"Sometimes we need someone—a therapist—to act as a mirror to help us find out who we are and how to become who we want to be."
"Sometimes we need someone—a therapist—to act as a mirror to help us find out who we are and how to become who we want to be."
3 min read
Therapy was a family affair. All four of us crammed into a shoebox office, filling the corners with our demands, desires, pain, and tears. It was incredibly intense and most of the time, not in a productive way. Every Thursday at 5PM was less like a typical family therapy session and more like a competition to be heard at the loudest possible decibel. A thunderdome where the therapist served as referee, tending to our family’s blood curdling outbursts. While catharsis comes in many forms.. this kind of “release therapy” felt temporary: like a rage room where people smash forgotten objects. Don’t get me wrong, it’s nice to smash and destroy stuff and scream at each other, but the relief is ultimately fleeting. And the problems certainly don’t go away.
My 12 year old self observed and partook in my family’s wildly adult, parental anguish. Saying the worst stuff you could possibly imagine at each other for 45 minutes probably wasn’t great for my development. And I still remember the sessions because they would set a precedent for what therapy would be defined as for my adult self… and also because they were frankly, traumatic. If I could go back, I’d clasp my hands around my younger self’s ears, and I’d have suggested holding my tongue in certain situations. That there are many things we shouldn’t say to the people we love the most, and that even if you’re a child, your words matter. Perhaps with a therapist there, we all thought that we had a free pass to say what we wanted, but now I know better.
Yet despite these wrenching family sessions, the passionate emotions splayed under the guise of therapy made me and my sibling incredibly perceptive:
Unfortunately, the family therapy sessions were not making a ton of progress. 6 months in on the weekly session, our therapist started to notice that we were slamming into a brick wall. And everything changed. “Can I speak to Sasha alone please?”. It startled everyone. The yelling about dirty laundry on the floor stopped, and all eyes turned on me. Until that moment, I forgot that I existed. All four of us were so enmeshed that it didn’t occur to me that I could have my voice heard in the therapist’s room without actually raising my voice.
The room with me and her.. was the quietest I had ever experienced it. And finally the tears rolled out. For the first time, I felt safe to share years of suppressed emotions, trying to stay strong and stoic. Being the “bigger person” at 12 years old, being the middleman in my parent’s relationship, constantly being an emotional sin-eater of sorts. The family therapist helped me map out the painful experiences of my childhood and showed me that being my own person was possible. Therapy looks different for everyone. For me, it was about gaining confidence and finding myself for the first time.
And even now, in my adult life, I’m still piecing together every cut I have in a puzzle to help me lead the best life I can, in the way that I want. We’ll never know who we are from the outside, and I think that’s a beautiful thing. Sometimes we need someone—a therapist—to act as a mirror to help us find out who we are and how to become who we want to be.
