This summer marked ten years since my dad passed away. It took all of the first five before I had any proper, sober coming to terms with it. During that time, I simply couldn’t access the pain building up inside me. I had the occasional drunken bawling and the angry misdirected lashing out, but at the time, I put too much in between me and my emotions to truly attempt to make sense of any of it. I took college classes, worked a job, played rugby, went out drinking with my friends and my new girlfriend and my teammates, and I took on a pseudo-parenting role as the only male left in my house. There simply was no time to grieve. Though a new perspective on life had been forced on me, I couldn’t acknowledge it. I wouldn’t allow myself to.
Not until my responsibilities narrowed and I had open space with which to think was I able to start making sense of this new life. My emotions suddenly had free rein once I put distance between me and my family and friends. I moved three hours away from home to the Washington, D.C. area, and settled into an apartment in Silver Spring, Maryland. I can still smell the place. The carpet was stained so deeply I’m convinced it was made that way. It looked like coffee stains on yellowed teeth. The odor of the building sat stationary, not changing from day to day or apartment to apartment. The combination of culturally diverse cooking and thin walls contributed to the fragrant cornucopia covering the entire building. Our apartment was not immune - the smell enveloped everything in it, filming my clothes worse than moth balls.
Still, it was freedom. I’d lived on my own before, in college, but there was no common goal here, no camaraderie or shared focus between my new roommates and me. My life was now mine alone to direct. There were no teachers around to haggle with over which grade ended up on my transcript, no parents around to deride my meal decisions or pat me on the back for a job well done. There were no friends to drink with on a Tuesday, or play video games with just because. Put simply, there was no one left to think for me, but me. For the first time, all I had with me were my thoughts, and with the vast majority of my known support system several hours away, I had a lot of time alone with them.
Over the next few years, I moved several times around the DMV (“DC, Maryland, Virginia”), each new temporary dwelling an incremental improvement over the last. As time went on, my life did too. I earned new jobs and spent a little more money on gyms and food and rent. I made some acquaintances with people whom I could share at least bits of myself with.
I was grateful for what I had, but terrified of what was happening. Anxiety was taking over my body, betraying my confidence to perform simple tasks like drive to work or go for a run. I would feel a pang of fear taking over my senses, making me acutely aware of every possible system in my body for the first time. I thought about my breath, my heartbeat, even the process of swallowing food. Cold was colder, warm was warmer. All of these sensations that were once simple and automatic and dulled-until-extreme were now tasks to monitor, problems to understand and challenges to overcome.
I didn’t know what this was at the time. Why was this happening to me? I became very focused on diagnosis - something must be wrong with me! I held onto this thought with conviction and perverse hope. My dad was only 48 when he died, I reminded myself.
Why not me?
. . .
It turned out to be one of the most beautiful days of my life , when I first broke down crying, aware that therapy could be the release I’d been needing. My mind, my heart, my eyes had all uncoiled, providing an emotional and even physical release like I never felt before.
This was the first day of the rest of my life, my new life. After my first session with Joy, I remember walking, aimlessly, through the ritzy Clarendon neighborhoods of Arlington, Virginia. I had a dazed smile posted on my face, and for the first time in years, it wasn’t forced. I cried a new brand of tears; these weren’t the same ones I left back in the therapist’s office, soaking in the trash can full of crumpled-up Kleenex. I wasn’t embarrassed by them. I wasn’t even sad. I didn’t care how I looked, only how I felt, which was elated, grateful, hopeful. What I felt most of all was relief.
I didn’t know where I was going, and just then, it didn’t matter. I had the sudden sense that I had life ahead of me, and I’d be happy wherever I ended up.
Therapy has provided me with countless instances like this over the last few years. As enlightening as it’s been, I’ve been frustrated many times, riding the rollercoaster of discovery, breakdowns and rediscovery. Assuming that my first day in therapy was going to be all I needed to provide me this new life was vital naïveté, because there was hard work that laid ahead of me, and if I’d known at the start just how trying this path would be, I might not be here now, telling this story.
