Let’s Normalize Therapy. Please & Thank You.
On this week’s episode of F*ck Wellness, Lara, Mallory, and Makena bring on nine incredible and thoughtful women to tell their therapy stories to conclude our month of discussing relationships. This episode is dedicated to highlighting and normalizing therapy and those who go to therapy in our society. We want to thank each of these women for their vulnerability, honesty, and deep insights into mental health, barriers to therapy, and the lessons they’ve learned. Each woman’s story was unique, multi-faceted, and we feel so lucky to be able to share them on our platform.
The podcast begins with Avani’s therapy story, a love affair of sorts. For Avani, going to therapy was a no brainer. “I can just sit in a room and someone is going to help me with my problems?” Avani jokes. “Yes please!” Friends are great to have, she explains, but therapists are different from friends. They are trained to help you with your individual problems. Avani admits that there have been times having a therapist saved her life and has given her a safe space where there is no judgement. “For me, a therapist is the one person in my life that I can literally tell anything to,” Avani says. From dating to dealing with depression to learning how to use her voice, her therapist has been a constant through it all. Therapy has changed the way she viewed the world, herself, and the environment she exists in.
Next up, we have Lara’s therapy story -- one that started only a few weeks ago. As with many of us, Lara had been meaning to go to therapy for a long time, but it just never happened. In the short time she’s been seeing a therapist, Lara has learned quite a lot. First she’s learned that we are all incredibly complex with our brains working a mile a minute. That means that all relationships, from intimate partnerships to friendships, have complexity that adds challenge, but also depth to every situation. A therapist’s role, in Lara’s view, is to validate those complex feelings and bring us back to our values.
Jessica’s desire to seek a therapist happened after a perfect storm of events - a career transition, a break-up, and a move out of her parent’s house. She started to notice herself acting differently, talking slowly and isolating more. “The transition that I was going through was uncomfortable,” Jessica says. “I had no idea how to cope with it.” After seeing a few therapists, she found one that aligned with her values and goals. The therapist helped her realize that though she was able to work, hang out with friends, and generally function as a human, she was struggling deeply with the life transition she was in. “Allowing myself to feel what I needed to feel was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do,” Jessica admits. Therapy brought Jessica some much-needed peace and clarity on how to cope with the barrage of events happening around her and continues to help her find the tools to meet each day with intention.
Nikki began seeking mental health services in college because her university offered complimentary sessions for students. She continued seeing a therapist through the pandemic to help her navigate her new environment -- living at home -- and to give her the tools to hand everyday stressors with grace and ease. The biggest lesson Nikki learned in therapy was that the only person you can control is yourself. “No matter how hard you beg and hope that other people's behaviors will change, whether they make that change is up to them and not in your control.” Nikki explained. She continues to advocate for mental health on her college campus by addressing the barriers and stigma that come with therapy.
A long-time therapy enthusiast, Makena can’t recommend therapy enough. From dealing with her grandmother’s death to improving self-worth, therapy has been a constant throughout her life. Makena has learned so much about herself through therapy, but the biggest impact has been learning how to appreciate and value who she is. “Knowing that I have the tools to navigate any situation that is thrown my way while also honoring all the feelings that come up in those situations,” Makena says, “that’s what therapy has helped me with.”
Emily G. started therapy once she learned her employer offered a few free sessions to employees. She had dabbled in therapy during middle school, but this time served as her first time in therapy as a card-carrying adult. Emily had a few ideas about what she wanted to talk to her therapist about, but it turned out that the sessions served a far broader role than she initially expected. “You think about going to therapy because you have this idea in your head that you have to work out something specific with a therapist,” Emily explains. “But the great thing is that you might not have even known you need it in other ways too.” Going to therapy helped Emily build a better relationship to herself and come to her own realizations about the world.
Abbey started therapy while processing some trauma in her life. As a recovering people pleaser, she found therapy incredibly helpful in unpacking relationships with her family, friends, and to herself. “Once I learned how to listen to my own intuition, the relationships around me changed because I was a different person,” Abbey says. Therapy helped her set boundaries, distance herself from codependent relationships, and relearn what she wanted her relationships to look like. Therapy was the hand-holding Abbey needed to move through her trauma and find her way in the world.
Emily S. is in therapy and an aspiring therapist. It took her a few different therapists before she found one that aligned with her values and ideology. Once she realized that being a family and marriage therapist (FMT) was something she’d be interested in, she started to wonder if you could be a therapist and need therapy. She decided the answer was a resounding yes. “We can’t help other people unless we are aware of the implicit bias that we have, our own personal backgrounds, our own personal traumas and accomplishments,” Emily explained. “By opening up and discussing these with your therapist, not only can you work through your own things you have going on, you can take the skills and help future clients.”
Mallory started therapy during the pandemic to unpack some feelings she’d been having around marriage and love. She quickly found a therapist she adored and they dove right into the meaty stuff. Mallory realized that she’d always viewed herself as someone who wouldn’t be married forever. This was really holding her back from allowing herself to settle into her incredibly happy relationship. Therapy helped her find the tools to change this narrative in her head. “I am an active participant in my life. I get to choose every single day what I want,” Mallory says. “That was so helpful in liberating myself of this belief that I would end up divorced or in an unhappy marriage.”
If you want to hear the stories behind these summaries, listen to the full episode. If you liked this style blog post, you can read our blog post based on the podcast episode “On Wednesdays We Talk Birth Control” that featured the birth control stories of 13 women.
