Before reading this, you might want to check out My Story, because that is what kicked off my years-long journey with therapy.
The first time I went to therapy was in 2012, and the stigma was so strong that I refused to call it “therapy.” Instead, I referred to it as “counseling,” because that seemed more approachable. Like something anyone would do.
In my 17-year-old mind, therapy was reserved for people who had severe disorders. Who were truly struggling. And that wasn’t me, right?
I had just lost my best friend, Lexi, and was strongly encouraged to go to grief counseling. Despite my hesitation, I went to my weekly sessions with my therapist. We mostly focused on how I was feeling after she passed. (Although there was much, much more to discuss about the events surrounding her death, but I don’t want to get ahead of myself here.)
Over the course of several weeks, I got to know my therapist and she got to know me. I must have really shown my hesitation, because instead of talk therapy we quickly pivoted to art therapy. First, it was drawing whatever came to mind, which completely overwhelmed me.
I knew these drawings weren’t “just for fun.” They would be analyzed. Picked apart. Every shape, line, and color. So I decided to play it safe. Simple designs. Muted, yet bright colors. Things “okay” people would draw.
My therapist must have quickly caught on to my overthinking, because we pivoted again.
We decided to make a scrapbook of memories I had with Lexi. Over the next few months, I arrived to my weekly appointments with various photos of Lexi and me, which wasn’t difficult because we took them so frequently. As I designed each page, my therapist asked me what the pictures signified. What we were doing. How I felt. And, unknowingly, I slowly began to open up to her.
I attended grief counseling the summer before my senior year of high school, and as the summer months went by, I prepared to head back to school. I knew my therapist wanted to continue to see me, and I knew we had some things to discuss before I walked the halls of Brunswick High School.
That was when I started to dip my toe into conventional talk therapy.
We talked about how I felt going back to school after the car accident, and we made a game plan to prepare for my first day. It was going to be different than years past, and not just because I was going to be a senior.
People knew me now (or at least, they thought they did) and they had questions. Questions that I didn’t want to answer. So, we talked about how I would handle that and how I would navigate this new life.
I continued therapy for a few months, but eventually I felt that I didn’t need it anymore. Creating the scrapbook for Lexi had been healing, and although there were still moments I would grab my phone to text her something, the reality of her being gone was slowly setting in.
I felt like I could handle this on my own now, but dealing with loss was only a small pebble in the mountain of trauma I had ahead of me.
I’m okay… Or am I?
My college experience started off subpar to say the least. Not only did I get mono and have to be hospitalized and go home for a month, but my anxiety slowly began to consume me.
Moving away from home and into a dorm is a big change for anyone, but I had no idea how much it would affect me. I was away from my entire support system and I was struggling to get my bearings. Chalking it up to this just not being for me, I decided to leave after one semester, take classes at a local community college, and attend a different university (closer to home) the following year.
Being home helped. My anxiety lessened and I was able to return to some sense of normalcy. I had been dating my now-husband, and our relationship was flourishing. We even had a trip planned for the summer–a trip where I would be riding on the back of his motorcycle through New England.
But something happened on the trip that sent me in to a months-long tailspin and ultimately brought me back to therapy to really dive into what happened to me on June 3, 2012.
Addressing my trauma
What ultimately led to my decision to reach out to my therapist was the impact my anxiety was having on my life. The panic attacks were constant and I could no longer ignore it.
I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t be alone. I couldn’t drive, especially at night. I couldn’t live an even remotely normal life, so I decided I needed to reach out for help.
The next time I sat across from my therapist, I had a lot to unpack. It was way more than grief counseling and art therapy at this point. I told her what was happening and she suggested we start treatment for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
She explained a form of therapy to me called Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) that has been shown to really help people dealing with PTSD. (And because experts can explain it much better than I can, here’s a link to an article from Cleveland Clinic explaining what EMDR is, how it’s used, and why it’s so helpful.)
I figured it was worth a shot and we began EMDR the following week.
I didn’t know it at the time, but my decision to embark on this journey was going to absolutely change my life. I just didn’t expect all the twists and turns that it was going to bring along the way.
Over the next several months, we dove deep into the car accident. Every moment. Every detail. Willing my brain to bring me back so I could feel what I felt, process it, and hopefully heal from it. It was difficult to get there at first, and most sessions left me feeling exhausted, but as the months went by, it was easier for me to visit that time in my life. And it was easier to work through it, too.
Before each appointment, we would go through a series of questions to determine my baseline. When I first started those EMDR sessions, everything felt raw and real. I couldn’t think about the accident without my heart rate and breathing quickening, but nearly a year into it, I was able to think and talk about the accident without feeling like I was in that moment. And that was the sign that told us EMDR had worked.
Eventually, I decided that I had worked through what I needed to work through to get my PTSD under control. I felt like I was “fixed” and no longer needed to have these weekly appointments, so my therapist and I parted ways, but I knew that I could always reach out if I needed her.
EMDR: Round 2
Due to circumstances completely out of my control, I had to relive every moment of the car accident in detail. Not surprisingly, it broke me.
After that, the anxiety returned like the slow drip of a leaky faucet. Constant, yet manageable. Each drip of anxiety was so small, that I almost didn’t notice it, but my body did.
Driving down a dark, winding road. Drip. Spending the night alone in my home. Drip. Sitting in a car with someone driving a little too much over the speed limit. Drip. Drip. Drip.
