Step One: Therapy

I first started therapy in high school. I begged for therapy at that time, because I was completely convinced that I suffered from some kind of mental illness. I mean, I liked dressing in all black (definitely not because all the cool kids did,) and sometimes I felt very sad (which had absolutely nothing at all to do with the fact that I was undergoing typical hormone changes,) and I definitely had borderline personality disorder (and it certainly wasn’t just because I was currently obsessed with Girl, Interrupted.) So yeah, all that, plus the fact that I sometimes self-harmed.

My parents told me I was just looking for attention. Then they told me if I was actually depressed, it was just because demons were oppressing me, and I needed to pray more. Then one day my dad saw a huge gash on my arm that I’d given myself with an eraser (turns out erasers are much easier to come by than knives, for a sheltered teenager, and they actually can do a considerable amount of damage.)

This was how I met Ginger. Ginger was a Christian counselor who did therapy out of her house (was it her house? Or was it just a house? In retrospect, I’m not sure.) Ginger’s insightful advice, after a few months of therapy, was to beat a couch with a plastic baseball bat in front of her, even when I was not currently feeling any rage, and to get rid of my cockatiel. I was not cured of my existential dread, or teenager syndrome, but I did stop self-harming. However, this probably had more to do with the fact that my parents started stripping me naked every night and inspecting my body for fresh wounds. So, you know, I guess it was the old, “if therapy doesn’t work, just add more trauma and maybe it’ll all cancel out” technique.

My next therapist was Stacey. I met her while living in a homeless shelter for pregnant women. I was so numb at that point in my life, that I can’t remember doing anything during the sessions except just laughing nervously and insisting that I was actually totally fine. Totally fine that my parents had abandoned me at 17, totally fine that I got pregnant at 18 and was forced to live in a homeless shelter since my parents had also stolen my life savings. It was cool, I mean, I didn’t have it as bad as my most of my roommates, some of which were literally addicted to meth. So seriously, all good here.

She ended up referring me to some kind of student of hers, who was doing a case study project. To be honest, I don’t really know what the project was, all I know was that I went to Fuller Seminary for a couple of days to be interviewed and do puzzles and games with a woman who probably wasn’t really much older than I was. She seemed so much older, though. She was a psychology student, and I was a pregnant, homeless teenager who used to work at Starbucks.

At the end of the project, she handed me a big manila folder full of her findings. I remember being disappointed that I actually apparently really sucked at puzzles. She also noted that I avoided conflict, but that I also avoided resolution. She was basing this one the fact that she had shown me some photos during the project, and asked me to come up with stories for each of the photos. I remember thinking I needed a complete narrative for each photo (although in retrospect, I was probably just supposed to imagine a brief scenario.) I had panicked at not being able to come up with compelling plots at a rapid fire pace. To be honest, I couldn’t come up with plots at all, in general, which was a complete anxiety trigger since my only life goal was to be a writer. So I jokingly ended every story with, “and then they all died.” Oddly enough, instead of finding my very lame and repetitive joke hilarious, she’d (correctly) deduced that I just run away from shit instead of trying to figure it out.

….Moving on.

Joann was the next therapist. She’d started as my marriage counselor, but after my husband decided never to return after the first session, she offered to continue seeing me on my own. At this point, I was pregnant again. I had a 3 year old daughter, and had unwittingly married an abusive narcissist.

The thing about therapists is, they never just tell you what to do. They make soft suggestions, but they never stand up, throw their coffee in your face, and say, “Hey stupid, stop being stupid.” But they should.

Still despite her professional restraint, she did manage to knock some sense into me. She never delved much into my past, she never encouraged me to figure out what had made me choose a psychopath to marry, she never asked why I had so much rage. But what she did do was encourage me to get a better job, go back to school, and also maybe leave the man who was leaving illegible post-its all over the walls, coming home at 6am with face tattoos, and beating his pregnant wife. I listened to the first two suggestions right away, but decided I needed another six years to fully consider the third.

By the end of those six years though, I had gone to school. I’d majored pre-law, and was on the dean’s list every semester. …Then I dropped out because I remembered that law is tedious as fuck, and plus I probably couldn’t have purple hair as a lawyer.

I’d gotten the better job. I was now working in a nice salon, and had worked my ass off to become arguably the highest producing stylist there. In six short years, I’d gone from having no clients, to co-owning the salon with another coworker.

I’d divorced my shitty ex, and had my own house. I had both of my kids with me, we had 2 cats, and my car had heated leather seats.

And I fucking wanted to kill myself.

That’s not normal, right? To wake up to coffee you can make by pushing one button, to take your kids to school in their good school district, to drive to work in a comfortable SUV, to walk into a beautiful salon you’re in charge of, and to think, “I hope someone accidentally presses a nuke button aimed at Los Angeles County, today.”

So I tried therapy again. Because, y’know, that’s where we start when we think we need to fix something with ourselves, right?

I cycled through a few therapists, before realizing that I was probably just being too picky and decided to just stick with one. ALL the therapists can’t suck, right? If I think everyone sucks, including myself, then I’m clearly the issue. The thing is, how do you undo THAT issue to where you can even connect with a therapist? I don’t know that answer, but with Tiffany, I really tried.

I didn’t do my makeup or my hair for our sessions. I spent countless minutes of my sessions wondering if she thought I was a compulsive liar because I said I was a successful hairstylist, but I clearly looked like an actual crackhead. I asked her a some questions about herself. (I didn’t want her to resent me for being self-centered or something, always talking about myself.) I did the weird homework projects, like “Draw of picture of yourself from when you were four.” I tried to laugh at her jokes even though I realized a few years ago that I don’t even think I know how to genuinely laugh anymore. And then one day, I finally told her, “Tiffany, I don’t think I’m ok. I’m just constantly thinking about how much I fuck up, and I feel anxious and embarrassed all the time, and I just can’t seem to find any joy in living. Like, I love my kids, of course, and I wouldn’t actually vividly and dramatically slit my throat open, like I visualize all the time, but like, I’m not ok.”

Tiffany immediately changed the subject. She was clearly zoned out and still stuck on something we’d talked about earlier, and wanted to brainstorm some logistical ideas for a totally separate issue I was having. Admittedly, that’s understandable, because I could probably go on for ages about that slit throat fantasy, and who wants to hear about that?

I haven’t been back to therapy since. It’s not that I don’t believe in therapy, or that I don’t think good therapists exist. The issue is that I don’t feel comfortable enough to genuinely connect enough with another person, in order to be a productive patient. So this is an issue which must be solved first. I guess I need to work on that?