Starting Therapy and the Ironical Setbacks

“There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.” Leonard Cohen

Once, I came across a comic which showed what coming to therapy looks like. (I have shared the comic on our page Celebrating You to avoid copyright issues.) It had four panels, and here's what I took away:

1. Before therapy: Trauma, attachment patterns, pain, grief, anger, shame, guilt, and other unprocessed emotions crystallized into pebbles and sediment at the bottom of the river that keeps getting disturbed with even slight change in currents.
   

2. Starting therapy: All the collected pebbles and sand begin to shake. Run, an earthquake is coming!
   

3. Initial couple of sessions: It is a swirl of dust inside your body! Suddenly everything that was kept safe over years of existence has come up and now, the chances of dropping out of therapy, or acting upon impulses that can end up in self-harm are very high. You have done some work on yourself but it is not working out! Everything is chaotic, unsafe and messy. “Even therapy cannot help me!
   

4. Somewhere towards the end or post therapy (remember, healing is always an ongoing process so this image is ideal at best but actually achievable to be realistic): Everything settles down to create foundational basis for your existence. You learn to accept who you are, and find meanings and colours in whatever shaped rocks and pebbles that had been burdening you for god knows how long! You are still unsettled by small or big currents however, with the awareness of your resources to overcome the hurdles.

It is ironical how therapy unsettles everything you initially came to get rid of, were in denial of, tried to shun off, suppress, basically, everything you unlike about yourself or triggers you in cycles of harming whatever “leftover good” is in your life. So, instead of becoming free, you get caught up.

“I am a mess! Fix me! But please don’t make me feel shittier about myself or my life choices.”

I wish therapy was easier, really. Even as a therapist in becoming, it is very hard to not judge myself in sessions (personal therapy or as a therapist) when I come face to face with my own pain, grief and shame around the ways I have sabotaged my growth. I am not taking the blame here but simply putting the reality of my existence out there. I am unkind towards myself when it comes to holding space for accountability for my fuck-ups. Some of my inner verbal talks look like this-

“You are a therapist; you are supposed to be sorted!”

“You should know better!”

“Are you going to seek therapy to learn techniques you already know?”

Well, honestly what sort of therapist am I if I am q sorted “know it all”! Nobody wants to be around perfect people. At best they are a reminder of our short comings and boy, is that uncomfortable!

I read it somewhere, (I am so bad at remember the sources) that you would never want to be friends with someone who is perfect. Maybe on the face of it you might think, “Fuck you, I want to be around perfect people! I want to learn and grow.” Well, trust me, you don’t. Have you ever idealized someone to be perfect, maybe in friendships, crushes, romantic relationships, maybe even your parents? Maybe you were told that your sibling is perfect and you suck. Rings a bell, somewhere? How much did you learn and grow in that environment? Funny how you actually stopped giving a damn when forced to meet ideals set by social comparison, no?

Seems like we are born to be messed up, to be imperfect and in a way, to be sad, to encounter difficult and sit through the hard to sit with emotions (for me that would be: grief, anger, helplessness, shame, guilt, disrespect). Sadness is so important for happiness. Similarly, the discomfort of therapy, (imagine the dust swirling around in your body, imagine chaos), is key to the warmth of healing.

Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

It is the darkest before the dawn.

“Happiness can be found in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light.” (Dumbledore, Harry Potter)

“There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.” (Leonard Cohen)

You know how sometimes eliminating the incorrect options in an MCQ paper is the only possible way to arrive at correct answers, assuming everyone has their own unique correct answer? I learned this analogy while I was mindlessly preparing for entrance exams I did not want to clear. So, at times, instead of solving the question, you try to fit various answers in the question to see if any of them even make logical sense. For example, unjumble the word RRTEOPSOSPUE. Your options are-

A. RUBBERBAND

B. PRESENTATION

C. PERETRATOR

D. PREPOSTEROUS

What I am trying to get at it is, we live in a world of absurd duality which at best functions in the milieu of greyness (subjective unique experiences and stressors). Life is supposed to be hard. You might think you want it easy but trust me, easy does not promise happiness, contentment or satisfaction.

There is a difference in wanting to be happy vs. wanting a lesser painful life.

I have been convincing myself of this truth for years now and there are no one way answers, not even when you help people find answers for a living. At best, we can take curious journeys, trying out experiments, ruling out incorrect options, looking for possible breakthroughs and shifts that help us meander in compassionate directions. (Clearly, I long to be a traveler!)

It is no reason why I cannot wear Dora the Explorer’s cap and model that I am not looking for life to not give me lemons. Rather, I am hoping life would give me courage and energy to deal with it, to be able to make lemonades with all sorts of flavours and colours (because boy, do I love cooking!).