A couple of months ago, I started seeing a therapist.
I think I mentioned that before, but if not...surprise! Apparently, even people who write a couple thousand words a week can forget to mention the important stuff.
I’ve never been anti-therapy. But I have been pro-avoidance.
For years, my coping strategy was simple: stay busy. Start another project. Write another blog post. Edit another video. Rearrange the furniture because it's amazing how much easier it is to move a sofa than unpack 30+ years of emotional baggage.
Unfortunately, emotional baggage is like glitter. Once it gets into your life, you're never completely rid of it.
My therapist is one of those rare people who sees right through my bullshit. But in the nicest, most empathetic possible way. Every week he shines a flashlight into another dusty corner of my soul and asks, "So...what's hiding over here?"
My first instinct is usually, "I don't know. Let's throw the tarp back over it and never speak of it again."
Instead, he gently reminds me that avoiding the mess doesn't make it disappear.
Apparently, healing requires unpacking all those old emotional boxes I've spent years shoving into the back of the closet and pretending weren't there.
"Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants;
electric light the most efficient policeman."
Louis Brandeis
Unhealthy things rarely survive, much less thrive, once they’re brought into the light.
I've spent most of my life avoiding uncomfortable feelings.
Anxiety? Distract myself.
Grief? Work harder.
Loneliness? Convince myself I prefer being alone.
Our brains lie, cheat, and sometimes steal when they're trying to protect us.
Therapy has become the slow, occasionally uncomfortable process of separating those unproductive stories from actual reality.
Some of those stories came from growing up the gay, agnostic kid in a Southern Baptist family. Some came from friendships that taught me what loyalty looked like...and, occasionally, what betrayal looked like too. Some came from romantic relationships that were wonderful while they lasted. Others came from romantic relationships that should've come with warning labels.
Every relationship or situationship left fingerprints. Some left scars.
All of them helped shape the man I am today.
For a long time, I became whoever I thought others needed me to be. People-pleasing wasn’t just a personality trait. It was a full-time job. I collected approval like some people collect baseball cards or stamps.
The problem is that when you spend enough years trying to be who everyone else wants you to be, you eventually lose sight of who you are. And what you want.
Apparently, finding my way back to me takes fifty-three years, a therapist, and an embarrassing number of tissues.
These days, I'm learning that healing isn't pretending the past never happened. It's understanding why it still echoes. Why criticism stings longer than it should. Why I apologize for things that aren't my fault. Why my first instinct is to assume someone is upset with me when they're probably just busy living their own lives.
My brain has an incredible imagination. Unfortunately, it often writes fan fiction about worst-case scenarios.
The good news is that healing isn’t about becoming a different person. It’s about becoming more yourself. The version that existed before fear started calling the shots. Before shame became the loudest voice in the room.
Therapy isn't always comfortable. Some weeks I leave feeling lighter. Other weeks I leave feeling like my soul just went through a commercial-grade pressure washer.
I'm finally realizing that dealing with the past isn't the same as living in it. Feeling your emotions isn't the same as drowning in them. And healing isn't a destination. It's simply deciding you're tired of running from yourself.
Some days that's easier than others. But for the first time, in a long time, I feel like I'm finally headed in the right direction.
Thank you for being a friend!
Clint 🌈✌️
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FROM THE ARCHIVES
BORN THIS WAY ON THIS DAY
07-08 = Peter Orlovsky (1933-2010) = American poet 🌈
07-08 = Philip Johnson (1906-2005) = American architect 🌈
07-08 = Silvia Modig (1976- ) = Finnish politician and journalist 🌈
MAN CRUSHES OF THE DAY
“A rainbow comes pouring into my window, I am electrified.
Songs burst from my breast, all my crying stops, mistory fills
the air.
I look for my shues under my bed….”
Peter Orlovsky, “Frist Poem”
“You’re going to change the world? Well, go ahead and try. You’ll give it up at a certain point and change yourself instead.”
Philip Johnson
Yay for therapy! I'm glad it's helping you. I can vouch for it - my own upbringing in a rural, fundie-infested town, undiagnosed AuDHD exacerbating my 'differences' from my destined-for-MAGAism peers and their bullying/mockery; dark unspoken family history that nonetheless made 'home' a place of isolation and weird vibes (and when the secrets all started blasting forth - hooowhee); and then years later the death of The Great Love Of My Life in '95 - all combined into a very bleak state of cPTSD which finally, a decade ago, resulted in implosion (after pushing myself too hard going back to uni and finishing a double-lit degree, reading 5-6 books a week, writing two papers per week as well, &c &c nonstop for four years). I hit what we now know was 'major autistic burnout' and went away for an ... erm, stay in Casa del Cray-Cray in a severe depressive/exhausted fit. But out of it all, I eventually found a fanTAStic therapist who's been guiding me through reconstructing myself, rebuilding who I am (or was, before getting pummelled too much). It took something like 5-6 years (being put on a poorly-chosen wacko-med by a former doc for 7 years didn't help any) to finally be able to break down walls and at last confront my cPTSD Ground Zero - my lover's death - last year around this time. Like you, I do better writing things out than thinking/discussing them, so (with my thurpist's advice) I wrote out this confrontation with memory and sent it to said thurpist, reliving/trying to recall what happened day by day in the last week or two of his life (the days coinciding exactly - or as close to it as I could manage - with the same date 30 years ago when as he was dying). It was beyond gutwrenching, but it workt: as in, it opened up long-walled-off memories and emotions. Only problem is, now able to feel them again, the emotions are at high tide right now, since it's now a year since that breakthrough and thus once more the anniversary of those dark days. But I know it's something I need to reincorporate into 'myself' rather than hide/avoid it. (Not to do a free plug for my own Substack, but - mostly for my own sake - I've been rereading/editing/rewriting-in-parts that year-old memoir and have been posting the entries, if'n you'd like to take a look at a spiritual reconstruction in progress ... if probably a perpetual rebuilding for the rest of my life.) But anyway, I'm being long-winded again. Congrats on entering therapy - as you said, burying and avoiding traumatic things past just allows them to grow even more monstrous in the shadows. Eventually ya gotta go back and not necessarily slay, but tame those dragons as best you can. Best of luck wisht to you.
🌈🌀