This past December, two years into a relationship (and a pandemic), and three months into an illness (post-viral syndrome, initiated by a gastro virus), I said to myself, “I need therapy.” I’ve been to therapists on and off over the years and I (virtually) see my own spiritual director on a regular basis but the last time I went to a therapist was more than eight years ago.
It was time.
I love therapy. In my teens, therapy helped me to say, “I love you,” to my father (and helped him say it back). In my thirties, therapy helped me to come to terms with my sexuality (I am a heterosexual-identified bisexual, yes!). In my forties, therapy helped me to figure out what to do with my life (quit my job and pursue my calling).
To illustrate how much I love therapy I will tell you a little story:
Once, during my spiritual direction training, I was the guinea pig for a “practice” spiritual direction session. My cohort was observing me in the session with a spiritual director who also happened to be a therapist.
I was talking about my spiritual journey, enjoying the rapt attention of a roomful of listeners, when I said something that made the director stop me and say, “Now I don’t want to go any further here because this is spiritual direction and I don’t want it to become a therapy session.”
“Oh, I love therapy,” I replied, confidently.
He looked at me, squarely. Was I really giving him permission to “go there” in front of all of these people? I looked back at him. Yes, I was.
“Alright. What’s ‘belonging’?” he asked me. I must have used the word when I was talking and he had knowingly (and artfully) picked up on it.
The question went into my heart like an arrow, penetrating my bravado. “I never felt like I belonged anywhere in my whole life,” I said, tears spilling down my cheeks.
He had seen something of my inner life and I had been willing to expose it. It was a powerful moment for every single person in that room and … healing happened.
And this is why I love therapy (and spiritual direction): healing happens.
In a recent session with my new therapist, I shared some of my latest struggles. “It’s sounds like the story of your life could be titled Life is Very Hard.”
I felt my defenses rising up because for years I’d consciously avoided saying “life is hard.” It had felt like a negative statement that needed to be transformed. Instead, I’d practiced saying “life isn’t easy” or “life can be challenging.”
But in that moment I realized something: I work with many people who find life hard and somewhere along the line I had let go of my practice of transforming the words in order to validate the statement for the ones who felt it to be true. “Yes, I hear you. Life is hard.”
“Maybe I’ve swung too far the other way,” I conceded.
“Or maybe that’s just my projection,” she said, softening. “What would you call the title of your life’s book?”
“Never Enough,” I said, without hesitation.
It’s true. No matter how much healing I’ve experienced there continues to be that deep-rooted shame in my being that tells me I’m not enough. It doesn’t rule my life (most of the time) but it’s never fully gone away. Sometimes it even returns in a full-force gale.
“Maybe you need to learn to make friends with your shame,” my therapist said.
This was a new angle.
Healing the shame? Been there done that. But making friends with shame? Okay, let’s do it!
So, thanks to good ol’ therapy, I’ve renamed shame “Shamé” and we’re getting along great. We’ve gone for walks, watched movies together and next week we’re going to an outdoor show (weather permitting).
From the fires of love,
Celia
