When I had been in therapy about a decade I seriously contemplated termination. My therapist and I were circling each other in a disagreement about money, but the life-threatening symptoms which brought me to her (binge eating disorder, stunningly similar to anorexia) were well managed. I had not binged in three years, I had bariatric surgery to treat my morbid obesity, and I understood the value of boundaries in relationships, though I still resented them. I understood how to eat without binging, and I connected with my body so I could see the dissociation creeping up on me.
I thought this was as good as it gets. I wanted my "cured" badge, I felt like I had earned it. But, more than that, I want my nosy therapist out of my life! Good God, she just can't let go of some things! Other people don't pay people to tell them things no one wants to hear, why do I? I'm not some teenager cutting myself or clinically depressed! WTF?
That was fifteen years ago, she's been sitting across from me ever since, and resolving that two decade old disagreement over money happened just this year. Surprise! It was a proxy for something else that I was not going to let anyone get near, until I did.
Honestly, I can't imagine life without her. I started seeing her in May before 9/11, in NYC, blocks from ground zero. With retirement looming, some change is coming up for us. She doesn't take Medicare. This does not distress me. At this point, whatever we work out, even if it comes down to termination, will just be a change in the shape of our relationship.
Beautiful and touching essay, written with love and insight from both chairs. Thank you.
Thank you for sharing more of your own story and experience here, it's why I keep writing. And I fully agree with you that binge eating disorder and anorexia are strikingly similar. All you have to do is dig just below the surface.
I love hearing how you've worked through whatever was feeling like a conflict in the therapy room, I think often that is where the magic of therapy happens.
Oh it was a conflict, the resolution was chiefly my coming to the realization that I wanted her to run her practice the way she sees fit. What enabled that shift was the realization that I really wanted her to show me she loved me in the ways my parents neglected to. I wanted any concrete accommodation from them to acknowledge that they have a child, they made an implied vow to me, I wanted them to recognize it.
They didn’t, it was beyond their capabilities as people. I transferred that to her so I could unpack it in the safe space of our therapeutic rapport when I was ready, until I was ready I slapped a “change your billing practices” label on the box to keep it sealed. I had to peel that off.
For me, it was after survival was no longer the concern that I could do the real work I needed to do. Connection and vulnerability work. Deep shame work. The work of sitting in the hard emotions of everyday life, because I liked to disregard all of those as mundane and ridiculous. The work of claiming everyday joy. Worthiness work.
My years with her were unusually long. Meant everything. That time and space gave me my life and while that sounds dramatic, there is no other way to say it.
We are very blessed to have had such opportunity. I would never wish illness such as ours on anyone. But I would never unwise it for myself either. The richness on the other side, richness that only deep work can possibly allow for... I would do it all again in a heartbeat.
I don't think I could say a single word of this better than you did. It is a gift that is confusing sometimes, because I would give the illness back in a heartbeat, but I would never give back what I ultimately learned in the meaningful connections, it gave me.
so much of this resonated with me that I honestly didn’t know where to begin.
I think what struck me most was the idea that there doesn’t necessarily have to be a finish line. I spent so many years thinking therapy was where you went when something was wrong, you worked on it, and eventually you were supposed to be “done.”
My experience now has been so different. It took me a very long time to trust enough to really let someone into the places I had kept protected for most of my life. And once that trust and safety were there, I discovered there were deeper places I was finally able to go—not because I was getting worse, but because I finally felt safe enough to go there.
I also really appreciated what you said about becoming curious about your therapist and about the relationship itself. I’ve had some of those same thoughts and questions, and I’m beginning to understand that they don’t take away from the boundaries that make therapy safe. Maybe being able to wonder about those things, talk about the relationship, and still trust the boundaries is part of what makes the relationship feel so safe.
Three years into this work, I don’t find myself wondering when I’ll be “done” anymore. There is still so much I’m learning about myself, and for the first time in my life, I’m doing that from a place of trust rather than fear.
Thank you for putting words around something I’ve been feeling but didn’t quite know how to name. 💜
I thought of you when I published this one. I wrote it a couple of weeks ago, but you were definitely on my mind and in my heart when I reread it before posting it.
