On Therapy
Everything Is True
Ada Hoffmann's author newsletter
One of my pet peeves is when people demand, jokingly or otherwise, that a stranger or fictional character "needs therapy." Whether it's because the person is behaving in a harmful way, or because they’re struggling, or simply because they're acting strange - I don't love it. There's a tendency for this kind of comment to shut down any further attempt to understand the person. It’s a trained professional’s job to understand them, or so the saying goes, and they should go and get one and stop bothering the rest of us with their damage.
I think this is an especially sensitive topic for autistic people, since we’re one of the groups that are routinely given therapies that are coercive in nature. (Obviously, we’re not the only such group.)
Yet, here I am, filling out the intake forms at a therapy place.
I don't feel like trauma-dumping on my Substack subscribers, so I'm going to be vague, but let's just say that I've been living in a stable environment for several months now, and feelings are starting to come up that weren't really safe for me to sit with before. This is 100% normal and a very expected part of how trauma works, although I still got blindsided by it for some reason. It's not just about the relationship I left this year - most of the worst of it is stuff from way before that, which for a variety of reasons I didn't have a chance to fully process before.
In the meantime, I seem to have surrounded myself with safe, accepting, trauma-informed, emotionally-savvy friends... who are encouraging me to get therapy.
(I am probably not going to get therapy immediately. There’s a wait list. COVID-19 caused trauma for everyone, and a lot of health care providers are burning out - so it’s a very busy time for those who remain. What I need in a therapist is really a bit of a unicorn - someone who can handle treating a particular type of issue, and who can also deal respectfully with at least three or four other, seemingly-unrelated things. I'm content to wait on the list for that kind of unicorn, and keep handling things as best I can on my own until then, rather than doing yet another unsuccessful round of CBT.)
It was hard to hear these things from the people I cared about and not feel rejected somehow. My friends didn’t think I was too much. They didn’t want me to stop talking to them about how I feel. They wanted me to have therapy in addition to their social support, not instead of it. But that was hard for me to parse out.
I didn't really get it until one day when I was talking to my girlfriend. I made some crack about my shadow work being sufficiently radioactive now that it required a trained professional.
"I don't think its more radioactive than before," she said. "I think you're just in a space where you can reflect on it more, which means now you would benefit more from what a therapist can do.”
For some reason that really struck me. The word benefit.
We talk a lot about removing stigma, but like, what would the world look like if we sincerely did think about therapy in terms of benefits? What if it wasn't the time-out corner that you go to when your brain pain is making you unsuitable for polite society? What if it was a place where you go when you want growth and good things for yourself, and you know that a good therapist will be an ally who helps you get them?
Maybe this isn't a revelation to anyone but me. But I'll take it.