Therapy Session Reflections #5 – Unpacking Week 33, Relationships – Platonic, Romantic, and Familial.

I recently wrapped up session 33 and now I am unpacking it accordingly. I am excited about my progress moving into my 34th session of therapy. The process of unraveling your stuff is enlightening and introspective. If you are really interested in getting as much out of these sessions as possible, you have to dedicate yourself to doing the work to unravel everything. That’s the part that is enlightening and introspective. In a sense, you are analyzing where you are currently and working backward to bring yourself back to where you started, but with a different perspective. A perspective that provides you with more clarity of where you are currently and where you need to go in the future. A lot of what I have been doing has done that.

When I walked into my therapist’s office, I was grieving and struggling with practically everything outside of my professional life, which was thriving. My five-year plan had blown up in my face. I was literally questioning everything that my life had been about leading up to this point. Every point in my life was a damn question mark. Everything that had lead up to my walk into that office made me question everything. So, I decided to deal with the grief and then work backward to start unraveling things in the past that had impacted me, which led me to be who I am. All of this involved me starting with familial relationships that built the foundation of how I viewed platonic and romantic relationships. WHEW, that damn work. YO.

That work that I put in for six months before the plague, quarantine, and uprising allowed me to be in a state of mind to get through a lot of the horrible aspect of this time, relatively unscathed. That work involved looking at how everything about my childhood built the foundation of how I view people. That is not a condemnation of how I was raised, but it is an acknowledgment of how things work when people raise children to be adults. It is nearly impossible to raise children without them being impacted by your stuff. Although I have considered myself rather self-aware about this, I realize that my son inevitably was impacted by stuff I wasn’t even aware of, so that’s why I encouraged him to see my therapist.

So during these many months of unraveling my childhood stuff, I have been able to gain perspective on my past relationships. I also have been able to recognize my triggers based on the perspective I’ve gained. These are the things that will help me build healthier and longer-lasting platonic and romantic relationships in the future. These insights gained have also helped me to work toward cultivating stronger familial relationships with those that are my chosen and genetic family.

As I’ve been [mostly] comfortably sitting through this quarantine, I have been considering how fortunate I am. During these months, I have been sitting with a lot of feelings, strengthening current relationships, and discovering what I want in future relationships. Now that I was able to unravel the impact of childhood relationships, I have been in a good place to ponder these things. That is HUGE for me because it opens an entirely new world for me, full of so many possibilities.

I know 100% I wouldn’t have felt this way, had I not gone to therapy. Sessions allowed me to clear a path that I didn’t even know was blocked and see a perspective I would have never been able to attain without assistance. So, based on this work I’ve done with the help of my therapist, I feel better mentally, emotionally, and spiritually than I’ve ever felt in life. That will allow me to embrace the world in front of me in a way that I could have never imagine, just a year ago. So moving forward, I will be embracing people, relationships, and life in a way that I never have previously.

To those that feel as if there are things in their lives that they need to address in a therapy journey, I encourage you to do so. That’s one of the reasons I started writing about my journey.

First, you must be willing to acknowledge that the help you seek is due to circumstances that are beyond what you can do on your own or by talking to your friends. Then find a therapist and be willing to open your mind and yourself to the discussions during the sessions. Be willing to do the work needed to implement the changes your therapist is guiding you on, to achieve the results you are seeking. Finally, it’s a process, and it will challenge you and may take time, but I promise it’s worth it. So, go forth and fix thyself.

I would love to know your thoughts on putting therapy session lessons to work in everyday situations. How are you taking what you’ve learned in therapy and applying them to your life in real-time? Reach out, let’s chat on FB, IG, and Twitter. Until then, Happy Healing and Happy Unpacking.

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