My Favorite Lesson My Therapist Has Taught Me

Though it’s taboo for some people to talk about, I’ve always been more of an open book. I’m going to trauma therapy and it is absolutely the best decision I’ve ever made. It’s been about 7 months with my particular therapist. After six other therapists that didn’t really help me much, I’m so glad to finally have found one that is amazing. I was straight up with her in the beginning that I didn’t just want to talk and be validated. I wanted to change and move forward. And she has helped me do exactly that and more. So far, here’s my favorite lesson my therapist has taught me.

The lesson:

As a major romantic, I always thought some man would come save me. That someone would swoop in and protect me from my pain. And the hard truth my therapist said to me, was that no one was going to save me. “But,” she said, “the good news is, you can save yourself.” I didn’t like hearing it. Not one bit. That meant work. I kept her words in the back of my head for a few months, and then I finally caught up to the idea. And it all made sense.

You can save yourself.

When I came to the realization that I have full responsibility for myself, that’s when everything started clicking. No one is going to make me happy but me. I can’t sit around and wait for someone to protect me or fix me or love me enough to make me feel valuable. That is no one’s job but mine.

For a long time, I’ve had a lot of reasons to blame people in my life for projecting their emotions on to me, for emotionally abusing me, for making me feel everything I did was wrong. My therapist taught me that all of those things happened. Yep, and that sucks. We worked through them (and still are). And now, it’s my responsibility to accept what happened and move on. It’s my choice whether I’m still falling down. It is all up to me to take care of me.

And that, my friends, is what has changed me. Maybe it’s not a groundbreaking revelation, but learning that I hold the keys to fixing myself, creating the best version of me, finding happiness–saving myself!–has empowered me beyond belief.

What this means for you:

I share this with you because I want everyone to have this simple idea in their head, too. Because maybe if we all started taking responsibility for ourselves, we wouldn’t take it out on others. Maybe we would stop looking for coping mechanisms or the next “thing” or the next distraction in a person or an app, and we would just get down to business and save our own selves. What a world that would be.

I hope you know how powerful you are. You hold within you so much more power than you can imagine. You can heal the negative beliefs, the patterns that are holding you back, the past that haunts you. I know you can save yourself. Seek out a therapist locally or do the work on your own online. Save yourself.

Photo by Roxana B Photography for Shop Henly