My journey to discover myself, to create an identity I’m proud of and understand how my mind works, how my grief and pain works, how I store it all and how I process it - it’s been the most difficult and most challenging project I’ve ever undertaken.
Therapy has been the main ingredient on this road to creation and discovery. Therapy (specifically talk therapy) is considered the practice of “thinking-together”. It enables “an unusual practical capacity of mind: the capacity to change the way (one’s) own mind works via the immediate and direct understanding of how it works”, according to Jonathan Lear, a Harvard Philosophy Professor studying social thought and the understanding of the human psyche.
It works because a (good) therapist seamlessly integrates their knowledge into your development. It’s collaborative; with a light touch, the therapist makes your goals their goals, and they work with you to accomplish them.
After years of practice, I can say confidently that working weekly with my therapist was the catalyst for what turned out to be an essential life reset. Years in, I’m just now feeling confident in knowing how my own mind works, where my sensitivities lie, what mitigates the effects of my negative emotions, and how these emotions typically arise.
Unfortunately, not everyone has this same experience. I personally know people who have been to therapy who claim it just didn’t work for them. From reading articles online, I know that many people think it can even make a situation worse. It’s also no secret that far too many people who would claim to need therapy simply can’t afford it.
There isn’t much I can do about that last part, but I hope I can shed some light on the first two.
Therapy didn’t work for me at first. It was actually my third attempt when it finally clicked. I visited two other therapists, one while in college and the other immediately after college. Neither had much, if any, effect. Looking back, I can tell I was simply going through the motions. I didn’t jive with either of the therapists I met with. Not much of what I talked about even reflected how I truly felt; the truth was I didn’t know how I felt at the time! I just said what I thought I should be saying, what someone in my situation would say.
I quit each after only a few sessions. Years later, when I felt most alone, most down on myself and saddest about my dad, when I felt the worst about my present moment, I had the fortunate feeling that therapy was still a viable tool in the toolkit. As strange as it sounds, and as painful as it was to endure, I believe I actually needed to let time go by, to let anxiety fill in the empty space, seizing control of my life. I needed to wait to talk to someone until it felt like my only move left to play before, to put it delicately, “throwing in the towel”.
. . .
Recently I started wondering, why therapy? Why did talk therapy, specifically, work for me?
Talking, as it turns out, is how I make sense of my thoughts and emotions.
It took me years of honing my self-awareness before I realized this.
I’ve heard authors claim the same happens when they write. As Steven Pressfield writes in The Artist’s Journey:
“Jackson Browne once said that he writes to find out what he thinks. (Wait, it was Joan Didion who said that...no, Stephen King said it too.) I do the same and so do you, whether you realize it or not.”
I believe him...them. But writing doesn’t help me do that, not like speaking does. When I write, I’m editing the moment before my fingers begin moving along the keyboard. When I talk, though, I have to force a conscious awareness to think before blurting out my thoughts.
I don’t know where this came from, and I don’t care. The awareness of it, though, enhances my entire life.
I’m a better writer because I read my posts out loud as I edit them. I try to explain any thoughts I have or concepts I’m working through as if to a dinner party guest interested in hearing what I have to say (unfortunately for my wife, she’s usually the sole dinner party guest entertaining my ravings).
In most cases, I don’t even need an active listener on the other end. It’s the act of talking through which I’m able to not only understand my own thinking, but I’m more likely to internalize the revelations that occur to me, too.
Even though I have the ability to evolve my thinking as I write, the words that make it onto the paper are premeditated. They see the insides of a mental filter before appearing on paper. As hard as I can try to bypass this process, I can never reach the vacuum I can when letting loose on a verbal rampage.
