CHAPTER EIGHTY-THREE
2004- Intensive
It took longer than expected for me to warm up to therapy. When I was growing up, my parents didn’t believe in it. My mom thought it would bring shame upon the family if anyone at church found out one of her children was seeing a shrink! Thanks, mom! She never wanted to admit there were any problems when I was a kid- and by the time I was an adult, I figured I was so fucked up there was no way that simply talking to some Ph.D. motherfucker would help me fix myself.
But in this rehab, therapy was the name of the game. It was pretty much all therapy, all day long. Even the non-therapy activities were therapeutic.
So, at the old-ass age of twenty-seven, I found myself attending psychological bootcamp six to eight hours a day, each session broken up with mind clearing activities like water polo and aromatherapy. This was my reality for a little over three months, all in an effort to try to figure out how I got so fucked up in the first place.
They started me out primarily in group therapy sessions- it was a straightforward way to ease me into the concept of psychological support as well as a method of acclimating me to long periods of social interaction. This is a nice way of saying they recognized I thought one-on-one talk therapy was bullshit and needed to stop hiding out in my room all day. But when they brought it up to me, I was compliant. I’ve always been good at toeing the line.
The first group that clicked with me was called, very simply, Women’s Group. It was just a bunch of women, six to eight max, sitting in a circle, talking about their shit. A therapist, female, would gently guide the conversation, but for the most part it was free-form. And it was so fascinating to see all the shit that would be dredged up. And how one person’s shit would set off a memory in another person and then she would talk about her shit and that would trigger the next woman’s shit, and it all just kept getting more and more intense, but never threatening. If, at any moment, it ever felt like things were getting too hot, the therapist would gently but firmly defuse the situation and get us back on track. It was like me and Simone’s “deep thoughts” sessions on steroids. I mean that in a good way. It taught me that everyone has their own shit but, at the end of the day, a lot of shit is universal.
I can’t put my finger on why I felt this way, but this was the first time in maybe ever that I felt 100% safe expressing myself in a group setting.
To be clear, I’ve always known how to stand up for myself, if need be, but I’ve always felt a terrible sense of danger whenever I’ve had to be vulnerable in front of more than one person at a time.
And at that point in my life, I didn’t even know if I were capable of being vulnerable with anyone, anywhere. But I was willing to try.
