Therapy is complex, grueling — and rewarding

Not Done with Therapy

I don’t need a therapist.

Not me, nuh-uh, I’m totally okay, totally.

That’s what I tell my 11th grade mechaneches when she corners me shortly after my parents’ divorce. That’s what I tell my aunt, the only one I’d ever opened up to about what was going on at home. That’s what I tell my principal, my mother, my grandmother, myself.

But at some point, when I’m so worn down and things have reached new levels of unbearable, I give in. It takes fewer than ten minutes for Mrs. Green, the mechaneches, to hand me a pale green slip: Tuesday, third period.

The school social worker has an office with a separate entrance, no windows overlooking the school grounds, a noise machine humming in the background. It’s safe and private and I feel a tiny stirring of hope. Maybe this will help?

Mrs. Weiss takes notes as I speak. I talk and talk, she writes and writes. She barely says a word until the time is up, and she tells me to come back next week, same time. We can discuss solutions next time, she says. I leave feeling relieved. This was okay. Besides, Tuesday third period is social studies, my least favorite subject.

The next Tuesday, I’m outside the door, right on time. There is murmuring from inside… can that be the noise machine? It kind of sounds like voices. I knock hesitantly, and Mrs. Weiss swings the door open with a big smile. “Come inside, Leeba, come in.”

She’s too loud, too jovial. I step in, suddenly wary. There’s someone else in the room.

My mother.

The room spins.

Mrs. Weiss tells me to sit. I want to run, run, run, but the door is closed and I feel trapped. Mrs. Weiss takes out her notebook, filled with my words, my secrets, all the pieces of my broken heart.

And she starts to read it out, word for word.

“It’s important that your mother knows,” she says, afterward. “It’s better this way.”

But it isn’t better. She’s made everything a thousand times worse.

I don’t go back to see Mrs. Weiss after that. I don’t reach out anymore. Professional help tastes of betrayal, sharp and painful.

It’s a few years and several major life changes later that I decide to try again. This time, it’s my own choice. My aunt recommends her friend, Mrs. Jacobs. I walk around the block six times before knocking on the door.

Mrs. Jacobs is warm and motherly and expressive. She oohs and aahs about my experiences. She tells me I should never have been treated like that, ever, and she teaches me breathing exercises. We talk about thoughts, feelings, and emotions, and she tells me everything’s just a matter of changing thought patterns. I see her for three months. It doesn’t help.

Later, I learn about the difference between cognitive-behavioral and experiential modalities. I learn that CBT isn’t going to help me access, process, and heal from deep-set traumas. I learn about attachment theory and ego states and transference and the role of the therapeutic relationship in the healing.

I learn this in Gila’s office, when I brave trying one more time. By now I’m juggling a family of three children, work, household, finances. But this is important. Therapy takes $10,000 and five years. It’s wrenching and healing and introspective and shockingly freeing. It’s grit and struggle and challenge and work, it’s light and revelation and connection and love.