“My philosophy is basically this (and this is something that I live by, and I always have, and I always will): Don’t, ever, for any reason, do anything, to anyone, for any reason, ever, no matter what, no matter where, or who you are with, or where you are going, or where you’ve been...ever...for any reason whatsoever…”
That’s Michael Scott, legendary fictional business manager from The Office, who’s completely aware that this sentence has no forethought to accompany its point. “Sometimes I’ll start a sentence and I don’t even know where it’s going. I just hope I find it along the way”.
This, to only my slightest shame, describes me too. Talking is my medium. It’s the one that enables my truest opportunity for self-discovery. It’s the most efficient method I have for getting closer to the internal mechanisms of the swirling thoughtfog comprising my mind.
. . .
Your medium might not be like mine. You might find it difficult to talk without thinking first. I was very shy in adolescence, but even then when I made a friend and I felt comfortable finally letting my guard down, I would spew out all sorts of crap that I was too scared to in front of a stranger.
You might not be that way. You might be like Stephen King or Joan Didion.
You might not be like any of us.
The goal is to make sense of your thoughts and emotions. Processing how you really feel about anything requires a delicate balance of purposeful ignorance, curiosity, and conscious processing.
But there is no single method through which this can be achieved.
Everyone has a toolkit for dealing with emotions, whether you are aware of it or not. This is why we drink, why we hang out with friends who like us, and sometimes, why we hang out with friends who don’t.
This is also why we play sports, code, write, draw, paint, and piece together puzzles.
Your medium can be the canvas or the computer screen, words in markdown or plaintext or the guttural and labial phonetics of speech.
Conscious thought does not have to be present the moment you work through the hard stuff. You can practice meditation to sit comfortably with your thoughts. You can exercise hard at the end of each difficult day to fend off unpleasant thoughts. Your art can be your release. Your medium is yours to discover.
. . .
I believe in the fundamental truths of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. We need safety and security, first physically, and then emotionally. We crave relationships and love because it’s as real to those of us in first-world countries as food and water are elsewhere.
When these things shift in our lives, as a result of a drastic accident or the loss of a parent or other loved one, we don’t just feel lost - our life runs out of the fundamental energy sources we need, our metaphorical water, food, shelter. We have to find a new stream to tap into, a new source to mine to make up for what we lost. Unfortunately for your current self, but fortunately for your future self, this process to recover must be self-directed.
Our emotions are often self-critical, and for us anxious thinkers, the criticism doesn’t stop. For a while, I latched onto everything. When that became overwhelming, I compartmentalized, storing everything as deeply and far from conscious thought as possible.
But complex thoughts and feelings don’t just disappear. They morph and invert and reshape themselves. They strengthen as time goes on, as they are left undisturbed and unprocessed.
As confident as we now that there is no limit to the amount of information the brain can process, that elasticity is the neuroscience of the future, it’s not necessarily true when it comes to dealing with processing our negative emotions.
For that, you need to employ your medium. To not let these difficult emotions outpace you, you need to become aware of, and make use of, the optimal way in which you process them.
If you’re struggling with awareness, feel free to revisit my post on headspace. If you’re struggling with progress, change your location. If you’re struggling with anything, leverage your relationships and develop new ones, whether one-sided and goal-oriented or as simple, wholesome drinking buddies. Above all, keep trying until you have no other recourse. And then, write. Think. Act. Play. Code. Talk.
You’ll find your way. Just keep looking.
Thanks for reading!
N.B. - I’m an affiliate of Bookshop.org, which means if you click on a book link and buy it, I’ll earn commission on the sale. With each purchase, I receive 10%, and Bookshop.org donates a matching 10% toward supporting local bookstores.
P.S. - If any of you are interested, I would love to share my more in-depth thoughts on why therapy worked for me, and why it doesn’t always work for others. I cut that part from this post for the sake of brevity, but let me know if you’re interested and I can share that next week!
. . .
If you enjoyed this post, feel free to subscribe if you haven’t already, share it with others, or just leave a comment. I would really love to hear from you!