![]() ![]() My own journey has been the best teacher in my life, which is how I stay grateful for all the struggles I’ve been through. While this initial year of therapy by no means cured me of all my deeply imbedded issues, it did set me on course with a two-degree shift, which changed the trajectory of my life. Therapy taught me how to feel, how to tune in, how to have a self without feeling selfish (one of the deadly sins, in my opinion, at that time). I have since added up the cost of what that weekly counseling would have been and weighed it out with how it changed my life – and all I can say is PRICELESS. I would have NEVER paid for it since I was not that bad, and I grew up with parents from the Depression and learned well not to spend unnecessary money. ![]() I went to therapy that year every week, Friday mornings at 8 am, often hung over. She would ask me how my life was, and I’d start talking about other people. ![]() The only feelings I knew were HAPPY and FAT (translate to good and bad). This second therapist had to teach me how to do feelings. ![]() I learned about “little t” trauma, the kind that you don’t see as well. Thus, began the long journey of learning about the hidden feelings I had because of what I perceived as a non-traumatic childhood. And maybe that had something to do with why I was binge eating. I was now realizing that maybe, just maybe, things weren’t all perfect. Little ‘t’ traumaįast forward five years I’m still struggling with my fat head weight issue. I was determined to hang on to the narrative of “all good” for a while longer. The next week, I went back in and told her I felt so much better (I was cured) and thanked her for her service. The compassionate therapist pointed out that my tears were suggesting that it wasn’t “all good,” which I didn’t appreciate. She pressed on, which was annoying, and I continued to repeat that it was “all good” as tears began to leak from my eyes (which also annoyed me). I said it was “all good” and wondered to myself why she was asking about my childhood. My first go of it, in my first session, my therapist wanted to know about my relationship with my parents. My obsession with ‘fat’ brought me to counseling If you saw photos of me then, I was not at all fat but the fat in my head was so big, it was an obsession. People wanted me to be ‘all good’… maybe even needed me to be ‘all good.’ The only problem was (ready for this?) I was fat. This was the narrative I learned, and I used it as a coping strategy to survive and fit in with the world around me. When I met my biological mother at 25 years of age, I wrote to her in my first letter that ‘my life was so good growing up.’ My internal life was another story, although I didn’t realize it at the time. And I had a white picket fence mentality – It was all good! (You know where this is going) And then the internal struggle My parents were both teachers, I had one brother, and lived across the street from the lake in a modest house with, I kid you not, a white picket fence. There was no abuse, we weren’t poor, I had nothing to complain about and was reminded of that every time I complained. At that time of my life, I looked really good from the outside looking in: I was popular (-ish), a good student, a cheerleader, had friends and boyfriends, stayed out of trouble (at least I didn’t get caught). I first had the inclination to become a counselor when I was a teenager, wishing I had a counselor better than the ones at school. Here is an illustration of what brought me into therapy maybe you can relate to parts. In our own lives, we only have one vantage point, and there are many dynamics affecting us which we often cannot see without the help of a ‘magnifying glass,’ so to speak. If your life is challenging at times, filled with normal human struggles plus some issues that you can’t seem to conquer, or patterns that you can’t seem to escape from, then therapy is VERY likely to benefit you. If you do, you are probably NOT reading this page! Perhaps your life is 100% fulfilling and satisfying, and you feel peace about all areas of your life. ![]()
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