Thank you for this. I often wonder what the right amount of therapy is and whether I need to always have in mind a discrete goal or timeline. I know the financial reality of how therapy is provided can be thorny, but there is also a way in which I have begin to think about therapy as an ongoing practice. I like that better than thinking about in terms of "unlimited growth" or something like that. Sometimes I just need a space where I can find out what a particular phase of life is really like without needing to do anything about it.
That's how I'm growing to think of it too. It's a place where I know I can look in word and have someone there with a different perspective, whose doing it with me. It feels like more of a gift these days than a necessity, but I'm really grateful to have the space for that kind of work.
I think therapy can change completely once you’re no longer in crisis. You finally have room to look at the parts of yourself that were always there, but got buried under whatever needed immediate attention.
Real healing rarely feels like a breakthrough. More often, it's realizing years later that you stopped bracing and never even noticed the moment it happened.
It's only once things finally go quiet that you get a good look at who you became to survive it. That's the part nobody warns you about. The person waiting on the other side of trauma is a stranger, and getting to know yourself again might turn out to be harder than surviving ever was.
Ohhh please always publish them! Always! They are the most meaningful ones because they show us the real YOU. You are a safe place for all your patients to be the real them. Let us be the safe place where you can be the real you.
Well done! You should be MAJORLY proud of yourself. I have always said that a great deal of people I NEED to see, never get seen. It takes some real surrendering to let down the guard and the ego, open up and be vulnerable. Go you.
I'm wondering now - from a therapist's perspective, when is therapy 'done'? 🤔 For how long should one see a therapist? I'm also curious about my therapist, and in a way I feel that we could have been friends if she wasn't my therapist. Do you ever end up being friends with some of your clients? Your curiosity about your therapist now leaves me with so many questions to overthink. Not sure if I have to say thank you or ask for advice on how to untangle this, and if you would recommend that others have similar conversations with their therapists? At least I have a week to think about it before seeing my therapist again. 🙃
Dorette…first, I love an overthinker (takes one to know one). And I’m sorry to have set off a parade of thoughts. Also, I’m not sorry, because I think it is useful to think about. I’ll do my best to overthink with you now:)
1) First, your question about when is therapy done (from a therapist’s perspective). I’m going to be really annoying here, because the answer to this is similar to my answer for so many psychotherapy related questions, it depends. It depends on so much including the client’s goals, attachment style, history, and so much more. Some people are working on a specific goal, some value ongoing support. Some people might need to experience independence and break from the therapeutic relationship and some may need to know the relationship is enduring. What I DO think, is that the length of therapy should be talked about openly and in an ongoing way…in every therapeutic relationship. Not all the time, but every now and then.
2) Of course you are curious about your therapist. I would be surprised (and skeptical) if you said you weren’t. And yes, I think that is very fertile ground in every therapeutic relationship (even if it took me years to acknowledge to my therapist because of how vulnerable it felt).
3) Have I ever become friends with my clients? NEVER. And not because I wouldn’t have loved being friends, but because that boundary in the therapeutic relationship is both ethical and essential to therapy. If I became friends with someone I worked with, even after we stopped working together, they could never come back and work with me down the road. I think it is important to preserve that relationship in perpetuity. NOW, interestingly, I have become exceedingly close with my therapist from my adolescent years. That said, it is weird and unique..I found her after 30 years of no contact, she is in her eighties and there is no chance of our working together again. I don’t recommend this, because the circumstances are so unique, but it has been a blessing for me.
I think this at least scratches the surface of your questions and I hope it feels helpful. And please ask anything, I am always happy to go down the therapy rabbit hole with you!
After overthinking some more, I came to the conclusion that we will probably never be 'done' with therapy, in the same way we're never really done doing our work. But in some seasons we will be okay to manage on our own. I started seeing a therapist not because I was in crisis, but because I was finally coming out of the fog of years of trauma. Processing in reflection. And intentionally choosing a life that is congruent.
I needed someone to witness parts of me I was not yet ready to share with the world. Most sessions I read some of my raw poetry, process relational dilemmas, and I often get the idea that my therapists enjoys our sessions because I am not in crisis, but in a construction phase and we can both see the progress I've made. I am so grateful for your profession, and finding a therapist that is a great fit for me. Thank you also for the work you do, sharing from both side of the therapy room, it is immensly helpful. And I'm sorry for all the amazing friendships you could not persue to keep the therapeutic relationship a safe space. I hope it comes back to you in other ways.
