My impatient journey with therapy

and when it finally clicked

Individual therapy was not something I had ever thought I needed. It’s not like I had anything against it, it’s just that I had always been able to manage myself, whether that was drinking from the firehose at MIT or working at small-scale tech startups. The one time I tried to go to therapy through my medical provider, they said that I was so high functioning that I didn’t qualify. That closed that conversation. I was a perfectly functional adult, and I didn’t need therapy to fix me.

But last year, something strange started happening. Every few weeks or so, I’d find myself breaking down in tears. While I was on vacation, I cried the hardest that I ever had. The worst part was, I didn’t know why.

After several months of this, I knew something had to change. It was at that point that I decided to try therapy.

The first session

I went into my first session eager and raring to go. I had chosen to work with this Asian-American woman that my friend had recommended, and I had full faith that she’d understand my story and be able to help me fix everything right away.

So as soon as the call started, I dove straight in, rattling off all of the facts. I’m not usually one to monologue, but in this case, I couldn’t stop. Time was ticking in our 50 minute session, and I needed her to know everything so that we could make progress ASAP.

But she did not match my urgency. No matter how quickly I shared my thoughts, she chose her words slowly, deliberately.

40 minutes in, and I was beyond frustrated — at the pace of the session, at her speed of processing, and at my still not having a single lead to this crying thing.

There was a brief lull in our conversation. That’s when she looked at me and asked “What are you feeling in your body?”

Her question caught me off guard. A feeling? In my body? What was she talking about? I paused for a second.

“Uh…like a tingling in the back of my head?”

I could tell she was trying to get me to pay attention to some deeper feelings, but to be honest, it all felt a bit too woo-woo for me. What was I supposed to feel? I really felt like I was just making things up. How could my body be feeling something that my brain didn’t know about?

That day, my therapist told me two things. First, that I was to take 2 minutes each day and do nothing but pay attention to what my body was feeling. And second, that finding an answer to my crying could take months, and there also might not be any answer at all. I shook her last point off - I didn’t want to dwell on it. I would just keep moving forward, and if doing this body awareness stuff was going to get me closer, then I was going to do it.

When therapy clicked

It wasn’t until my sixth session that therapy really started making sense.

In the past six weeks, I had started noticing some things about myself - the buzzing that never stopped in my head or the occasional pressure in my chest on a Monday morning. We dug into my inability to slow down, my need to endlessly optimize, and my reliance on auto-pilot to get through my work day. I was definitely learning.

On the day of that sixth session, I felt no different than any other work day. I had been chugging along steadily through my tasks and had managed to check some things off my list.

As we began our session, my therapist asked me what was on my mind, and I offhandedly mentioned a situation with a mean customer that we’d just resolved at work. I thought we were going to breeze on by, but for some reason, she couldn’t let the story go. She just kept asking question after question — How did that incident make you feel? Where in your body are you feeling it?

I could feel my annoyance rising. There was no story here. It was no big deal. Why were we still talking about this?

That’s when she asked me to stop and be still for one minute.

I did as she asked and closed my eyes, but I couldn’t help but feel stupid. What was the point of sitting here? There was nothing to notice.

I continued to sit in silence.

I don’t know what changed, but partway through the minute, tears begin to build. And just like that, they broke free and wouldn’t stop.

I was so frustrated at myself. I didn’t want to cry right now. I was fine. I wiped away my tears, blew my nose, and put my glasses on - but a few minutes later, the tears started again. And again. And again.

All the while, my therapist sat there, saying nothing. I wished so desperately that she would rescue me from my crying and change the subject, but instead, she did the exact opposite.

“You’re sad, Kelly. You are really really sad.”

Hearing those words only made me cry harder. Again, my therapist sat there in silence.

“But… I don’t want to be sad,” I blurted out. “I want to be happy! I’m supposed to be happy!”

“But right now, you are sad. And it’s okay to be that way.”

I hated what was happening to me. I hated not knowing why it was happening. All I wanted was to understand it, or to run away. But we did neither. We just sat in it. I had to sit in my intense feelings of sadness, and it sucked.

That’s when I realized - this wasn’t going to be a quick fix. There was so much that we still didn’t understand, so many layers we had yet to unearth. No, this was not going to a sprint. This was going to be a fucking marathon.

Finding my answer

Before that momentous sixth session was over, my therapist asked me, “Is there anyone that you feel comfortable sharing your feelings with?”

“Yeah of course— my sister and my partner.”

“For this week, would you be open to sharing your feelings with those people?”

I burst into more tears. I couldn’t. I didn’t want to. Not these feelings. They were too sad. I didn’t want to burden them. I was the happy one. I always had been. I was the one that people leaned on. It was my responsibility.

We talked through it more, and after some time, I finally agreed. For the sake of being honest with myself and my loved ones, I’d give it a shot.

—

That week, I did not hold back, and boy did the tears come. But instead of hiding away, this time I called someone each time, and I cried.

I cried and I cried. And as I wheezed for breath and noisily blew my nose, they stayed on the phone with me. They didn’t try to fix my problems or figure out my sadness. Despite my greatest fears, they didn’t run away.

There was something strangely liberating about letting myself feel my sadness in front of my loved ones. I was showing them this sad, weak, broken version of me, and they still accepted me. And that meant so much.

—

It took a while for me to be sure, but one month later, there was no denying it: my unexplainable crying outbursts had all but stopped.

The only thing that was different was that I was finally letting myself be sad. For the first time, I was finally letting myself really lean on others. When the tears inevitably came, I let them come and go on their own accord, when they were ready. I didn’t hide from my feelings. I felt them.

And when the tears dried up, so did my sadness.

I never did figure out exactly what caused those crying outbursts. But it didn’t matter. Because of therapy, I had learned to give myself permission to feel sadness, without judgment or restraint. And that acceptance changed everything.

And there’s so much more to learn

In the past eight months, therapy has continued to help me re-think so many parts of my life - my friendships, my work, my marriage, and myself.

I came into therapy looking for an answer, and realized that I was seeing the world in black and white - judging traits as good or bad, feelings as strong or weak, actions as shoulds or should nots. Therapy has taught and continues to teach me to see the world in all of its wonderful shades of gray. I’m learning that it’s okay to hold contradictory feelings at the same time, that my go-getter energy that I judge so much has also helped me succeed, and that taking time to celebrate successes is just as important as working on weaknesses.

Therapy is teaching me that my mind is not the only things that matters - my feelings matter too. Only by acknowledging and accepting where we’re currently at can we start to make the changes we want and find the balance and groundedness that we seek.

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