Why You Probably Don’t Go to Therapy Even Though You Know You Should
In 2016, I was about to get married to a woman I did not want to marry. I loved her but wanted to call it quits. I was experiencing so much anguish over it that I needed professional help. I went for three sessions. By the third session, I was fully avoiding the topic of my wedding and was instead trying to direct my therapist toward petty, day-to-day issues that I felt more comfortable discussing.
I stopped going to therapy. I got married. Then I got divorced less than a year later. It was painful, it was confusing, and it was way more drama than it needed to be. Why?
Well, we’re often fragmented internally: we know something is wrong and we want to get better, but we also don’t want to get better because our brains rightly assume that getting better involves more pain and abandonment of a current way of thinking. Our brains can’t even understand what they would do with all their free time not internally complaining about this thing anymore.
Sorry, folks, but “your eyes must do some raining if you’re ever gonna grow.”
Knowing and Not Knowing
I knew I was in anguish, I knew I needed professional help, but even after going through the effort of finding my therapist and driving across Los Angeles to meet her multiple times, I couldn’t actually face my own feelings. This state—which I have been fascinated by lately—is called “a state of knowing and unknowing,” and this is the traumatic state most of us are in all the time to some degree. It’s honestly probably just part of being conscious. We oscillate back and forth between knowing our deep, shame-inducing realities (“I don’t actually want to be married”) and not knowing them (“I love this person, everything will be okay.”). It’s a kind of cognitive dissonance.
This oscillation has a close friend in cycles of abuse and trauma. There’s that old trope of the abusive husband hitting his wife then saying, “Sorry, I love you.” That is what a state of knowing and unknowing looks like from the outside. He knows he did something wrong, he apologizes in that moment of knowing, and then he goes back to unknowing until it happens again. It’s disorienting, and it’s confusing. This oscillation often creates a state of knowing and unknowing in the victim/recipient, who sees and reacts accordingly to both the states of their abuser/partner and so is confused and disoriented as well. And this, all because Mr. Man couldn’t face his own demons, so made everyone else face them.
In New Age lingo, one might say this oscillation—or dissonance—happens because we might have knowledge of certain truths but that this knowledge is often not yet embodied. That is, it is intellectual knowledge, but it is not autonomic, embedded knowledge. The effects of abuse or repression are often held in the body, and they come out in fits of rage, or sadness, or drunkenness when we have fewer inhibitions. When we “come to,” we apologize or feel bad because intellectually we know what we did or said was inappropriate, and we are now ashamed that this behavior was and still is inside us hiding somewhere—until we drink again or have a bad day. But instead of doing anything about it, we usually just relish in the fact that we were aware of it for a moment and then go back to unknowing. This can go on for a lifetime. It’s important to note: you never need to face any of your issues, it’s not a requirement, no one can force you to. You can stay in your unknowing (suffering) state forever. It’s not your partner or your therapist1 or your shaman’s job or skillset to actually heal you, they can only facilitate.
Therapy is just a place for us to face these unembodied truths in a state of sobriety and calmness. Then, we can take this newly identified “knowing” and let it permeate our awareness about all aspects of our life. From this embodied place, we will automagically start to see our behavior change, and our thoughts will change as well. Then, one day, you’ll wake up and feel different and “suddenly” unburdened.
The Answer is Within
It sounds cheesy AF but it’s true. All the answers you need are in your body and your feelings, you have just got to find words for them with your therapist’s/shaman’s/etc’s help. Somatic therapy is great for this and has worked for a great number of my friends who have experienced trauma.
My mistake with therapy the first time around was that what I really wanted was my new therapist to tell me what to do with my life. I wanted her to say “Yeah, your relationship sounds horrible you should cancel your wedding.” Understandably, there is no way she could do this since she didn’t really know me. It would have been unethical, an abuse of power, and not really helpful for me in the long run. The role of a therapist is not to be a life coach—and in situations like the above, you can see why I might think life coaches are often dangerous.
In retrospect, the fact that I wanted to go to therapy to discuss an overwhelming and sustained feeling of not wanting to get married was all the information I really needed. If I got these feelings once or twice, I could call it pre-wedding jitters. If I got it for months on end with no sign of letting up, obviously I should have listened to it.
We don’t need anyone’s advice, we just need to do the thing we are afraid of doing.
Talk is Cheap
Admitting your trauma or your dark feelings out loud is a step in the right direction, just like making the decision to go to therapy or do ayahuasca. However, these are ultimately superficial decisions. I know tons of people who admit their traumatic experiences routinely as if saying it out loud is the same thing as being healed. This is where I observe the state of knowing and unknowing so clearly in friends. You’ll see people have these moments of shocking clarity and openness about their pitfalls or troubles or pasts, and then like a gopher back in the hole you’ll see them descend out of sight back into the safety of unknowing.
Healing—if it exists at all—comes in changing your behavior and your thoughts of self in light of this moment of knowing, not just talking about it. This practice—routinely taking note of where the gopher is—is how you embody your knowledge. It takes time.
