What therapy did for me
I decided to try out therapy in 2017. This was after spending a good while trying to solve these rather intangible “life” problems by myself. At first, I tried observing my friends and how they did things and dealt with problems — life and just day-to-day things — and then I just mimicked them (how kids learn things!). Some of it helped and I actually learned new ways of doing and being while others didn’t really stick. I also spoke to them about my issues and while that usually helped with immediate problems, the larger story, the narrative, remained the same. Day to day life was also becoming hard, there was a whole period of time where I was trying my best but felt nothing was really working out or going the way I expected it to and I couldn’t figure out why. So I decided okay, I need to find some way to deal with this.
My biggest concern about starting therapy was that it was going to take time and everything already felt like it was just one step away from becoming unbearable. In the end, I resigned myself to it because I knew it was going to help in the long run and I couldn’t really think of any other approach.
When I started out, I knew there was a lot to deal with. I had this constant nudge from my parents to go home every weekend. And doing that was like stepping into another world of expectations and behaviors that were so far removed from who I was and what I had going on. I was also rather fresh off an emotionally abusive relationship. To put it simply, any sort of abusive relationship makes you feel like absolute crap about yourself and you start operating from a place of low self-worth. And despite the fact that I was out of it, I knew I was probably still carrying patterns from it into my day-to-day life.
And so we got started. My counselor and I clearly established that there were two problems to deal with, the family issues and the leftovers of an abusive relationship. We picked up the family issues first because they seemed more immediate. The first round of sessions hit me like a train wreck, I will not pretend otherwise. And this was because there was so much that had happened as I was growing up that wasn’t dealt with. And most people might not have had that much baggage. I’ve thought about it long and hard, and yes, most Indian families have their share of dysfunction.. but my family went through some lows and no one had the right tools to deal with such situations in a wholesome manner. They did the best they could with what they had but that also meant that there was a whole chunk of things that were not addressed that adversely affected me. As a child, your way of thinking or relating is — something bad happened because I did something or something awful happened to me and that automatically means I’m also awful.
So there was a lot of that at first. Swimming through that ocean was HARD. Not to mention debilitating. At the end of it, there was a lot of relief and I had released a lot of pent-up emotions. “Accepted” behaviors in the family were finally addressed as problematic. And the acknowledgment of the problem, even if only in my space, allowed me to process so much anger and slowly, I was able to accept people as they are… and how they affect me, and what I need to do to address it. It was INTENSE work. Because there are emotions involved as are authority figures, societal norms, notions of what is acceptable and what is not, and so on.
While we did all of this, I read a lot of books about abusive relationships and came to understand them. I was pretty flabbergasted at how it was all so “textbook” but the only people who know or talk about it are those who go through these things or people who aid in recovery. There is still a lot of taboo and responsibility put on the person who goes through the abuse but it’s really quite insidious and shattering.
So all of this was the brunt of the work. The center from which the problems emerged. After this, we got to talk about more current situations and problems, and what I got out of this was… basic tools to handle life as an adult. Ideally, you learn these skills as an adolescent. But when you’re not okay or you’re carrying the weight of something bigger, you actually just miss out on these things. So this was kind of like reparenting. I felt like I was walking on eggshells a lot and it was scary as fuck. But if you take it down to a microscopic level — you’re learning how to ride a cycle again and you’re scared AF because you’ve fallen and hurt yourself a lot but there’s someone with you and guiding you through the whole thing. While before it was probably just you closing your eyes, scared and just trying to get away from it or hurtle through it and get it over with.
If you are fucked up, it’s okay. We were all dropped and broken, some of us shattered, some of us are still taped up… You don’t have to go through life like that. Get help. It’s out there.