There is a specific memory I have of my teenage years. I was in my room, lying on my bed and sobbing. It was daylight but the room was dark, thanks to the black sheets I used as curtains. My mother is in the doorway. I told her I think that I needed therapy; I needed help.
Clearly uncomfortable, she stammered “I think you’re fine.” and that was the end of it.
The values shift of Millennials
I have a theory – maybe it’s true, I don’t know; I’ve never fact checked it.
Anyhow, my theory is that Millennials became the champions of therapy. I feel like we were the generation that broke through the customs of pushing down pain and stopped the stigma of therapy being for “weirdos” or the truly unstable. It wasn’t shameful for us, it was proactive. If you had a broken bone, you’d seek a professional to fix it – why should thoughts and feelings be different?
Again, I have no scientific backing on that. And I’m not even sure why the people my age around me were so ready to seek therapy. Maybe it was the television shows we grew up on, Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood teaching us it was okay to be you and Sesame Street showing how to accept everyone for who they were.
Even those of us who had access MTV had exposure to worlds and ways of creativity that were previously blocked by our parents’ control of the radio dial, seeing Michael Jackson’s Thriller theatrics and Madonna’s unashamed sexuality, the bubblegum purity of Debbie Gibson or Tiffany coming right after the dark and complex The Cure, the poppy Bananarama juxtaposed by Run DMC collaborating with Aerosmith.
I always thought it was funny we were considered the Snowflake generation, sneered at and mocked for so-called Participation Trophies. Needing to be coddled and validated. “Destroying” values and industries left and right as we came of age.
- Who were the adults insisting we needed these trophies?
- Who paid for them to be made? (My theory is no one, because I never saw a participation trophy in any of my extracurriculars. Maybe it happened, but it wasn’t happening in Pittsburgh during the 1990’s.)
- Who were the people telling us we shouldn’t accept being disrespected and should stand up for our worth?
- Who taught us to accept people as they were, inevitably opening up acceptance to LGBTQ+ on a mainstream scale?
It was our parents. It was the adults making content catering to, and targeting, children. Were we the scapegoats when these lessons ingrained in us shifted perspectives as we came into adulthood and the job market?
I think so, but others might think I’m just being a typical whiny Millennial. So be it.
My first therapy session…
…happened in my 30’s. I began to see a psychiatrist who I did not click with, yet didn’t know better. A blessing in disguise, he had become overloaded with patients and passed me off to a therapist, though he would still handle my medications.
I remember going into Brian’s office for the first time. He had multiple setups – two club chairs with a round table inbetween to give some space, or a leather couch across from his desk and chair. I chose the latter, mostly because it had throw pillows I subconsciously needed to hug and shield my body. I still do, nearly 10 years later.
I sat across from him, slightly dejected at being passed off to someone else, and annoyed that I had to start all over again with why I needed help. I said I came to therapy to get past my feelings of my father. Up until that point I was unable to think about him without breaking into painful sobs. Every memory was a raw nerve and the hurt was that animalistic, primal pain one feels at the death of a friend, partner, or beloved pet.
I wanted to get past that and think of him with the same level of nothingness I thought of my past sexual assault. It held no power over me; it happened and it was awful, but it was not going to define me. I wanted that same blank space for my father.
I then said to Brian, “I don’t want to do any Freudian style therapy; I don’t want to end up blaming it all on my mother.” (Or something to that effect. I remember not wanting to do psychoanalysis and defaulting to “she’s the problem.”)
Brian said he specialized in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, CBT, so mom wouldn’t come up unless I wanted her to.
Session 2 and beyond
Getting through my actual “daddy issues” went faster than I thought, which was surprising. But moved on I had and it was wonderful. Then, during a session in November I was relaying how I had to go to my family’s city for Christmas and was not looking forward to it. The usual stuff you’d say, like, “Family, ugh, know what I mean?” and everyone might chuckle.
A quick note about what I think makes Brian so helpful – he has never been a person who agrees with me. I don’t mean as in we’re fundamentally different, quite the opposite. I mean that he has never once in the eight+ years I’ve seen him, let me off the hook the way someone else might. There has never been an allowance on his end for accepting if I feel as though I’m a bad person. Where someone might say “I understand why you’d feel that way” or the aforementioned chuckle and nod, he has never done that. He won’t let me get away with accepting bad feelings.
Brian didn’t chuckle. Instead he simply said, “You don’t have to go.”
I sat in shock. Not only had that never occurred to me but of COURSE it never occurred to me. Because yes, I absolutely had to go. The fallout of not going would’ve been catastrophic.
As I explained this Brian just looked at me, blankly. The session ended and I drove home with his words in my head. I still think about that sentence to this day.
“You don’t have to go.”
That changed everything.
Part 3 coming soon.
