2019, The Year I Got Help
I was thinking recently about writing one of those Facebook posts where you revisit the triumphs and successes of the past year in a desperate attempt to impress your friends and family and feel like less of a complete failure.
I was reflecting on the year that was and how I did a number of things I’m proud of, including going back to therapy after an unscheduled five year break. The more that I thought about it, the more it felt like I did not do a bunch of things that I am proud of AND went back into therapy so much as I did a bunch of things that I am proud of BECAUSE I went back into therapy.
I’m proud that I realized that I needed help. I’m even prouder that I took the steps to get that help because when you live paycheck to paycheck the way I do, and money and time are perpetually in short supply, then it is very easy to give yourself permission to avoid therapy even if you realize just how much you to stand to benefit from if.
I was able to silence the counter-productive part of my brain that argues, with horrible persuasiveness, that I did not have enough time or money for therapy when other, more pressing expenses like food and shelter and my children’s educations were staring me in the face, and, for good measure, it was likely that I would never have enough time or money for therapy.
Then I reached a point where I realized that I could not go on the way I was living. Years upon years of low-level but persistent self-sabotage had done a number on my career, my finances and my psyche. I was letting myself defeat myself. My bad habits were getting the best of me, particularly in terms of procrastination.
I needed a catalyst to help me break through a wall of procrastination that was keeping me stuck in the same awful holding pattern indefinitely. Weekly online therapy through Better Help provided that catalyst, and I am not just saying that because I would love to be a paid spokesman for them.
My therapist gave me the tools to realize that I was putting off finishing my books Postal and The Weird Accordion to Al because I was terrified that at the end of the process the world would reject my books the way they’ve rejected so many of my columns and I would lose two more huge reasons to wake up feeling hopeful and optimistic.
So instead of facing the possibility of crushing failure, I sabotaged myself by holding off the satisfying, terrifying act of completion for as long as possible because that would make everything real and concrete, and not something that exists in the comfortably far-away realm of fantasy and the semi-distant future.
Therapy gave me the tools to finish The Weird Accordion to Al and Postal and the crowd-funding campaign for the book, which is nearly as much work as writing the book itself.
I’m very happy that I finally stopped giving myself permission to procrastinate. I don’t allow myself to not open important emails for days, even weeks out of fear and dread of what horrors they might contain. I finished books I’d been working on for years and can’t wait to share them with the world.
Sometimes tough love can be a form of self-care. That’s how it was with me and therapy. I did myself a huge favor in the long run by not letting fear control me, by being tougher on myself and not tolerating patterns of self-defeat and self-sabotage that have held be back.
So if you have been thinking about going back into therapy, or trying therapy, or giving online therapy a go I encourage you to take positive steps to make your life better. The mere act of doing something substantive and constructive after a long period of inertia and inactivity and feeling overwhelmed is bound to have a positive effect on your life, even beyond the enormous, almost incalculable possible benefits of therapy itself, which can certainly go wrong in the hands of the wrong people but which can also change your life in a very positive way that makes the substantial cost involved not only justified but a relative bargain.
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