Therapy Notes

Sit on the couch with me...

Rosecliff Mansion, Newport

Therapy Notes is one of my ideas for SBLife. I want to share the reflections I find within my own therapy. It feels extremely vulnerable, but I believe in the support that therapy provides and I believe so many reasons we go to therapy are universal.

Recently, I spoke to a friend who described having a simple realization in her life. A thought that came to her suddenly and simply, but changed the way she saw a relationship. I resonated with her. I’ve had those moments. Sometimes what helps us the most is not complicated and can come softly into our awareness as if it has always been there waiting for us to look over in its direction. These obvious, little epiphanies will have you wondering why you never thought of them before. Shifts that seem so simple, yet change everything. My friend had her epiphany privately, but I frequently have shifts in therapy. There’s something about the safety and relief of being heard that allows space for new information to come to the surface. No matter how simple.

First, a little academic note. I have my master’s degree in psychology. I was lucky enough to take fascinating classes on topics like creativity, resiliency, evolutionary psychology, and more. My capstone to graduate was a research project about the experience of adult children estranged from family members. I have all these interesting bits of information that now live within me and I ponder them often. One of the reasons I came to make my very first therapy appointment was due to learning, in more classes than one, that the primary source of happiness and resiliency in life involves having some sort of social support.

Social support…not an easy subject for an adult estranged from family, like myself. So as the professors spoke more and more about the need for external support, people who listen and try to understand you, I knew I needed to seek it out in order to fully heal. I needed a bit of scaffolding, so to speak, from someone who had experience helping others through estrangement.

That’s when I found Grace. What we’ll call my therapist.

I needed Grace in my life because I realized that no matter how many books I read or podcasts I listened to, I was hurting faster than I could teach myself to heal. Maybe there was something to this social support idea, after all.