My Biggest Takeaways from Therapy this Year

These past few years have been growing periods for me. I’m learning vulnerability, boundaries, recognizing co-dependency, and lowering my expectations.

I’m not going to lie to you, it’s been hard.

I had pretty sturdy walls built up to not feel things. A few of my friends (and my now girlfriend) are all great communicators. They know how to talk things out, work through problems and keep calm through it all.

I was the polar opposite.

I grew up not learning how to communicate, not knowing how to control my anger, and shoving my problems in my pocket. I would just swallow it all until I couldn’t hold it down anymore and then I’d have an existential breakdown followed by a panic attack.

It was horrible and it only made my anxiety worst as I got older. My friendships started becoming more and more surface-level and in every relationship, there was a lack of proper communication.

So when I met my girlfriend, my world did a full 180.

She wanted me to actually talk about my feelings.

I vividly remember us sitting on the couch before and she would try to get me to talk about whatever it was I had on my mind. But when you don’t know how to communicate, your vocabulary for explaining your emotions is slim to non-existent.

Mine were more non-existent.

I would try to push her away, say everything was fine, and shut down the conversation. This is what I was good at and I knew how to do it well.

Then along come two friends of ours. She would sit up until 4:00am some nights just talking about feelings, experiences, and emotions with them. Where I was so socially and emotionally drained by 10:00pm that I’d have to go to bed.

But then I felt isolated.

Why couldn’t I just open up? It was easy for me in my head to talk to myself about my feelings. It was easy for me to write them down. Then why when I would attempt to say it out loud, would I feel a huge knot in my throat?

What was wrong with me?

Queue the shame.

They were all big fans of Brene Brown. I didn’t really know who she was at the time, but they suggested checking out her Ted talk. I listened, but didn’t really absorb.

Of course, then, they wanted to talk about it.

I remember thinking vulnerability was bullshit. I didn’t need it, it wasn’t for everybody, and it definitely wasn’t for me.

I brushed it off and I’m sure they all felt defeated but thank god they didn’t give up.

A year or two later I think they finally got to me. I’m not sure what finally clicked, but I didn’t like who I was anymore. I realized all of my friends were closer with each other than I was with any of them.

I felt jealous.

I wanted them to text me about what was going on in their lives, I wanted them to come to me when they had a bad day, I wanted a deeper connection.

I craved it.

I had gone so long with stone walls built so high that all I could see were dark gray shadows and no one was around but me.

I was lonely as fuck.

I think I broke down to my now-girlfriend about all of this and with grace, she held me and sat with me through my grief.

At that moment, I felt the stone start to crack and the wall started to slowly crumble. It didn’t happen overnight. I couldn’t expect it to because it definitely wasn’t built overnight.

But I felt relief and hope.

Now I’m here, in 2021 and I’ve been going to therapy for about a year now.

It’s funny, because once I’ve had a few sessions and worked through whatever it is we’ve talked about during the session, I always feel as if I’m fixed and invincible and won’t need another session for a while.

But that’s not how therapy works.

You’re not there to be fixed, you’re not invincible, you’re just human. And the only way you’ll see progress is by committing to consistently putting in work.

I’ve learned a lot from my friends, my girlfriend, and my therapist. Like how to keep my power without letting others take it away from me, managing my triggers from past traumas, finding bravery in being vulnerable, the importance of setting boundaries, and lowering my expectations.

That was a new one.

I worked so hard to tear my walls down and face vulnerability head-on. I worked hard on knowing my worth and my limits and setting boundaries. I put in the work almost every day to be a better version of myself.

But then I had a wake-up call. Just because I’m in the middle of having this self-reinvention to be the best me, other people are not in that same boat.

My mom is not in that same boat.

I wrote my mom a 19-page letter letting her in on all of my past that I chose to keep from her until now. I confronted her about her guilting, shaming, and gaslighting that I grew up with. I let her know my boundaries going forward and that I wanted to work on mending our relationship.

At first, she was very open to mending our relationship. She missed me and I missed her, but by the end of the letter, I got a big ol’ slap in the face.

We talked about the letter over a span of 4 days with 3-hour phone calls each time. She listened, she tried to answer questions that I had, we cried, we laughed, but at the end of it all, she just wasn’t willing to meet me halfway.

I told her thank you for listening to me, and for reading the letter in the first place. I didn’t have high expectations that she would. And I told her I was ready to move forward and put in the work to have a better relationship with her.

She flat out told me she didn’t want to put in work. That it shouldn’t be “work” it should be easy.

After all of our phone calls, I was a little taken aback.

By this point, I’ve learned that relationships aren’t always easy. There’s an ebb and flow between two people as they grow together and as individuals and if you want anything beyond surface-level, you have to put in a little bit of work.

But I guess my mom didn’t want this. I guess she wants surface level.

So I went to my therapist with this news. I had been keeping her updated with the whole thing. Her face sank as I cried over telemed not understanding why my mom didn’t want the same thing I did.

That’s when she explained to me that my journey is not my mom's and where I’m at in life is not where she’s at. If I wanted peace with the situation that I had no control over, I needed to lower my expectations.

This sounded absurd to me. I even got mad at my therapist.

I wasn’t going to lower my expectations, she needed to rise to them because I saw the potential for what our relationship could be. I worked hard so she could work hard too, right?

Right…?

Lowering my expectations was the best thing I could do, and it has saved me a lot of heartaches.

We still have a surface-level relationship and it’s not always easy on my end to see it, but I keep in the back of my mind that showing up for my past self and confronting her about everything is all I could do, and I should be proud.

I took back my power, I was vulnerable, I set boundaries.

This year has been a doozy, so have the years leading up to it, but I’m learning to show up for myself more. I’ve put my mental health first and I’ve put myself first for the first time.

Until next time,

Haley