I posted earlier this week about my therapist flipping through her notebook being the most terrifying sound but then yesterday I actually heard the most terrifying sound from my therapist:
"I think the best way I can support you is to push you out of the nest because I think you're ready to fly on your own."
Did... did I just graduate from therapy
so I don't know what all y'all's mental interiority is like but mine is like a bickering council. usually it's different temporal instantiations of myself; like, I have the hopeless romantic emo teenage self, a scared and anxious inner child self, the bitter undergrad self, the tired 30s self, etc.
a lot of my therapy journey, especially in the beginning, was re-contacting and re-negotiating with these old selves (trying to re-acquaint myself with bitter undergrad self was a challenge because he kept wanting to bite my head off for a good three to six months) but for the past six months or so the constituent members of the council have been pretty stable but hey, recently a new self dropped.
I saw a text from a friend that made me feel kind of uncomfortable and was about to dismiss it when it felt like there was a mental hand on my shoulder and there was the new persona (what I'm going to start calling therapist me). anyway, therapist me said "are you dismissing this because you actually feel it is worthy of dismissal, or is it asking you to reconsider some long-held beliefs about yourself" and teen me was like "hey fuck you, we are different and nobody understands us" and inner child me was like "I really want to be understood but I'm scared I will think they understand me and find out they actually don't" and teen me put his arm around inner child me's shoulder and was like "yeah we're just protecting him!" and therapist me was (very calmly) "I know opening yourself up to potential hurt is scary but it would be such a loss not to take advantage of this moment to feel seen and understood and less alone and also to learn more about ourselves and how to better navigate the world, not to mention to grow closer to this person" and they bickered a bit longer before we reached the consensus to sit with the feeling until we can catalog how it manifests in our body and better understand it and the entire time tired 30s me is in the back chain smoking cigarettes and sighing.
and actual me is sitting in the food court of the grocery store just staring into the middle distance with my phone open in my hand.
so yeah my head just got a little bit louder today, but I think it's a good addition.
today I was sitting on my bed thinking "I don't know why my therapist said I could do this on my own. The laundry is piled up because it hasn't been put away and I'm behind on work and I still need to wash that pan I made curry in several days ago" and then therapist me was all "you know she never expected you to be perfect. be kind to yourself, you are doing a lot on your own now and things will always be hard. just do what you can and ask for help if you need it" and teen me was like "ugh I GUESS" and inner child me was all ✨🥺✨ and tired 30s me was all "ok I gotta go get a haircut because 2024 is my new slut era be good while I'm out" and undergrad me rolled his eyes and cringed
I went to therapy because I thought my brain was too loud and instead it just got louder