YES YES YES to every word you wrote here. I could not have said any of it better (and I've tried quite a bit)! I have no doubt your therapist enjoys seeing your growth and insight.
And, for those friendships I never got, I got even better; I got to witness growth and bravery and heart unfold in front of me. I have never, and I hope will never, take that for granted.
I love that you can see and acknowledge that.. my therapist calls it 'seeing someone's naked self' and I must admit I think that is one of the most beautiful elements of therapy, being vaulnrable in a safe space and having the experience that someone can see your and it's not only okay, it's actually freeing to feel the congruence of showing up as your full self.
I think in a way that is what I love about my work as well, because although people walk through my doors becuase of their physical pain, I've never met a chronic pain patient with a flair up when they were not going through a difficult time. In a way I also try to create that safe space emotionally. Humans are so wonderfully complex and sometimes a therapeutic relationship can be just as meaningful as friendship, thank you for helping me see that.
I think we just helped each other see something and feel something and I'm appreciative as well. And I'm appreciative of your work, I think you're right that there is a lot of overlap when the jobs we do are done well. I've been in physical therapy twice in my life and I have to say, I had to my physical therapist, and even though I hated having to go, I loved seeing him.
I think therapy may be the only thing we pay for repeatedly while secretly wondering why we still need it.
At some point, a part of us expects a graduation ceremony.
Congratulations. You have successfully completed Being A Person. Please collect your certificate, complimentary tote bag, and permanently regulated nervous system on the way out. Trauma has been processed. Childhood has been reviewed. Please allow six to eight weeks for your new personality to arrive.
Except, inconveniently, life keeps happening.
People leave. People die. We fall in love. We get disappointed. We encounter new situations that somehow manage to wake up very old fears. And occasionally something we were absolutely certain we had dealt with comes strolling back into our lives with the confidence of someone who still has a key.
I used to think that meant I had failed somehow. That if an old wound still hurt, then clearly I had not healed enough. Apparently there was a secret advanced level of therapy where nothing bothered you anymore and you floated through life like a psychologically enlightened houseplant.
I don’t believe that now.
I’m beginning to think one of the cruelest things we do to ourselves is turn healing into another destination we are late reaching.
We imagine there is a finished version of us somewhere ahead, standing at the end of a long road, emotionally regulated, perfectly self-aware, hydrated, and somehow no longer annoyed by anybody in traffic.
And then we judge the person we are today for not having become that person yet.
But maybe healing was never supposed to work that way.
Maybe the strange thing about doing this work is that life keeps taking us past some of the same landmarks. The same fear. The same shame. The same memory. The same voice telling us something about ourselves that we once believed completely.
From the inside, that can feel like going in circles.
But circles and spirals look remarkably similar when you’re standing inside them.
Sometimes you return to the same place carrying something you did not have the last time: language. Boundaries. Perspective. Compassion. The ability to recognize what is happening while it is happening.
The landmark hasn’t moved.
You have.
And perhaps that is why I keep thinking about this distinction: the wound may still know your address. It just doesn’t get to own the house anymore.
That doesn’t mean it never visits.
Sometimes it knocks.
Sometimes it shows up at an unreasonable hour.
Sometimes it wanders around back and jiggles the kitchen window because apparently trauma has absolutely no respect for property law.
But knowing where I live and having authority over my life are no longer the same thing.
That feels like a much more honest definition of healing to me.
Not erasing what happened. Not becoming immune to pain. Not reaching some glorious emotional finish line where the past finally shakes your hand, apologizes for the inconvenience, and leaves you alone forever.
Maybe healing is simply renegotiating who gets to make decisions inside you.
The past can speak without getting the final vote.
Fear can enter the room without choosing the furniture.
A memory can hurt without becoming a prophecy.
And maybe therapy without a finish line isn’t a depressing idea at all.
Maybe the problem was the finish line.
Because once healing becomes somewhere we are supposed to arrive, recovery becomes one more way to accuse ourselves of being behind.
Perhaps there is no perfectly healed version of me waiting somewhere in the distance.
Perhaps there is only this version, still becoming, still learning the rooms of his own life, and getting a little better at deciding who gets a key.
Everything about this is beautiful, but here is the line that made me stop: circles and spirals look remarkably similar when you’re standing inside them. That's the difference 100%, you can't see the forest from the trees when you're standing in the forest. This reminder is so helpful.
