process and through a lot of practice and effort, I learned more strategies to manage my anxiety and to accept myself, others, and the world. This approach changed me a lot, but in a good way. I found myself with a silent mind, as it had never been before.

Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t cured, and I think I never will be because what I’ve learned throughout this process is that anxiety is not a disease, it’s an emotion. And trying to fight it back with all my physical and emotional strength only made it worse because I paid more attention to it. The difference between before and now is that I learned that trying to eliminate anxiety is not the goal. The goal is to accept and use the anxiety when needed.

If you identify with any of the statements above or are looking for a therapist, you can schedule a free 30-minute consultation at https://trywillowtherapy.com/therapists