Health & Wellness

10 Things I learned in my 1st year of Therapy

March 30, 2021May 2, 2022

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This October 2020 made 1 full year in Therapy. I never thought I would be celebrating that, but here we are! When I first started therapy I wasn’t sure why I was there, but I knew something had to change. I also wasn’t too sure on how open and honest I was willing to be with my therapist at the time, but I showed up. After talking with a friend about her therapy experience and some of my issues I was going through at the time, I knew I wanted to talk to someone about it. Particularly, I knew I wanted to discuss my track record with relationships and decision making.

I found my therapist on Therapy for Black Girls. After a few initial meetings and back and forth emails with a few different therapists, I stuck with Pha Pha.

Now my first few months were rough. Mostly because I wasn’t ready. While I knew I needed to be there, I wasn’t ready to be there. I was still navigating a toxic relationship that I wasn’t fully detached from and some behaviors I wasn’t sure I could give up. I was doing the homework and journaling but I wasn’t fully committed. It wasn’t until the start of the pandemic and a clean break from that relationship did I fully invest myself in my therapy. It wasn’t until I was sitting alone and sitting in my shit did I really start to do the work.

That was almost 5 months after I started therapy. 5 Whole Months. Now I believe everything happens on time – so while yes I could have been in a different place in my life or in my journey had I been committed day one, I know I needed to be in a place where I was ready and willing to be vulnerable and committed. Once I got there, other things became easier. I appreciated the fact that Pha Pha allowed me to get to that point on my own.

While on this 1 year journey I found out so many things about the process, about therapy and about myself. There are some things I am still working on and somethings I haven’t dealt with yet. As I share these tips with you all, I still work on these myself.

Don’t wait to be ready, start therapy anyway. Once you get there you’ll figure it out. I went back and forth with the idea of starting therapy before I actually did. Why didn’t I start earlier – because I didn’t feel like I was ready. I also didn’t know why I needed to go, which delayed me actually starting. But I got to a place where I knew I needed to be there and was ready to change something. So even if you aren’t 100% sure why your going – if you know you need a change – walk through the door. Once you get there you’ll figure it out.
Be honest with yourself so you can be honest with your therapist. I wasn’t completely honest with her or myself when I first got through the door. I couldn’t be honest with her because I wasn’t being honest with myself. Honestly, I wasn’t happy where I was. So I was trying to keep up an appearance that I knew why I was there. I kept telling myself – I’ll share this not that because this sounds ok. The shit that sounds crazy is what you need to share. That’s where the work starts.
Keep a Journal of your sessions, questions and progress. It ‘s always good to track the things you are working on, but also to process your feelings on paper. Sometimes we underestimate the power of writing things out and being able to come back later and see your thoughts, questions that went unanswered and growth. While I am someone who consistently keeps a journal, I found it even more helpful to keep one separate for therapy. I wrote down questions and tips from my therapist there – and kept my daily dumps separate.
Find someone to share with and hold you accountable. Having friends that allow you to be open, honest and vulnerable about your therapy journey is important! Especially if they are able to be honest and transparent with you, ask deeper thought-provoking questions and say – it’s ok. For me accountability means, when you say I will discuss that next time in therapy- they follow up and ask “Did you discuss this?, How did you feel? What do yo think now?” This also means – if you are that person that wants to make sure you keep your word, you will hold yourself accountable too.
Know that therapy is a journey, and progress is sometimes slow and tough. When you first enter therapy, you may expect things to unfold quickly. I thought that my process would be quick, that I would be further along in my process of unlearning and making better decisions. I had to learn the very hard way- after making countless relapses in my choices and behavior that – if it took me almost 30 years to learn a behavior, I wasn’t going to unlearn it in 10 months. Now can I make significant progress? Absolutely! But, when I had expectations that were clearly unrealistic – I shorted myself the ability to truly enjoy the process. So I had to realize that while I am making progress there is still a process – and maybe the things I need to process require more care and attention which requires more than 10 months!
Every session isn’t going to bring an “a ha” moment or be full of deep questions. The first time I had a session that wasn’t full of deep-rooted questions, tears or me analyzing why I did something – I was concerned. Was this bad? What does this mean about my process? No this isn’t bad and this actually is good. This means you are operating in a calm space. For me this meant I was actually operating in the middle – the calm space I was afraid of feeling, and while that was a scary thing it was also necessary.
Be open to being challenged and not liking what you hear. That’s the point of therapy right? I mean if your therapist can’t tell you the hard truths about your childhood, behavior and choices – you might need to discuss why you aren’t open to that in therapy! At first it is difficult to have those discussions because you will find out things that you have done or are doing that may be toxic and self sabotaging. The point here is to be open to hearing that and being challenged to figure out why and how to move past it. That was hard for me because I thought I was always the better one, the one always making the right decisions. Yet in reality, I was actually contributing to the toxic behavior. Some of that I knew, but what I had to be bluntly told is I knew I was doing that and was making a choice to continue that. I didn’t like that – but I needed it.
The hard days are when you really process – the calm days are when you heal. When you first start therapy there are going to be some really tough days. And there will be some really good ones too! And then there will be some what I like to call “blah” days. Because you aren’t super high or super low you are just existing. For me, I had to realize these are days of rest and healing. While you definitely heal on the hard days, for me the days where I was just blah, I was healing through rest and stillness. That has become more important than I realized. So I stopped panicking about those days and just let myself be.
Sometimes you might feel like your in a space to fully stop therapy – don’t. While you may be the expert in your life- you aren’t the expert in therapy. So sometimes you might feel I like “ok, I’m good, I guess I can stop therapy or take a break”. For some that may be true, but if you are like me and want think that everything is good to go, the best thing is to take a quick week or 2 break then revisit the idea.
The past is going to come up – don’t hide from it. That past man – is a real bitch. In therapy your past may come up more than you actually thought it would or even realized. For me, I knew my past was a contributor to many things I needed to be in therapy for, but I didn’t realize I was THAT deep. At times, I would get annoyed that there was so much focus on my childhood – but I needed to fully process some memories I pushed back or some behaviors I learned to full unlearn them. So I had to be ok with frequently and for some months consistently talking about my childhood or connecting something back to my childhood.