I have always thought that therapy was a lifelong process, and that I’ll always need a therapist for the rest of my life, so I could become and stay a good therapist and a human.
I never even considered the possibility that therapy could „end“ for someone. I wonder what therapy ending for me would feel like.
If you like your therapist and she has been nothing but great to you, I‘d say keep her in your life.
You and I share a sensibility. I have no plans to go anywhere, though I do know my therapist will retire one day in the not too distant future. You better believe I'll be writing about that one! She's been such a godsend to me.
I love this essay. I always love to read your work, and especially when you allow yourself to (more) fully open up and share the deeper parts of what you are thinking and feeling. This essay is one of those. This is my favorite line: "...I discovered that vulnerability could create the very connection I had spent so much of my life longing for."
I've never had long-term therapy, so I can't speak to what you're describing. But the part about the crisis passing and then wondering what's left — I know that.
I have gone through stretches of a long-term personal illness, a career crisis, and difficulties with children when I'm on high alert, looking for whatever will get me through the day. When it passes, and fortunately it does, I find myself compelled to actually sit down and figure out what I learned, so if something like it comes around again I can handle it better.
For you, it sounds like the "what's left" was the relationship itself with the therapist. For me, it's more like the relationship I have with myself and the compelling need to learn from it and do homework. I never thought of giving this up — it seems that this habit is hard-wired into me. I live with the idea that a difficulty in life is more palatable if I can walk away with someone more than an uncomfortable experience.
It sounds like such a useful thing you've discovered about yourself. I'm sure you've grown a tremendous amount because of it. It may be helps make the hard things worth it.
Oh good. I'm glad. Sooo...with safety in place, I look forward to reading more of your personal essays...when you are ready. 😉
When I had been in therapy about a decade I seriously contemplated termination. My therapist and I were circling each other in a disagreement about money, but the life-threatening symptoms which brought me to her (binge eating disorder, stunningly similar to anorexia) were well managed. I had not binged in three years, I had bariatric surgery to treat my morbid obesity, and I understood the value of boundaries in relationships, though I still resented them. I understood how to eat without binging, and I connected with my body so I could see the dissociation creeping up on me.
I thought this was as good as it gets. I wanted my "cured" badge, I felt like I had earned it. But, more than that, I want my nosy therapist out of my life! Good God, she just can't let go of some things! Other people don't pay people to tell them things no one wants to hear, why do I? I'm not some teenager cutting myself or clinically depressed! WTF?
That was fifteen years ago, she's been sitting across from me ever since, and resolving that two decade old disagreement over money happened just this year. Surprise! It was a proxy for something else that I was not going to let anyone get near, until I did.
Honestly, I can't imagine life without her. I started seeing her in May before 9/11, in NYC, blocks from ground zero. With retirement looming, some change is coming up for us. She doesn't take Medicare. This does not distress me. At this point, whatever we work out, even if it comes down to termination, will just be a change in the shape of our relationship.
Beautiful and touching essay, written with love and insight from both chairs. Thank you.
Thank you for sharing more of your own story and experience here, it's why I keep writing. And I fully agree with you that binge eating disorder and anorexia are strikingly similar. All you have to do is dig just below the surface.
I love hearing how you've worked through whatever was feeling like a conflict in the therapy room, I think often that is where the magic of therapy happens.
Oh it was a conflict, the resolution was chiefly my coming to the realization that I wanted her to run her practice the way she sees fit. What enabled that shift was the realization that I really wanted her to show me she loved me in the ways my parents neglected to. I wanted any concrete accommodation from them to acknowledge that they have a child, they made an implied vow to me, I wanted them to recognize it.
They didn’t, it was beyond their capabilities as people. I transferred that to her so I could unpack it in the safe space of our therapeutic rapport when I was ready, until I was ready I slapped a “change your billing practices” label on the box to keep it sealed. I had to peel that off.
This makes so much sense and is so insightful, it is clear from just a short comment what incredible work you are doing.
For me, it was after survival was no longer the concern that I could do the real work I needed to do. Connection and vulnerability work. Deep shame work. The work of sitting in the hard emotions of everyday life, because I liked to disregard all of those as mundane and ridiculous. The work of claiming everyday joy. Worthiness work.
My years with her were unusually long. Meant everything. That time and space gave me my life and while that sounds dramatic, there is no other way to say it.
