I love therapy. If I could make my therapist live with me I would. But that's not an option, apparently it would be inappropriate. I digress, for far too long there has been an unhealthy stigma attached to achieving some form of mental health and the process involved to get there. Generations have learned that therapy is healthy, if not vital to acclimating to life. There is so much to learn when you have a chance to heard.
Redditor u/FRlVOLOUS wanted everyone to share and discuss why therapy is good for all of us by asking... What is the best, most valuable thing you've learned from therapy?I started out in therapy to battle my claustrophobia and it helped. I use to have to be medicated to ride an elevator, it took a bit but I was able to overcome that battle. I have since regressed because I had to stop therapy for awhile. But now I'm getting back on track. I have learned that I am capable of controlling my mindset in the moment when I feel trapped. It's a start.
Think About It
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Don't judge your feelings, just try to understand where they're coming from. Judge your actions.
Oh Jack!
You can't control the actions of others, and you can't presume to know their motivations either.
A simple example would be "Jack is always drumming his fingers on the desk to annoy me. He knows I hate that!"
The fact is that, unless Jack tells you that, you cannot know if that's his motivation. Most likely, he's doing it absent-mindedly.
I know it's a silly example, but it applies to a lot of things. We tend to be very self-centred in our thinking.
10 Year Later
After I lost my oldest daughter to trisomy 18 anger was my go to emotional response to most things. I either cried or yelled. It felt impossible to process or move beyond because I felt so bitter at the unfair world I lived in. It didn't help I have abusive parents who were making things so much worse through their scumminess. I couldn't stand being any more depressed than I was. I could barely get out of bed. I definitely had to learn to process my emotions. That was almost 10 years ago. If I hadn't gone to therapy and put the work in I don't know who I would be today.
IF YOU DON'T TELL THEM...
One big thing I've learned is that someone might not know what they're doing is annoying you/hurt your feelings/offended you IF YOU DON'T TELL THEM. One of my friends critiqued a video of my training my dog but the way she went about it was unexpected and really hurt my feelings. I knew she meant well but she wouldn't know how bad it made me feel if I didn't tell her.
So I told her...
She apologized because it was not how she meant to come across. But since we had the conversation we were able to come up with an agreement that she would only critique videos if I sent them to her asking for help. And she ended up thanking me for telling her and said she was so happy that I felt safe enough to know she wasn't going to retaliate against me for it.
Time Heals
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Give yourself permission to grieve.
Not just for the loss of loved ones, but for anything that makes you feel sad.
So far, so enlightening. I hope y'all are taking notes. Too often we think that our problems don't merit help. As you can see we are often wrong. Let's continue...
No Excuses
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That my past trauma and upbringing aren't excuses for my bad behavior, and i have to be the one to break the cycle.
Your Story
Acknowledge your feelings - and I mean ALL of your feelings.
Never give up on a NEW path or a modified path to your goals. Disc herniation received from a job I detested. It's been more than 3 decades ago... and wow does time fly.
Accepting this new path was hard for me, but the "choice" of the matter was taken from me, but one thing I would NOT give up was finding a true love.
Met online, married darn near 15 years now, best decision I ever made was NOT giving up!!!
Decided, I couldn't go out and shake my moneymaker lol, but daaamn I found online dating and the rest is "her story" i.e. my story of not giving up!!
Samesies...
My big, huge, existential emotional and psychological issues are actually NOT special — they're just like millions of other people's — and do not make me special. Learning to let them go is not a betrayal of who I am and will not make me less unique or interesting.
It is so it is...
I can live with/accept what I went through because I like where and who I am now (mostly). That was a huge success.
I think about this a lot.
If anything, at all, was different I might not be married to my wife.
If my parents stayed married, or my wife and I had sex ten minutes later, I wouldn't have these specific daughters who I love more than anything. Butterfly effect and all that.
It makes it so much easier to accept that everything I went through had to happen just like it did, but the future is wide open.
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It's important to realize that needing therapy isn't a handicap. It's an enrichment. If you're trepidatious, just try one session. There are plenty of docs in your area that work with payments. You won't regret it.
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Ok, who is watching the clock? Those seconds aren't going to count themselves. The only way to understand time is to be its witness. Although that can get depressing. Let's focus on the light and cool.
History...
Calculate Figure It Out GIF by OriginalsGiphy"If you are an 80-year-old American, you have lived through approximately 1/3 of our nation's entire history."
Those Days...
"The 80s were 40 years ago."
"This is what messes me up because I was born in 82 and graduated high school in 2000 so for some reason my brain is stuck on the 80's being twenty years ago. The 70's thirty years ago etc etc. I have to stop and realize sometimes that my concept of how long ago things happened is way off."
Time goes by...
"We observe that light travels at 186,000 miles a second, but given the vast size of the observable universe, that's a snail's pace. But from the point of view of a particle of light, time doesn't even exist."
"Time slows down as you approach the speed of light, and theoretically stops completely when you reach the speed of light."
Years Gone By...
"MLK Jr. and Anne Frank were born in the same year."
"Betty White was born in 1922. Automatically pre-sliced packaged bread loaves became commercially available in 1928. Betty White is six years older than sliced bread."
Long Live the Queen!
queen elizabeth images GIFGiphy"The queen and Marilyn Monroe would've been the same age."
"And Marilyn Monroe and Andy Griffith were born on the same day!"
- osme1
I swear Liz is going to outlive dirt. Wait, I believe she already has. Well she won't be alone, she'll have Betty White. At least she better have Betty. Time is nothing without Queen Betty.
TV Time
Season 2 Omg GIF by Paramount+Giphy"Happy Days was a TV show made in the 1970s-80s about teenagers in the 1950s. Similarly, That 70s Show was made in the 90s-00s about teenagers in the 70s. If a similar show were to be made today, it would be about teenagers in the 2000s."
- VVillyD
A Croc
"If a T-Rex imagined a creature as ancient as the T-Rex is to us, it would be a Stegosaurus. If that Stegosaurus imagined a creature as ancient as the Stegosaurus is to us, it would be a Crocodile. If that Crocodile imagined a creature as ancient as that Crocodile is to us, it would be a Shark."
On the Clock
"On a twenty four hour clock the amount of time that humans have been on the earth would total around five seconds."
"How about this one: If Homo Habilus first appeared at midnight, 24 hours ago, that means the first Homo Sapiens appeared at 9:25 PM, or about 2 and a half hours ago. The first human civilization, in lower Mesopotamia, appeared at 11:57 PM, or about 3 minutes ago."
"The Western Roman Empire fell at 11:59 PM, or 1 minute ago. Everything that has happened since - the Crusades, the Plague, the discovery of the New World, the world wars, all of it - has happened in the last minute of human existence."
And that's just OUR Sun...
"The span of our lives are so insignificantly small that our Sun will last another 5 billion years. That's 9 zeros people. Our eldest live to around 100 in the best places. That's 50,000,000 (50 million) times longer than any person can reasonably expect to live. And that's just OUR Sun. The universe as a whole has probably existed for magnitudes longer than that already and will continue to exist until the end of time as we know it."
Tell Me a Story
william shakespeare GIF by will herringGiphy"We know what a good storyteller Shakespeare was but there were Greek playwrights who wrote shows nearly 2,000 years earlier that are pretty good, too."
I hate time. Only because I'm petty and irritated of the amount I squandered. That's neither here nor there though. Time marches on and continues to amaze. I'll keep watching.
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