81) Therapy

Therapy

What It Is.
What It Isn’t.
Is It Even What It Is?
If It Isn’t, Then What Is It?

I’m lucky.

I have Medicaid and I so I’m able to get into therapy easier, because the institution is more sure of the payment, and I don’t have to worry about climbing the paywall that has kept me from accessing care in the past. I never forget how lucky I am, because I’ve been unlucky, and I can see the unlucky all around me.

It was a really good session.

We talked about some incredibly hard work that took place during the past week. We talked about huge wins in healing my relationship with my children, which is the reason I started therapy to begin with. We talked about relationship patterns and how hard it is to break through them even when you really want to, even when you know you can, and should.

It’s maddening.

I fully embrace that words like cr@zy, !ns@ne, n^ts, etc. are ableist, and hurtful. I have come a long way in not using them and encouraging others to do the same. This moment makes you feel like you’re losing control of your faculties. It makes everything feel impossible.

It feels defeating, and hopeless.

It’s taking a step across a threshold and not being able to lift your foot, even though you need what’s on the other side, even though everyone behind you is waiting to get through too.

It’s the crushing weight of all of that.

It’s drowning, and seeing the waves and the light right above you, and swimming with absolutely all of your might without breaking through to breath the long-awaited air on the other side.

It’s incapacitating.

It’s exhausting.

It’s so much easier to shut down. It takes so much courage.

Both my partner and I are standing on similar precipices.

Mine is the struggle to allow myself to have the same grace, forgiveness, love, and empathy for myself as I do for everyone else. It’s not as easy as just saying “I love myself,” and then it’s all better. (As we return to the story, I invite you to watch for times that this was reinforced.).

His is regulating himself when he feels abandoned. From the outside, that may seem simple and logical and straightforward. I encourage you to sit with it for a minute and just soak in how profound that is.

Abandonment, whether real or perceived, is so destabilizing. It causes us to panic, and to search for our own faults and unworthiness. Just perceiving abandonment, or even perceiving signs of abandonment, can induce a state of panic. Panic blows chunks because it feels so irrational. Feeling irrational is isolating. Isolation reinforces a feeling of abandonment.

It makes a lot of sense that in a moment of feeling abandoned, a person would just want to be saved, just want it to end, want anything just to make it go away. It feels hopeless, and when we feel abandoned, we feel powerless.

Powerlessness doesn’t lead to using tools and resources.

Hopelessness is not the birth place of problem-solving.

We’re actually talking about incredibly powerful cycles, and not just one cycle, but many of them.

If you read that “regulating himself when he feels abandoned,” and initially thought to minimize it, to reduce it, to dismiss it, you’re not alone. That’s the problem. So does he. So did I. It’s a reflex

It’s a reflex that leads to feeling guilty when we need help. It’s a reflex that makes us feel like we’re too much, and not enough.

My therapy today was helpful.

It helped me see the progress I’m making and the good it’s doing. It helped me weather what was difficult and ground myself. I can even credit last week’s therapy with a process that I was able to employ during the week that lead to great understanding, connection, and healing.

Therapy did not figure out how to get me across the self-love hurdle (which also blows my mind, because I DO love myself, I just don’t think I’m a person). Therapy did not figure out that my partner is struggling to self-regulate during panic.

I did.

I sat here with myself, after therapy last week, an absolute mess because we went to a very rough and vulnerable place inside of me that I couldn’t get back out of. I was trapped in a very scary part of myself, and our time was up. She said not to go back there before our next session. I was still there.

I bawled for hours, waiting for the onslaught of Automatic Negative Thoughts to stop, that I’ve spent years to be free of, and that I know are untrue, self-defeating, and harmful.

I sat here, still trying to interact with my life, showing how messy I was, and fully admitting that I was in a triggered state, that I needed to come out of.

Therapy didn’t sit in it. I did.

It didn’t happen during therapy. Therapy led me there, but 47 minutes goes by pretty quick. 47 minutes is barely enough time to catch up on events of the week.

You greet each other. Your therapist asks how you’re doing. You fill your therapist in on how you’re doing, because it’s the one time it’s not oversharing to do so, and if you’re lucky, you have time to continue with goals, or train approaches. Then you make another appointment and go on your way.

That’s not therapeutic.

It’s traumatizing.

It’s especially traumatizing when you desperately need to sort through your baggage. No wonder we’re all trained to talk about doing the work, but never get to the point of doing the work.

Worse, if you do do the work, (yup, I know I just said do do. Stay with me here.) and others are trapped in this cycle of talking about the work instead of doing the work, you’re healing alone, and it hurts so much to interact with those who are just talking about it, especially when they think that’s what doing the work is.

Therapy is supposed to help us. It’s supposed to be where we bring our brokenness and they show us how to put ourselves back together.

I can honestly say that the therapists WANT to do that. They go through so much school to learn how. They research, and dig, and advocate, and then their job becomes more about what insurance allows, or will pay for, than what their client needs.

Insurance only pays for 6 sessions, or insurance will only allow 3 months of therapy, or your insurance requires you to pay $50 out of pocket each time. The specifics vary, but it all amounts to layers and layers of barriers to care.