We are very blessed to have had such opportunity. I would never wish illness such as ours on anyone. But I would never unwise it for myself either. The richness on the other side, richness that only deep work can possibly allow for... I would do it all again in a heartbeat.
I don't think I could say a single word of this better than you did. It is a gift that is confusing sometimes, because I would give the illness back in a heartbeat, but I would never give back what I ultimately learned in the meaningful connections, it gave me.
Exactly!
❤️
Dear friend,
so much of this resonated with me that I honestly didn’t know where to begin.
I think what struck me most was the idea that there doesn’t necessarily have to be a finish line. I spent so many years thinking therapy was where you went when something was wrong, you worked on it, and eventually you were supposed to be “done.”
My experience now has been so different. It took me a very long time to trust enough to really let someone into the places I had kept protected for most of my life. And once that trust and safety were there, I discovered there were deeper places I was finally able to go—not because I was getting worse, but because I finally felt safe enough to go there.
I also really appreciated what you said about becoming curious about your therapist and about the relationship itself. I’ve had some of those same thoughts and questions, and I’m beginning to understand that they don’t take away from the boundaries that make therapy safe. Maybe being able to wonder about those things, talk about the relationship, and still trust the boundaries is part of what makes the relationship feel so safe.
Three years into this work, I don’t find myself wondering when I’ll be “done” anymore. There is still so much I’m learning about myself, and for the first time in my life, I’m doing that from a place of trust rather than fear.
Thank you for putting words around something I’ve been feeling but didn’t quite know how to name. 💜
I thought of you when I published this one. I wrote it a couple of weeks ago, but you were definitely on my mind and in my heart when I reread it before posting it.
Oh, What a gift,
thank you. 💜
I don’t even know that I have the right words for how much that means to me. I’m just going to let myself receive that for the beautiful gift it is.
Thank you for thinking of me and for telling me. 💜
Such a lovely and heartfelt gift…
And the truth❤️
I am honored 💜🙏🏼
Thank you for this. I often wonder what the right amount of therapy is and whether I need to always have in mind a discrete goal or timeline. I know the financial reality of how therapy is provided can be thorny, but there is also a way in which I have begin to think about therapy as an ongoing practice. I like that better than thinking about in terms of "unlimited growth" or something like that. Sometimes I just need a space where I can find out what a particular phase of life is really like without needing to do anything about it.
That's how I'm growing to think of it too. It's a place where I know I can look in word and have someone there with a different perspective, whose doing it with me. It feels like more of a gift these days than a necessity, but I'm really grateful to have the space for that kind of work.
I think therapy can change completely once you’re no longer in crisis. You finally have room to look at the parts of yourself that were always there, but got buried under whatever needed immediate attention.
Exactly!
Real healing rarely feels like a breakthrough. More often, it's realizing years later that you stopped bracing and never even noticed the moment it happened.
It's only once things finally go quiet that you get a good look at who you became to survive it. That's the part nobody warns you about. The person waiting on the other side of trauma is a stranger, and getting to know yourself again might turn out to be harder than surviving ever was.
❤️❤️❤️
Ohhh please always publish them! Always! They are the most meaningful ones because they show us the real YOU. You are a safe place for all your patients to be the real them. Let us be the safe place where you can be the real you.
You are clearly that for me, and truly, so is this community, it's been the best surprise of writing.
Well done! You should be MAJORLY proud of yourself. I have always said that a great deal of people I NEED to see, never get seen. It takes some real surrendering to let down the guard and the ego, open up and be vulnerable. Go you.
Thank you so much for this. I am beyond grateful I got/get to do this kind of work with someone I trust.
Finding someone you trust, feel safe & comfortable can be challenging - I’m glad you’ve found yours. Great work. :)
Thank you for the encouragement. It is definitely appreciated.
Very moving.
