One Hour Isn't Enough

Sometimes I feel like one hour a week isn't enough for therapy. I don't know how other people's sessions go, but mine are always different. Sometimes new skills or resources are discussed, learned, and practiced. Sometimes it's a back and forth conversation regarding one specific step or place I feel stuck in, and how to navigate my way through it. Sometimes I talk about random things while I color. Sometimes I share details of memories that won't leave my mind, and what triggered them. Sometimes I share a single feeling and it morphs into an eye opening revelation. Sometimes I'm sad, discouraged, and crying. Sometimes I'm cheerful, articulate, and inquisitive. Sometimes there are abrupt stops in the middle of a sentence, losing train of thought, what the point was, and where I was headed. Sometimes I talk so fast that I stumble over words and string sentences together. Sometimes I stare quietly, not knowing what to say. Sometimes I try drawing, writing, or visualization exercises. Sometimes I get stuck questioning what the point of it all is. Sometimes I want to quit. Sometimes I doubt that I'm doing enough, that I've made any progress at all. Sometimes I feel so proud of myself that all I can do is share experiences that happened throughout the week that allowed me to notice progress. Sometimes I leave the session feeling the weight of the world, dreading every encounter that will happen thereafter. Sometimes I leave the session feeling refreshed and optimistic, ready to shower the world in love and light. No matter how I show up, I am so f'n proud of myself for showing up week after week. Someone recently asked me how I do it, go to weekly therapy. I've been thinking about that question a lot lately. Life is filled with questions that I don't have the answers to, questions that I will likely never have an answer to, and questions that I don't yet know how to even ask or consider. It's filled with experiences unacknowledged, and words left unsaid. Therapy allows me a guaranteed safe space to share and process everything that makes up my reality - often things that feel socially unacceptable to share. Therapy helps teach me that everything is socially acceptable to share. We just have to learn how to allow ourselves to say the words to others and how to work through all the things that may arise throughout the process. Many experiences seem unspeakable because we haven't seen enough examples of others sharing their misfortunes and how they work through them. Everyone is seemingly expected to experience and deal, all on their own. The worse the tragedy, the more isolated one feels about their experience. I personally haven't a clue how one navigates life without therapy…without the space to process the experiences and what makes up their reality. To share your experience, share your feelings about the experience, and release yourself from any shame or guilt that surrounds it. To be asked questions that make you think about it in a different way. To be given resources to figure it out. To just know you're supported and not alone. I tried to go it alone, and I have never felt so out of touch with myself. So lost. I now realize that's because I kept it all inside. I never spoke the words aloud to another or allowed them to come out in writing. I needed that extra step of allowing the experiences, feelings, thoughts, and emotions to be free from myself…I needed to see that what I was experiencing internally was real. That I wasn't crazy. All the introspection in the world doesn't have the power to make itself seen; we have to be willing to show ourselves to the world. I had and still do have a lot of darkness in me, though I'm starting to see it in a different light. I used to loathe the darkness. I ran from it. I tried to escape it. Therapy has taught me how to stop running from it. To sit with my darkness and allow it to be seen. To accept it for what it is. The more I sit with each thing I used to consider darkness, the more I learn to love and nurture myself. The more I heal. The more I feel real. These experiences that happened, that weren't shared or acknowledged, left parts of me in that darkness. Not the act alone, but going through it alone is often where trauma is born. The experiences that leave a part of us alone in the dark can seem separate from us. Almost unreal. Too ugly to look at. Too painful to revisit. Too broken to fix. We try to bury them in the depths of our mind, cursing them if they dare to surface. We banish them because they are too much to handle now, just as they were too much to handle when the experience first happened. So when I was asked, how I go to weekly therapy, I think, how could I keep abandoning myself? I mean, who wants to sit alone in the dark? Now when I feel the darkness looming, I grab a candle and a cozy blanket, and I snuggle up with it. I let it know that it's not alone. What this actually means is that I'm sitting with myself, talking to the parts who are trapped in the darkness. I speak to each one of them like a loving mother would to her child. I make space for them. I acknowledge their experiences and let them know it's okay to share their feelings, even when they're too big to understand. I cry for them and with them. I thank them for being there. I acknowledge their bravery. I encourage them to express themselves and take up space in the world. I get out colored pencils or a Lego kit and allow them safe play time. I expect nothing from them, but try to give them everything they didn't have when the experience happened. Sometimes I journal about these integral moments with myself, but most of the time I just share them with my therapist the next time I see her. Sharing the connection and the progress with another brings the healing work full circle. It gives purpose to my days, for I know I am finally learning to love myself wholeheartedly. Sometimes I feel like one hour a week just isn't enough for therapy.