The tiny moments of anxiety grew closer and closer together, and before I knew it, I was wondering if there was any way I could ever get better. Would I be like this forever? What kind of life is that? Why was I spared if this was what my life would look like?
These thoughts came and went. I was able to catch them before they got too dark, but part of me was worried that it was only a matter of time before the train of negativity flew off the tracks.
Again, for reasons outside of my control, I ended up seeing a psychologist. I took a written test consisting of 100s of questions about my thoughts, emotions, etc. and sat in the room with the psychologist while he asked me even more questions.
At the end of our conversation, he told me that he would go over my questionnaire and put together a comprehensive report about “what’s going on inside of my head.” I knew that I had been struggling, but part of me was wondering if he would tell me I should go back to counseling (I still refused to call it therapy). So, I asked him and his response was so definitive, it caught me by surprise.
“Oh, I can tell you right now that you should go talk to someone.”
There was something urgent in his voice, and I was worried that if I didn’t reach out to my therapist right then and there that I wouldn’t get the urge to do it again.
So I did. And we decided to go through a second round of EMDR therapy. This time, we didn’t talk about what happened in the accident. Instead, we talked about what I was struggling with at the moment.
As we tackled each struggle, it became clear to me that what I was feeling was directly related to what happened to me. My mind still had so much trauma to process, and I was confused why none of this came up before.
But maybe my brain was just trying to protect me. Tackle one thing at a time. Looking back, it was probably a good thing. I had to tackle the trauma in two phases: the actual accident and the aftermath of the accident.
And when I did that, I truly felt free. Five years after the accident.
A global pandemic
Like many others in 2020, my mental health suffered. The lockdowns made me feel isolated and alone, despite the fact that I had my husband with me, and I hit my breaking point in December of 2020.
My dad had just canceled Christmas and I had convinced myself that life would never be the same again. This was the “new normal” everyone talked about. Not being able to see family, not being able to go out with friends, and not being able to feel safe being out in the world.
At the time, I was doing communications for a large hospital system, which probably didn’t help my anxieties surrounding the pandemic, and decided to look into the Employee Assistance Program for a counselor (still not calling it a therapist yet).
I received 6 free sessions for the year, and decided to meet virtually each month, starting in January. This was the first time I talked to a therapist about something non-accident related, which was difficult for me to get the hang of.
But over the course of 6 months, she helped me address my anxiety head-on. I learned about proper coping mechanisms, how to tap into my anxiety without letting it consume me, and how to adjust my mindset to catch (and eventually stop) those anxious thoughts.
She helped me find the tools I needed to live a full life, and I left those sessions feeling like I could handle anything life threw at me.
Looking inward, becoming a parent & developing a new relationship with therapy
In August 2023, I gave birth to my daughter. Pregnancy and motherhood changed me in so many ways, and it gave me a new spark for life.
At the time, I was not writing blog posts, but I desperately wanted to share my thoughts about being a mom, handling anxiety, and just looking at life in a positive way. After much thought, I decided to launch a podcast in January 2024.
I thought this podcast was going to be something that would allow me to connect with people and give advice, but it actually turned out to be something that allowed me to improve my mental health and my overall wellbeing.
As I talked about different topics, I learned things about myself. I discovered that I had this incessant need for validation, an unhealthy obsession with social media, and a comparison mindset that was just absolutely toxic.
I tried to remedy these things on my own, and as I talked about my life over the course of 2024, I realized that there were even more things I wanted to change about myself. I wanted to be the best version of myself possible, so that I could be the best role model for my daughter as she grew.
So, I turned to therapy. (Yes, I finally started calling it therapy!)
As of today, I have been attending therapy twice a month for nearly a year, and I don’t see myself stopping any time soon. I used to only think of therapy as something to help me through my trauma, which it did, but I’ve come to learn that it’s so much more than that.
It’s a safe space to talk through life’s everyday struggles. It helps me identify and cope with my emotions in a fast-paced world that really doesn’t allow a lot of time to do that naturally. It allows me to look back at my childhood and identify reasons why I am the way I am, and gives me space to change the things about myself that I want to change.
It reminds me that I am only human and that I don’t need to be so critical of myself. Above all, therapy allows me to be a better mom, wife, sister, daughter, and friend. I plan to continue therapy as long as I am able to, and I strongly encourage every single person to attend therapy as long as they can.
Introducing: Therapy Thoughts
Now, for the entire reason I decided to write this post…
A few months ago, I was listening to a podcast about wellness in the workplace. The interviewer started talking about something she discussed in therapy, and the guest responded with, “Man, someone should start a blog about everything they learned in therapy.”
I immediately thought, “Wait, I could totally do that,” so I revived this blog. As I sat down to write my first post of this new series, I realized I needed to provide some context around how I got to where I am with therapy.
Cue this long, detailed post about addressing my traumas and becoming a therapy advocate.
And now that I’ve done that, I’m really, really excited to share my therapy moments with you. While I do encourage everyone to go to therapy who can, I realize that it’s not necessarily accessible for everyone. I’m hoping that by sharing these “aha” moments that I have with my therapist, I can help you have your own “aha” moments, too.
Thank you for taking the time to dive into my decade-plus journey with therapy. I hope you stick with me as we continue to explore these Therapy Thoughts.
Keep Going, Keep Growing 