I think therapy gets a bad rep. Likely because people often say it when we’re struggling, making us feel like something must be wrong with us. Like, “Wow, that’s a lot, maybe you need therapy,” or just “you need therapy.”
Well, you want to know who needs therapy? People who have no one to just love them, to hold space for them and never use it against them. People without someone to see and experience their pain and sit with them in it.
And understand them through it.
And still love them after it.
Someone to sit in their hard and their unlovable and love hard anyway. And then pretend they didn’t notice. Pretend it didn’t leave a mark that will need tending to. To protect. To cover.
Someone to, for the moment, take their eyes off themselves to focus on them.
The people that need therapy are those who don’t have someone to fight for them. To fight with them. To listen long and hard and then listen again. People who don’t have someone to make them feel safe and worth it and important. People who don’t have someone to see through it all to the magnificent person they are and reflect that back to them. People who don’t have someone that sees their greatness before they ever believe it, before they ever even step into it, and draw it out of them. Someone to speak it as if it were already so, until they believe it and do step into it.
Someone to see them and get them and witness their unfolding, their becoming, their release of the stuff that has kept them safe through the battle. This same stuff, once needed but that now holds them back from their freedom and purpose. Someone to understand the power of presence in risking releasing the weight of it all.
The power of love to tear down walls and venture into new territory.
People need therapy because their people have their own “stuff” that gets in the way. Their people are busy defending and protecting their own ego to know the power of presence. The healing power of love that lays its rights down.
People need therapy because they don’t trust those around them, for whatever reasons, to love them through it. To keep them safe in it. To understand and acknowledge and love them whether they agree or not. All! The! Way! Through!
We need therapy because sometimes we’re just too tired. Because even the caretaker, needs caretaking. Because we need someone to remind us, we are not crazy even when we think we are (crazy people don’t think they are crazy). We need to know that we will make it through even when we think we will not, and to know, without a doubt, that we are not alone, we are not the only ones, and we can be safe, loved, seen, and known.
Sometimes, we need therapy just so we can breathe again.
Sometimes, I need therapy.
Sometimes, everyone needs therapy.