It becomes about case loads and reporting and filing, and training.

I want to be clear, I’m not against training. I’m not against record-keeping. I’m against adopting practices that don’t help, or worse, get in the way of helping. We should all be against it.

This week, even though it took days to establish a gentle and regulated space, we did so much more that we ever achieve in therapy, because therapy has it’s hands tied.

Therapy is just one tool. It can’t heal you. It can’t fix you.

You fix you. You apply the tools. You move forward or backward.

Often, the harder it is, the more it needs to be done. No wonder we stay stuck.

It’s all teachable. It’s all learnable.

I understand why I’m stuck right now. I need evidence that I’m a person too. I need to consider my needs, and hold boundaries for them. I need to treat myself like I matter, before I will believe it. I need to address the barriers to doing that, until there aren’t any left. That’s not going to happen in therapy either. It’ll happen in little choices every day, and tiny wins along the way.

I understand why my partner is stuck right now. Regulation takes practice, and it won’t take very long before it won’t be so hard. That practice won’t take place in therapy. It will take place here, in little reinforced moments.

It hurts.

It kills me that the therapy that so many need isn’t a thing that actually exists or that people can access. What we actually need is someone who isn’t trying to fill every 15-minute slot of the day to put as much money in the bank as possible for their corporate entity. We need someone to sit with us, and actually have time and space for our traumas, not just talk about them, then pack it all back up in the middle while your splayed and exposed. What we actually need are workshops to build skills that don’t make us feel small and insignificant, but give us a chance to practice and rewire our nervous systems.

There are so many necessary components that happen outside of “therapy.”

How do we meet those needs? How do we fill those gaps?

I think if we find the answer, it will light the flame of our healing.

New Therapist by Protyus A. Gendher

Hello new therapist, nice to meet you. 
Please make yourself comfy; have a seat. 
Is there anything I can get you? 
Perhaps a refreshing beverage or treat? 

Oh, that’s right, you can’t accept gifts, 
I was just hoping to build some rapport 
So, you won’t break up with me 
Like the therapists I’ve had before. 

By now I should know the whole drill, 
The beginning is always the same 
Fill out these papers with traumas and goals 
Your diagnoses and name 

You’ll ask me what I want to accomplish here 
And my traumas will all scream at once 
And I’ll try to find words, like that’s how it works 
I’ll do whatever the system wants. 

Well, I’m so sorry our time is up 
I’ll see you back in a few weeks 
But we haven’t covered any ground 
And the traumas are still screaming 

Hi, nice to see you, I’m glad you came back 
I’m sure your eager to get started 
What would you like to tell me  
About why you’re so broken hearted? 

And I’ll try to find some way 
to easy you in to my reality 
But with my triggers all firing at once 
I’m all big emotions and it’s messy 

Time’s up again; good work today 
I’ll see you back here in two weeks 
And I’m just left to clean myself up 
From my emotional bodily leaks 

Let’s see, where were we? 
I’ll apologize  
For all of the blubbering  
I did last time 

I’ll try to explain 
What’s been getting in my way 
How the life that I’ve lived 
Interferes with my every day 

But I’ve lived a lot of lifetimes 
And I don’t know where to start 
And it’s hard to explain 
The damage that’s been done to my heart 

Well, that’s enough for today 
And I have a little bad news 
I won’t be here in two weeks 
Because I have to help my parents move 

So, let’s have you back in a month 
And next time we’ll really dig in, 
But after a month has passed 
Remind me what I’ve said again? 

It feels good to be making progress, 
We'll have you back in two weeks 
Then we’ll unpack some triggers 
But in between the phone rings 

Hey there, we’re so sorry 
We had to cancel your session 
Your therapist has to attend a training 
It's a really important lesson 

The soonest we have after that 
Is another two weeks after now 
I say thank you and hang up the phone 
And shove my traumas back down 

Hey, it’s been a little while 
I’m really sorry for the gap 
Let's not waste time, let’s jump right in 
Remind me where we’re at 

But before we do let’s take a minute 
To review and reset our goals 
I’m sorry, I know these sessions aren’t long 
And your trauma’s been on hold 

Two weeks later we come back 
Still waiting to really get to work 
Still trying to give you my story 
Still trying to be heard 

Halfway through our session 
Still just trying to describe the cast 
Much less my story’s plot or twists 
Or the complexity of my past 

You let me know you’re leaving 
You’re all just so overworked 
You feel really bad, and you wish me the best 
To the waitlist I return

(I wrote this while waiting for my first therapy session with my current therapist. She had to cancel the next two sessions. When I got out of that first therapy appointment my partner was in therapy. When he got out, he let me know that his therapist was leaving.)

(12/24/25 – I’ve lost two therapists since then)

It is so incredibly reductionist to tell someone to just go to therapy. It’s so dismissive and victim-blaming to say clients need to be more open, more honest, more raw, more vulnerable.

Capitalism has killed the space for true healing, so we have to find it in ourselves, and in each other. Cycle breaking is guerrila warfare on the ground level.

Remember though, it’s not us versus each other. It’s us together taking on the world.