Back in 2016, I had not yet separated the idea of intellectual and embodied knowledge I had the intellectual feeling that I loved this person, proposed to them, and spent five years with them, yet I didn’t know what to do with the purely body-knowledge (gut) that none of it really mattered because I simply did not want the relationship to continue. I was able to convince myself the feeling was stupid and the thoughts were correct. As I’m coming to learn, this is rarely true: If it feels wrong for me, it’s probably wrong for me. I deserve to feel good.
Cut Your Losses
If I had been brave enough to face my truth at the time, I would’ve been able to suffer the loss of some money on the wedding, I would’ve been able to bear the sadness in my partner‘s eyes as I told her I couldn’t go through with it, and I would’ve been able to bear any emotional reality that came with this decision. I would have been able to bear it because in my mind and in my body, it would have felt like the right decision. There would be no part of me doubting me.
Instead, I pushed through. I was too afraid to disappoint everyone, to disappoint myself, to stop the momentum, and so I ended up hurting myself and my partner in remarkable ways. It could’ve been a beautiful uncoupling, and I actually did express to her at the time that I was having serious doubts, but neither of us wanted to embody this truth. Neither of us wanted to face it because if we did, it would be the end of our relationship, and it would be dealt with as a death like any other.
The Eeyore Attitude
Many of us live in a state of cognitive dissonance which I identify as “being in a state of unknowing more often than you’re in a state of knowing.” We have a thing that bothers us, but we ignore it just enough to persist through life as if everything is okay. As I said, sometimes this works for a whole lifetime! Go for it if that’s the life you want.
You can avoid facing your issues forever. You don’t need to go to therapy of any kind. It’s a well-worn path.
I can tell you what’s ahead:
First, you’ll grow comfortable feeling unfulfilled with yourself.
Then you’ll grow comfortable with your pain.
Then you’ll grow comfortable with grim views of yourself, grim views of your future, grim views of your past, and grim views of those around you.
Then, over time, because of these grim views you hold, you will begin to embody them rather than just think them. 2
Finally, life will probably become all-around grim. Even if you’re healthy, wealthy, and free with a happy family and a great partner, everything will still weirdly seem annoying or dull to you, and, at that point, you’ll feel vindicated that you were right all along: “Life is grim.” This is the land of unknowing.
Sometimes ignoring your problems ends up in rock bottom, a drug addiction, a nasty breakup, a family falling apart, or some other intense denouement. But more often than not, it just results in a sort of dead feeling, like a bird without wings. Given that we’re all in states of knowing and unknowing, most people reading this know whether or not they feel dead inside.
The grim world of “unknowing” is perfectly characterized by Eeyore, who only uses his intelligence to complain about himself and everything around him. He has made it his way of life and embodied it fully. Have a listen:
Time Doesn’t Heal Everything
The longer you wait, the less likely a reckoning becomes and the more intense it will be when it does come.
I truly believe that all basically neurotypical people have the cognitive and emotional power to unburden themselves of any emotional baggage that is weighing them down. I believe everyone reading this has the right and ability to feel so lovely about themselves and their choices. Over the past year, I have seen miracles in friends that finally took their mental health seriously. While quarantine was hard on a lot of people, it also forced people to face the stuff that bars and dating and office life were allowing them to ignore. I also believe psychotherapy and somatic therapy is a great place to start your journey. You can find a therapist that checks all your boxes at Psychology Today. Money is not an excuse, sorry. Most community health centers have fantastic therapists and are free or the price of a burrito. Expensive therapy does not mean good therapy; cheap therapy does not mean bad therapy. Remember, the therapist doesn’t have the answers. Time is not an excuse either, you can do therapy on the phone from anywhere.
Without therapy of some kind, this thing that bothers you will sit like a rock in your gut, it will weigh you down, it will make everything in your life heavy, and it will not go anywhere. Even if you feel grateful for your health and your family and your treat everybody relatively well, that sinking feeling is still real, as real as anything else. Take your feelings seriously, because even if you ignore it and think nobody notices, it rots your life.
Speaking from experience, time matters. The sooner you face this thing, the sooner it will get less heavy. Suddenly your gut and your brain will dedicate their time and energy to emanating love for yourself and those around you instead of sucking energy from everything and everyone just to grow heavier.
If this sounds like you, I truly hope you get to experience the joy you’ve been denying yourself. You’re amazing.
Speaking of joy, I end every post with a picture of my hot-ass family and a picture of my breakfast. Sorry, not sorry.
It’s important to remember that a therapist does not have all the answers, in fact, they don’t have any answers. They are just people who went to school for how to listen, they aren’t gods. This can be seen clearly in the fact that like 60% of Los Angeles (made up stat) goes to therapy but psychological issues still abound. No therapy session or ayahuasca ceremony is going to do the work for you. They might help, but they aren’t the work.
Say what you want about “manifesting,” but surely most of you, dear readers, understand that if you have bad thoughts about yourself—no matter what hand life deals you—you will manifest a bad life for yourself.