The Greatest Advice I Received from a Therapist

Hippie Go Free Free 🐸
3 min readDec 9, 2024

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Changing my “look” was something I did often. It took me YEARS to understand that every time I transformed my outside, I was actually subconsciously attempting to transform my inside. Certainly, it is fun to switch up our hair color, cut, make-up, and clothing styles. Playing in our personal creativity and self-expression can also be helpful as many of us are still learning about who we are and aren’t, within this wild world. I remember “trying on” a more punk rock version of self, while dating a bass player during my senior year of high school. Or the time I shaved half of my head and painted the other half in rainbow colors, as I represented the “entertainer side” of me during my dance-fitness rockstar days. Of course, let us not forget my attempt at “tough-cool-girl me” when I rocked pink Timberlands and blasted a Y2K genre of Hip-Hop vibes out of my Civic sunroof. Most of the time, the variety of outfits and hairstyles was nothing more than a journey of self-discovery. Or so I thought.

As this progressed into adulthood, I started to understand just how much about myself I did not like. The secret reality was, that I wanted to change how my brain worked, but settled for a box of hair-dye instead, because that was something I could control. The truth is, I hated my emotions then and I still hate them now. I loathe the fact that I have always been super sensitive and still do not fully understand how or why I feel everything at level 100. My emotions, your emotions, and even the emotions in the room, are all quickly absorbed by me as if I am a human sponge. Not just from day to day, but from moment to moment. From age 8 to my late 30’s, it is safe to say that I have had about a dozen different Licensed Mental Health professionals assisting me down this path of insanity. Year after year, I awaited a diagnoses. Something, anything. Please tell me why I am the way that I am. Somebody! But nothing. No Bipolar 1, no Bipolar 2, no borderline personality disorder, no OCD, nada. I eventually picked up a fancy “emotional disturbance” kind of PTSD label, but the hard facts are, it is perfectly OKAY and (more common than I know about!) to experience a variety of human emotions. Clearly, I do not know the ins and outs of any of those diagnoses I casually rattled off above and I absolutely mean no disrespect to anyone. I simply just didn’t understand the inner workings of my own thoughts/behaviors and once held a belief that if I had a specific diagnosis, then I could be “fixed.” Obviously, I have a lot to learn about…well, everything. And that is okay. I am eternally open to learning about self and others.

So, what is this big bomb-shell advice I speak of? This is what my therapist hit me with it and to this day, I hear it on a loop in my head:

“It is not my job to teach you how to erratic your emotional scale. It is my job to help you understand your emotions and process them. You do not need to stop having feelings, you just need to learn how to live with them.”

That blew me away.

I don’t know if you can relate, but I am my own worst critic. I am way too hard on myself for even HAVING feelings. I make myself wrong every time I feel anything that is considered “negative.” I am afraid of my own anger, I hate when I am sad, and I have grown fairly professional at repressing loneliness. But every day is a practice. Each sunrise brings us all an opportunity to give ourselves a break. To accept that being human means having a full-blown human emotional scale of feelings. My therapist’s words of wisdom are my gentle reminder that I am not “wrong” for feeling all the feels. My current daily practice is to surrender to what is while gifting myself a smidgen of compassion along the way. With a new morning comes a new window to set your intention. My intention today is to honor each emotion as it arises, without judgement.

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Hippie Go Free Free 🐸
Hippie Go Free Free 🐸

Written by Hippie Go Free Free 🐸

Tie-dyed rabbit hole of wild-child adventures, stoner wisdom, & Spiritual perspectives!

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