Trying this AGAIN.

This time, I'm going to try to write in here more regularly. I was so active on LiveJournal, years ago. It was a great release for me. I'm trying to find a great release again. Here's today's reflection.

Pretty much anyone who knows me, knows that I have an incredible relationship with my therapist. Sure, some people have been weirded out by the fact that I text her (although we are working on decreasing that, because I was using it as a coping skill). Others might find it creepy that I have googled her randomly, although I'm never looking for any new information, just proof that she exists outside of our sessions (and, in true therapist fashion, I get minimal results...unlike when you google me and get the Myspace pages of a few pre-teens from Ireland). And still others might wonder why I have such a great therapist who is not a specialist in eating disorders (well, I think it might be for that very reason. because she specializes in working with PEOPLE, not disorders!), or that I could afford a NICE apartment if I didn't go to see her for therapy and saw someone on my insurance instead.

I had a long "weekend" of Thursday through today of thinking and reflecting, and had many many pages of journals, so last night I texted my therapist asking if we could have a session-and-a-half or a double. We started off planning on a 75 minute session but ended up with a 100-minute session. It was the best 100 minutes I could have asked for.

Why? Well, I mean, I did work out some important things, got a lot off my chest, and learned her daughter's name by a total accident! But that's not what was so inspiring.

My therapist has disclosed to me before that she's been in therapy. She implied that she may have been in the first few months that we worked together. Then once we were talking about terrible therapists, and she told me that she once saw a therapist who constantly fell asleep in the middle of their sessions. Every once in a while, she reminds me that going through "shit" and going to therapy is as "normal" as normal can be.

It's just so empowering, to have a therapist, who appears PERFECT (although she reassures me constantly that she is not, that she is human), to be showing no shame about being in therapy. It's the attitude I LONG to be able to show at work (I would get in trouble for disclosing it at my current job, which is understandable since I work with a different set of clients), and to be comfortable with saying it out loud in the world.

Her honesty makes me feel sane. Makes me feel capable. Makes me feel like I can do what I want to do, and if something's going to get in my way, it's not going to be my past.

Self-disclosure is a very controversial thing in therapy. Honestly, I don't wanna hear about her marital problems (although in my head, she does not have any) or if eating Coldstone makes her feel fat (I do believe that she has told me that it does not, that she finds it purely delicious. I LOVE her food attitudes. Better than a nutritionist, because her stuff is based on human nature, not scientific nutritional knowledge!) or that she has a pounding headache (I'm sure she has had one at some point while working with me, it would have been nearly impossible not to!). And she doesn't disclose those inappropriate things.

But what she shares, is so powerful. Empowering.

When I say I want to be like her, I don't just mean in the "I want to be a thin blonde with a great, husband, a sweet daughter, and a baby boy on the way" but that I want to connect with my clients the way she can connect with me, to have the dedication, understanding, and empathy that she is able to share with me. To have that with just one client, even, would be enough.

My therapist is incredible.
The therapeutic relationship we have built is so strong, the strongest, stablest, healthiest relationship of any kind that I have ever had. (at least, in my opinion...and it's helping me to form MORE stable, healthy relationships)
And I'm realizing that sometimes in order to follow my dreams, I need to do less, not more.
I am not the same as everybody else.
Or anybody else.