So no, I won’t pretend I had a dramatic breakthrough while staring out a rainy window (though that has happened).
But after enough sessions, the ones where I talked too much or the ones where I said nothing at all, a few truths stuck with me.
I spent so long shrinking, softening, censoring. Trying not to scare people away with my intensity.
That one sentence cracked something open.
Turns out, the right people will meet you where you are, not make you feel like you’re too big for the room.
You can analyze your trauma to death. You can know your attachment style, your zodiac sign, your childhood wound.
Being smart about your issues isn’t the same as moving past them.
I once listed all the “difficult” things about me in session: sensitive, intense, anxious, emotional. And my therapist smiled and said:
Sometimes the work is just… unlearning shame.
This hit harder than I wanted it to.
I’m a productivity addict: I love a to-do list and hate feeling “lazy.”
If you keep waiting until you’ve “done enough” you’ll collapse before you get there.
When you’re constantly used to guessing what others want to hear, you lose touch with what you actually think or feel.
So you say, “I don’t know.” But you do. Your body knows. You just need a safe space to remember.
I used to feel ridiculous mourning a life I hadn’t lived.. the fearless, unbothered version of me that never emerged.
But grief isn’t just about loss of people. It’s also about the dreams we didn’t get to live out, the childhoods we should’ve had, the selves we buried to survive.
People love you most when you stay consistent… even if “consistent” means self-sacrificing or stuck.
Outgrowing your past doesn’t mean you’re betraying it.
Therapy doesn’t fix you. It unmasks you.
And sometimes, all it takes is one brutally honest line from a near-stranger to make you finally see yourself clearly.
If any of this made you feel something, write it down. Revisit it. Or better yet, take it to your own therapist and see what they say.
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