Thank you❤️
I'm wondering now - from a therapist's perspective, when is therapy 'done'? 🤔 For how long should one see a therapist? I'm also curious about my therapist, and in a way I feel that we could have been friends if she wasn't my therapist. Do you ever end up being friends with some of your clients? Your curiosity about your therapist now leaves me with so many questions to overthink. Not sure if I have to say thank you or ask for advice on how to untangle this, and if you would recommend that others have similar conversations with their therapists? At least I have a week to think about it before seeing my therapist again. 🙃
Dorette…first, I love an overthinker (takes one to know one). And I’m sorry to have set off a parade of thoughts. Also, I’m not sorry, because I think it is useful to think about. I’ll do my best to overthink with you now:)
1) First, your question about when is therapy done (from a therapist’s perspective). I’m going to be really annoying here, because the answer to this is similar to my answer for so many psychotherapy related questions, it depends. It depends on so much including the client’s goals, attachment style, history, and so much more. Some people are working on a specific goal, some value ongoing support. Some people might need to experience independence and break from the therapeutic relationship and some may need to know the relationship is enduring. What I DO think, is that the length of therapy should be talked about openly and in an ongoing way…in every therapeutic relationship. Not all the time, but every now and then.
2) Of course you are curious about your therapist. I would be surprised (and skeptical) if you said you weren’t. And yes, I think that is very fertile ground in every therapeutic relationship (even if it took me years to acknowledge to my therapist because of how vulnerable it felt).
3) Have I ever become friends with my clients? NEVER. And not because I wouldn’t have loved being friends, but because that boundary in the therapeutic relationship is both ethical and essential to therapy. If I became friends with someone I worked with, even after we stopped working together, they could never come back and work with me down the road. I think it is important to preserve that relationship in perpetuity. NOW, interestingly, I have become exceedingly close with my therapist from my adolescent years. That said, it is weird and unique..I found her after 30 years of no contact, she is in her eighties and there is no chance of our working together again. I don’t recommend this, because the circumstances are so unique, but it has been a blessing for me.
I think this at least scratches the surface of your questions and I hope it feels helpful. And please ask anything, I am always happy to go down the therapy rabbit hole with you!
After overthinking some more, I came to the conclusion that we will probably never be 'done' with therapy, in the same way we're never really done doing our work. But in some seasons we will be okay to manage on our own. I started seeing a therapist not because I was in crisis, but because I was finally coming out of the fog of years of trauma. Processing in reflection. And intentionally choosing a life that is congruent.
I needed someone to witness parts of me I was not yet ready to share with the world. Most sessions I read some of my raw poetry, process relational dilemmas, and I often get the idea that my therapists enjoys our sessions because I am not in crisis, but in a construction phase and we can both see the progress I've made. I am so grateful for your profession, and finding a therapist that is a great fit for me. Thank you also for the work you do, sharing from both side of the therapy room, it is immensly helpful. And I'm sorry for all the amazing friendships you could not persue to keep the therapeutic relationship a safe space. I hope it comes back to you in other ways.
YES YES YES to every word you wrote here. I could not have said any of it better (and I've tried quite a bit)! I have no doubt your therapist enjoys seeing your growth and insight.
And, for those friendships I never got, I got even better; I got to witness growth and bravery and heart unfold in front of me. I have never, and I hope will never, take that for granted.
I love that you can see and acknowledge that.. my therapist calls it 'seeing someone's naked self' and I must admit I think that is one of the most beautiful elements of therapy, being vaulnrable in a safe space and having the experience that someone can see your and it's not only okay, it's actually freeing to feel the congruence of showing up as your full self.
I think in a way that is what I love about my work as well, because although people walk through my doors becuase of their physical pain, I've never met a chronic pain patient with a flair up when they were not going through a difficult time. In a way I also try to create that safe space emotionally. Humans are so wonderfully complex and sometimes a therapeutic relationship can be just as meaningful as friendship, thank you for helping me see that.
I think we just helped each other see something and feel something and I'm appreciative as well. And I'm appreciative of your work, I think you're right that there is a lot of overlap when the jobs we do are done well. I've been in physical therapy twice in my life and I have to say, I had to my physical therapist, and even though I hated having to go, I loved seeing him.
I think therapy may be the only thing we pay for repeatedly while secretly wondering why we still need it.
At some point, a part of us expects a graduation ceremony.
Congratulations. You have successfully completed Being A Person. Please collect your certificate, complimentary tote bag, and permanently regulated nervous system on the way out. Trauma has been processed. Childhood has been reviewed. Please allow six to eight weeks for your new personality to arrive.
Except, inconveniently, life keeps happening.
People leave. People die. We fall in love. We get disappointed. We encounter new situations that somehow manage to wake up very old fears. And occasionally something we were absolutely certain we had dealt with comes strolling back into our lives with the confidence of someone who still has a key.
