one (of many) path(s) to therapy

Daniella Shoshan

Aug 11

3 min read

Updated: Aug 19

I went to therapy because I was on the brink of joy and I noticed I was backing (sprinting) away from it.

Daniella Shoshan is a writer of plays, poems, and stories short, long, and in-between.

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When I was nine I went to two therapy sessions as my parents were divorcing. I remember the therapist’s blunt bob and a colossal potted palm in the corner of her office. There were games and coloring books and Highlights magazines that I refused to enjoy in front of her, as though doing so would give me away or betray some code. I was shy and introverted, always polite, and I knew I was supposed to answer the bob’s questions but in one of the few defiant, against-the-grain moments of my young life, I did not do that. I stared at the plant and ignored her for forty-five minutes once and then, the next week, twice. I was not made to go again.

When I was twenty-five I went to therapy because I thought I was a failure. That I was a quarter of the way into my life and had already ruined everything. That there was something so innately terrible about me, broken in me, that I needed to radically change everything about me as soon as possible except how could I do that when I was exhausted from hating myself while attempting to perform perfection. Shorter explanation: at twenty-five I went to therapy because I was depressed. And then I stopped going because I was scared that I was depressed. Because I didn’t want to be forced to go on medication, because I thought that would change who I was and I guess maybe I didn’t want to radically change everything about myself, afterall. I was convinced that if I continued to be seen, I’d be seen for what I was: beyond repair. In our last session, the therapist sat across from me, blinking in an Eames chair, manicured nails splayed on her baby bump, her blowout immaculate, everything I wished I was and knew for certain I’d never be, and I dead-stared at the ficus in the corner.

When I was thirty-seven I went to therapy because I was scared again. This time, because I’d built the life I always wanted, a life I feared I’d never be worthy or lucky enough to live, and I was afraid to lose it. By misstepping. By not being careful or grateful enough. By being myself. And I was still exhausted. Of being panicked all the time, of pre-grieving losses I hadn’t lost yet in order to prepare myself for inevitable shoes dropping, for every shape and shade of around-the-bend doom. Shorter explanation: I went to therapy because I was on the brink of joy and I noticed I was backing (sprinting) away from it.

This time, though, I haven’t stopped going. Because even though it can be heavy, even though the reprocessing and the reparenting, the parts work and the exposure work and the inner child work and the breathwork and the trauma work is work and that work is ongoing and ongoing feels like another unknown I have to accept and not control and I do not like that, I want so much of the time to feel “cured” and “normal” and “done”, the longer and once utterly inconceivable explanation is: I go to therapy because I want a relationship with myself. I want to love myself. And while I may not be there yet, or there everyday, I go to therapy and somehow find that I can love earlier versions of me who told herself stories that weren’t true, stories she didn’t author, stories that kept her from recognizing herself. I go to therapy whether it is hard, or happy, or help-y that week, to meet and re-meet myself. I look my just-right-for-me therapist in the eyes and I do not stare at her plant and I stay.

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