It’s been two years since I first walked into her office, with the smiling, professional side of me fully engaged and (so I hoped) masking the severity of the problems. I waited agreeably in the waiting room, making good eye contact with the receptionist, smiling, holding myself with proper posture, and radiating sweetness—if only as a defense mechanism. I was nineteen, and scared half out of my mind.
The door was borderline-flung open, and my new therapist entered the waiting room with about as much speed. She leaned back on the door slightly, looking somewhat breathless as she smiled and called my name. And so it began.
No other mental health professional had been able to keep me in their office beyond a few months. Nobody else had fit. Nobody else had been able to elicit a knee-jerk reaction to the question of past sexual abuse from the very first meeting … and certainly, nobody else had respected and cared about me enough to say, “You know what, let’s back up. We don’t need to talk about this right now. Not until you’re ready. And if you’re ready with someone other than me, that’s okay too. I’m just going to follow your lead on this one.”
No one else dared “joke” about my food issues with me during the evaluation, taking note of and ultimately engaging in my sense of self-deprecating humor. Frankly, I was thrilled that she did. Thrilled.
And seriously, two years into this stuff, the Psych Spectacular deserves a medal. Not just for standing beside me while I grappled with every demon I could possibly summon from my past, every darkest detail from childhood that I could throw at her. (And trust me, I found the oddest ways to reach her—when words wouldn’t come, I snail-mailed letters … and then relied on the safety of emails … and then cited lyrics. And she accepted them all, without fail). But no, not just for that.
But for creating an unfailingly safe place for me, even when it meant taking me with her after she left the center at which we originally began. For proving to me that caring about someone does not equal being taken advantage of. For showing me that hugs are not dangerous or things to be punished over (this in particular, is huge. Huge). For letting me know that coming into session and talking about dog rescue and my latest taste in music is just as important and just as “okay,” therapeutically speaking, as talking about the tough stuff. For reiterating time and time again that it was not my fault and I’m not some twisted, perverted freak of nature because of what happened to me. For respecting me so much that when she messed up and told a little white lie (as she is, after all, only human … damn it) and I caught her in it, she gave me the option to walk away from her if I wanted. She had apologized, explained why she did what she did, and acknowledged a thousand times over that it was wrong, as I paced the side yard outside and tried to sort it all out … but when I needed a few weeks to myself to deal with what had happened and all of the flashbacky bullshit that it stirred up in me, she told me it was okay to leave.
And for showing me that “the water is fine, come on in,” with her own openness and self-disclosure.
Guys, seriously, she is one of those once-in-a-lifetime psychs that you know you’d keep seeing even if all of your so-called demons had been worked out. Just because you want her on your side while you deal with this thing called “life.”
I realized recently that nothing – truly, nothing with a capital N – is off limits in session. It is actually quite an amazing realization. And when she starts a sentence with a grin and, “Don’t put this on your blog, okay?” … well, I know I’m exactly where I belong.
She’s one of only three or four people that I know in the real world who knows exactly how bad things were as a child. She is also one of the precious few people I know in real life who have the URL to this blog. And after poking around it once (or twice, I don’t know … nor do I really care), she demonstrated her commitment to being foremost a therapist and second an ally, by telling me she felt it blurred the lines too much for her to read here, so she’d let it alone. Whether or not she still does is not of my concern; I don’t post that which I won’t later stand behind. But that she would know herself that well and hold such a dedication to our work to recognize what might ultimately complicate it spoke worlds to me. Worlds.
Tonight, we set off her alarm when we opened the front door, and though I almost offered to go back outside while she spoke to the security company, she didn’t hesitate to offer up that word while I sat on the other end of the couch. Granted, I knew it’d never leave my mouth, but that she trusted that it wouldn’t? Wow. Okay, then. And later, she took a page from my book and used dog rescue analogies to get through to me when I had shut her out and lapsed into feelings of failing and worthlessness over the whole stupid school situation.
Point is, she gets me. And she gets how to get to me, even when she may well think she’s not getting anywhere at all. I’ve used dog analogies to explain myself since almost the beginning, likening myself to a feral or comparing myself to a particular rescue case I had worked with previously when I couldn’t otherwise find the “human” equivalent to explain. And the fact that she took a chance and turned my own way of thinking on me tonight was huge. And for my defensive little self, it also worked—flawlessly.
It’s funny but earlier, I reread my journal entry from the day I met her and I still giggle at the bits of conversation that I wrote down then. Because really? It hasn’t changed. At all.
It still fits.