I used to think that meant I had failed somehow. That if an old wound still hurt, then clearly I had not healed enough. Apparently there was a secret advanced level of therapy where nothing bothered you anymore and you floated through life like a psychologically enlightened houseplant.
I don’t believe that now.
I’m beginning to think one of the cruelest things we do to ourselves is turn healing into another destination we are late reaching.
We imagine there is a finished version of us somewhere ahead, standing at the end of a long road, emotionally regulated, perfectly self-aware, hydrated, and somehow no longer annoyed by anybody in traffic.
And then we judge the person we are today for not having become that person yet.
But maybe healing was never supposed to work that way.
Maybe the strange thing about doing this work is that life keeps taking us past some of the same landmarks. The same fear. The same shame. The same memory. The same voice telling us something about ourselves that we once believed completely.
From the inside, that can feel like going in circles.
But circles and spirals look remarkably similar when you’re standing inside them.
Sometimes you return to the same place carrying something you did not have the last time: language. Boundaries. Perspective. Compassion. The ability to recognize what is happening while it is happening.
The landmark hasn’t moved.
You have.
And perhaps that is why I keep thinking about this distinction: the wound may still know your address. It just doesn’t get to own the house anymore.
That doesn’t mean it never visits.
Sometimes it knocks.
Sometimes it shows up at an unreasonable hour.
Sometimes it wanders around back and jiggles the kitchen window because apparently trauma has absolutely no respect for property law.
But knowing where I live and having authority over my life are no longer the same thing.
That feels like a much more honest definition of healing to me.
Not erasing what happened. Not becoming immune to pain. Not reaching some glorious emotional finish line where the past finally shakes your hand, apologizes for the inconvenience, and leaves you alone forever.
Maybe healing is simply renegotiating who gets to make decisions inside you.
The past can speak without getting the final vote.
Fear can enter the room without choosing the furniture.
A memory can hurt without becoming a prophecy.
And maybe therapy without a finish line isn’t a depressing idea at all.
Maybe the problem was the finish line.
Because once healing becomes somewhere we are supposed to arrive, recovery becomes one more way to accuse ourselves of being behind.
Perhaps there is no perfectly healed version of me waiting somewhere in the distance.
Perhaps there is only this version, still becoming, still learning the rooms of his own life, and getting a little better at deciding who gets a key.
Everything about this is beautiful, but here is the line that made me stop: circles and spirals look remarkably similar when you’re standing inside them. That's the difference 100%, you can't see the forest from the trees when you're standing in the forest. This reminder is so helpful.
You’re just being nice :)
I'm not that nice,
I have always thought that therapy was a lifelong process, and that I’ll always need a therapist for the rest of my life, so I could become and stay a good therapist and a human.
I never even considered the possibility that therapy could „end“ for someone. I wonder what therapy ending for me would feel like.
If you like your therapist and she has been nothing but great to you, I‘d say keep her in your life.
I love learning from you, T. 🩷
You and I share a sensibility. I have no plans to go anywhere, though I do know my therapist will retire one day in the not too distant future. You better believe I'll be writing about that one! She's been such a godsend to me.
So beautiful!
Thank you❤️
I love this essay. I always love to read your work, and especially when you allow yourself to (more) fully open up and share the deeper parts of what you are thinking and feeling. This essay is one of those. This is my favorite line: "...I discovered that vulnerability could create the very connection I had spent so much of my life longing for."
Oh man, thank you! Those are always the essays I find so hard to publish, so your support means more than you know
I've never had long-term therapy, so I can't speak to what you're describing. But the part about the crisis passing and then wondering what's left — I know that.
I have gone through stretches of a long-term personal illness, a career crisis, and difficulties with children when I'm on high alert, looking for whatever will get me through the day. When it passes, and fortunately it does, I find myself compelled to actually sit down and figure out what I learned, so if something like it comes around again I can handle it better.
For you, it sounds like the "what's left" was the relationship itself with the therapist. For me, it's more like the relationship I have with myself and the compelling need to learn from it and do homework. I never thought of giving this up — it seems that this habit is hard-wired into me. I live with the idea that a difficulty in life is more palatable if I can walk away with someone more than an uncomfortable experience.
It sounds like such a useful thing you've discovered about yourself. I'm sure you've grown a tremendous amount because of it. It may be helps make the hard things worth it.