Five Years
This past Friday, February 14th, 2025 marked five years since Yours Truly was discharged from the psychiatric floor of the hospital. (Full story available here.)
Five years. The wood anniversary, apparently. I guess I should whittle myself a present out of a 2x4 or something.
Since my time in the hospital I have continued with my medicine as prescribed and I regularly consult with my psychiatrist. My therapist is a very important character in my life story; I basically make no big decisions without talking things through with her first. All of which is to say that my mental health journey continues even though I have come so far since 2020.
The main reason that I mark this anniversary every year and talk about mental health a lot is that I don’t want others to go through what I went through. When things with my anxiety, panic, and depression were really bad, I didn’t know what to do to get help. I mean, I knew therapy and medicine were options, but I didn’t know where to start. Things were so bad that I couldn’t think clearly. I didn’t look for help the moment things started to get bad; I tried to push through on my own. Which had worked in the past, but is not the best way to deal with things. I let it get so bad that the only option left to me was the hospital.
Now, as I say in the above linked post, being in the hospital for mental health is not the end of the world. It was actually great - exactly what I needed, and I’m glad I know that those services exist. But it also cost tens of thousands of dollars (thankfully mostly covered by my insurance). Also thankfully I didn’t lose my job because I had the option of taking Family Medical Leave. Plus my family and friends are The Most Supportive. In short, for being in a terrible situation, I had it really good.
I think because I had it really good, I sometimes make it sound too easy when I encourage others to seek help.
I tell basically everyone to try therapy, not because I think they’re crazy, but because I genuinely believe that every human being would benefit from a few good conversations with a person who can give purely objective feedback or help a person see things that might need some processing. It’s not about letting a therapist fix you, it’s about letting someone help you know yourself better, to help you think through and deal with the things that are hard. Every single human being has some type of baggage or shit they need to deal with and I firmly believe that therapy helps.
But, therapy itself is hard in many ways.
It is hard to find care. While resources exist to help one find a therapist, it can feel impossible to find one that is in your vicinity and is taking new patients.
It is hard to find good care that will work for you. Finding a therapist is not as simple as just finding someone who has availability. You need to find someone who you can trust who makes you feel comfortable enough to share your deepest and darkest. Sometimes it is necessary to shop around and try a few different therapists before you find one that will work for you. That is a daunting task, especially if you’re not feeling your best.
It is expensive. My therapist costs over $200 a session. I process it through insurance, but then there is a deductible that has to be hit before I start getting any money back. To me it is worth every damn penny, but then I already know and feel the benefits of therapy. I completely understand how one might look at a bill from a therapist and be like, “that ain’t worth it.”
It takes time. Therapy doesn’t follow a linear path. Most likely, you won’t feel much different after a first session; it can take a while to feel any impact. There are ups and downs. There are sessions where it will feel like nothing happens, no progress is made. There are sessions where you feel like your soul gets ripped out. And then there are sessions where you figure something out and you process it and when you leave you genuinely feel like you made progress. That is just how it goes, but can feel really quite annoying if you are trying to feel better or different.
It is scary. How do you walk into a room with a perfect stranger and tell them all your stuff? How do you know you can trust them? How do you know they aren’t judging you? What if they are a shitty therapist and give you really bad advice and it screws up your life even more? And all of those big scary things aside, how the hell are you supposed to admit to yourself in the first place that you might benefit from some help? What does that say about you? What will your friends and family think? Therapy is big and scary and for all of that, it is also not a guaranteed solution. Just going to therapy isn’t enough; you have to want to help yourself to feel any benefits from the process.
I have been in therapy three different times in my life. The first time I was a kid and too scared to be honest about what was going on, so I made up stuff that I thought sounded scary. Any help I received for my fake problems was minimally helpful to the real ones, so I was glad to stop going.
The second time I was a teenager and feeling real crappy because of anxiety. This time I was much more honest with my therapist, but she really just listened and didn’t offer much feedback or advice. She didn’t give me any strategies to try to help myself feel better, which is what I needed. Her style didn’t match my needs, which happens sometimes. It doesn’t mean she was a bad therapist, it just means she wasn’t the right therapist for me.
The third time I started therapy was after the hospital. I was so desperate to get better that I held back nothing. My first session with my current therapist was like, “here, let me explain my entire life story to you and tell you every single thought and feeling that passes through me and also anything else you want to know”. I emotionally dumped all over her; she didn’t have to try really at all to encourage me to share. I was ready, I wanted to be there, and I knew that I needed the help. I was comfortable with her, so I told her everything. And for over four years of working together she has helped me in innumerable ways. We are a good fit so it all felt easy, even when the work was hard.
I think because my current experience with therapy has felt so easy and helpful and, no joke, has changed my life, I forgot how hard it can really be to get started. I forgot about all the false starts when I was younger. I forgot that not everyone starts therapy at the level of desperation that I was at when I started the third time around. I went into it already trusting the process because I had no other choice; that isn’t true for everybody.
I will never stop talking about the benefits of therapy. I will never stop quoting my therapist in daily conversation. I will never stop recommending therapy to others, especially to those I love and value because I want them to feel as empowered as I feel because of therapy. I want them to be happy and well and thriving.
But what I need to stop doing is making it sound easy. Therapy is far from easy, and I think the mistake I’ve made over the last five years is that in all the talking I do about mental health, I’ve made getting help sound simple and obvious and like a solution for everything. To me, it was. But everyone else’s situation is not the same as mine. What I should be doing is offering support for the journey. Offering to help someone find a therapist. Listening to their experiences with a therapist and helping them find another one if need be. Coaching them through the process and reassuring them that it’s normal to feel like therapy isn’t doing anything for a while. I want to be a loud voice in support of mental health care, but I need to be a louder voice in acknowledging how hard it can be and back people up when they are struggling.
So, I’m sorry to anyone I may have made feel pressured. I’m sorry if I made it sound easy and then didn’t listen to concerns. I’ve shrugged off many a concern about therapy with a “yeah yeah, it’s hard but it’s worth it”. And I’m sorry about that. I should be a better listener and coach in addition to advocating for mental health care.
In conclusion: go to therapy. Everyone should try it. Know that it is a challenge, scary AF, and expensive. But also know that if you ever need help, advice, coaching, or simply to vent, I am totally here for that. You don’t have to be alone through the difficult work. Help is here, always.
