Photo by Nong Vang on Unsplash
I had been going to different therapists on and off for several years when I found myself in Jacob’s office. I didn’t know if I still believed that therapy could help me. However, I had retained a sliver of hope, because Jacob specialized in trauma, and I had finally recognized that my symptoms of depression, anxiety and disordered eating all stemmed from medical trauma. This was the root cause of my ongoing psychological and spiritual pain, and without treating the root cause I was destined to continue to experience these symptoms.
With a mixture of deep skepticism and hopefulness, I entered Jacob’s office prepared for combat. I wanted him to know that I had spent countless hours reading books and articles on mental health symptoms and treatment options. I explained to him that I was a therapy veteran: I had filled out worksheets, learned to meditate, practiced yoga (had even become a yoga teacher!). Ultimately I was trying to prove to him that I was going to be a tough case for him.
I could hardly afford these sessions, and required him to prove himself to me. I asked him to read several pages of journal entries I had written over the past few years. I also emailed and called him several times - abruptly changing my appointments or asking him therapy-related questions on the phone. I had lost much of my trust in healers over the course of my years, and subconsciously was testing him.
This is not the way that I acted in the rest of my life, but my trauma was created within a medical context and it played out in these relationships I had with medical professionals of all sorts. As soon as I was in the office of a health care professional of any kind, whether Western or Eastern, hospital or naturopathy, my adult rational self receded to the background and my Inner Critic ran the show.
I desperately wanted Jacob to really see me and help me. I wanted him to be my saviour, like I had with all the others beforehand. But I also did not trust him, because at that point I had put my blind faith in other healers of all kinds, and was always left disappointed. So I put him through a series of subconscious tests to ensure that he really did care, that he did not just see me as an ignorant patient. I had developed this feeling that I was viewed as sub-human, ignorant and pathetic to the doctors who had treated me throughout my life: something that my Inner Critic told me daily. I needed Jacob to prove to me that this was not the case and I could emerge from the dark tunnel I found myself aimlessly wandering in without a way out.
Over the next several months, Jacob passed all my tests. He read all my documents. He answered my phone calls and emails at any time of day. He allowed our sessions to go a bit past their allotted time when it was clear I needed a few more minutes to collect myself. He even opened up to me about his own life and insecurities to make me feel less alone. It was becoming clear that he truly did see me as a fellow human being, not greater or lesser than he.
What I wanted to know was: am I another patient to you? Do you see the humanity behind my struggles? I desperately needed him to, because I did not.
But that wasn’t good enough for me, because the goal of my Inner Critic was to convince Jacob of the truth: that I was hopeless.
As with all therapists and medical professionals I had visited with over the course of my life, both allopathic and holistic, my subconscious goal was to convince Jacob that I was a hopeless case.
He didn’t buy it. He would even give examples from his own life to show how similar we actually were; that neither he himself nor anyone else was better than I was. That the feelings of confusion, broken-ness, isolation and fear that I felt were felt by everyone. That “figuring it all out” is not the prerequisite for beginning to live a life of fulfillment and joy.
Jacob was a hard case for my Inner Critic to crack. Maybe this time I wouldn’t be able to convince him that I was a hopeless case. I used all my usual ammo to try and convince him, but he was ready to defend my case and countered back with sincerity against all the verbal attacks I waged against myself. In each session what he was communicating to me was that no matter what I had been through, no matter what my obstacles in life may be, no matter how immense my struggles, I could not convince him that I was a hopeless failure.
Finally, after several months, I submitted to his arguments. The shame that my Inner Critic had stored up to use against me was no match for him and no matter what shameful things I divulged to him about myself, he was not fazed. Maybe I wasn’t so different than everyone else and equally deserving and capable of living a good life.
But yet, I couldn’t shake how different I felt deep down, as though I was some sort of alien here to survey human life and attempt to mimic their moves, always knowing it was merely an act. Others worked, had families, went on vacations - they didn’t seem weighed down to the point of paralysis by their shortcomings and shame. How?!
At this point the shame could paralyze me at any moment. One moment, I was securely in adulthood, performing the actions of everyday life. All of a sudden, before I knew it, I was paralyzed on my couch, hysterical or numb, or some tortuous mixture of both. It didn’t seem to matter how many books I read, or how many self-improvement workshops I attended, this paralysis by emotion continued. So what was the difference between them and I?
What’s the difference between them and I, Jacob? The answer was profound and simple - as all profound truths are:
“Because you believe you are a failure, and they do not.”
I was shocked to hear this. So… what you are telling me is that the reason I am in such acute pain is because of a story I am telling myself? We each have a different experience based on the story we tell ourselves?
Yes, pretty much, he replied.
In that moment, everything changed for me. Because I knew that he was correct. My Inner Critic had been the loudest voice in my head for the majority of my life and she had created and maintained this story about my hopelessness that I wholeheartedly believed. The goal of my Inner Critic was to prove to me and everyone around me that I was a hopeless and unloveable failure. My Inner Critic was strong and intelligent and sneaky, and incredibly manipulative and convincing. She dictated the story I was telling myself about my life, and I followed.
But I was the one who created her. Which meant that I was stronger and more cunning that she was. I just had to create another storyline for my life, one where I was a strong and capable healer, rather than a passive victim.
Prior to this appointment, I had come into therapy sessions as though they were trials - I always had something to prove. But now I was seeing the role of a therapist, and all health care professionals, as that of a sort of story editor.
Our developmental traumas lead us to believe things about ourself and the world that cause us immense suffering. We medicate ourselves with drugs to numb the stories of defeat our Inner Critics begin to write: alcoholism and workaholism are one and the same for the purpose of distracting us. All to avoid the despair generated by ourselves through the stories we tell ourselves about our lives and the world around us.
🜁 ~ 🜂 ~ 🜃 ~🜄
To be at home in this world is to recognize the truth of your story:
That as long as you are breathing, there is more right with you than wrong with you.
That as a member of the human family, you are capable of extraordinary things.
That whether you look at this mystery of being through a scientific or historical lens, you are an unequivocal miracle.
That you are inextricably linked to the collective.
That you are whole.
You are enough.
We are all storytellers, whether therapists, physicians, teachers, parents, lovers, friends. Make your story beautiful; it is up to you.
