Back in my senior year of high school, I was in a fair amount of therapy. But my main therapist had just left the organization for her dream job, and I was left with someone new.
Now she knew this coworker of hers, and she had specifically recommended him for me to work with, which filled me with hope that it would be a smooth transition. However, it was not. We just didn’t click into place.
I could write a whole other post about the importance of finding a good therapist for you, and maybe I will at some point, but that’s not what I’m getting at today.
One day, I came in with a story about a fight I had with my boyfriend. And as I finished my story explaining how I felt about the incident (worried, confused, and triggered), he hit me with a question that caught me completely off-guard.
He said, “okay, next time he does that what are you going to do?” I didn’t know. That question scared me a little. When I expressed my hesitation, he pushed the point a little, saying, “well if there are no consequences for his actions, what’s to keep him from treating you that way all the time?”
I have to say, this was a whole new world for me. I felt confused, angry, but even more than that, betrayed. I had considered therapy my safe place to vent, and now…this. Whatever this was, I still wasn’t sure. It seemed to me like he wanted me to break up with my boyfriend.
I pushed back, that I didn’t know what I would do if he did it again. That’s when he said the thing that completely set me off. “Well if you won’t make this boundary, then I’m going to make a boundary that we don’t talk about your relationships.”
I never saw that guy again. I wasn’t interested in paying him to be making statements like that, and if I couldn’t talk to him about my relationships, then what could we talk about? The whole exchange left an awful taste in my mouth. Now, years later, I see where he was coming from, and I can see his mistake.
Moving on
That whole experience was soon buried by more therapists and exchanges of “oh I’m switching locations” and “I’m not sure I can give you what you’re looking for”. I soon forgot about it, mostly. But as the memory comes up now, I realized I’ve been working on that original lesson on the back burner all this time.
Back during my therapy days, most of my treatment had one purpose. The purpose was to get me to be able to cope with the things that were beyond my control. Especially back then, there was a lot that was out of my control. In fact, most things in my life were. But that’s not incredibly uncommon before adulthood.
At any rate, with all of this training in coping and allowing, a conversation about boundaries had never ensued. Not once. So it makes sense that a question about and insertion of a boundary had caught me off guard. In the moment, it seemed like a slap in the face, with no explanation as to why it was given.
And I can see where the mistake was made. Having only seen me once or twice, I highly doubt he had any chance to look over the notes that my previous therapist had taken over the years-yes, years. And having known that I had been in therapy for years, it makes sense that he would think that the topic of boundaries had come up, since it is quite “basic”. But it hadn’t.
I wasn’t ready
Now, leaving his office that day, I knew I wasn’t going back there. I wasn’t willing to. I felt like the basic foundation of therapy had been ripped out from under me. And I didn’t go back, but I didn’t really hear what he said either, because I couldn’t.
And that’s what I want you to consider this time around. There are some really important things/truths/practices that are really transformative and important but that we aren’t ready for in the moment. You may not be ready for them because you’re not in a place to make those decisions, or that you don’t have the foundation to understand their importance, a mix, or something completely different, but that’s a valid place to be.
I think sometimes we approach therapy (and life) with the attitude that the solutions are out there, somebody has the answers and if they just give them to us, that everything will be alright, but I’m telling you, that’s really not the case. At least, not all the time. Sometimes we’re not ready for the thing that would be the answer to our problem.
Whether you’re in therapy or not, there’s something so necessary about doing the inner work, walking the path that you’re put on, and seeing the lessons that life gives you as they come up. If we don’t use our own experiences as a form of understanding the present, then we hardly have anything to draw from.
Drawing boundaries today
Nowadays I’m learning more and more about what it means to have boundaries, and to maintain them even when it gets tough, and believe me, it does get tough. But I have a foundation for understanding why boundaries are necessary, and that’s what got me to the first step of realizing “my boundaries” in the first place.
I first had to understand what it meant to cross a boundary, decipher what that felt like in my experience, and then I could see where it was happening in my life. After that I was able to start identifying my boundaries and figuring out how to maintain those in interactions with others.
But before any of that happened I needed to have a lesson on my personal power in terms of what I allow myself to feed into and experience. And before I had a grasp on that, setting boundaries seemed like a fantasy world. In short, no, I wasn’t ready to have that conversation. Not without a proper foundation for it first, and that’s nothing to be ashamed of.
What about you?
The same goes for you. I bet there are important things for health and well-being that you don’t have a grasp on yet, but are you ready for them? Has life shown you the importance of them and your own ability to take those practices on? Maybe not.
And if you’re dealing with a situation like that, going to a therapist or doing some research online probably won’t help you in that area. You can’t force a lesson that has no base. So focus on your life and what is pertinent to you. Try your best to manage your response to your daily life situations and learn from them the best you can. That’s all you really can do.
However, if you’re going to go to therapy, I would suggest finding a person who understands where you’re coming from, and is willing to meet you where you’re at, even if it’s in order to hold your hand to get you where you’re going a bit. Find someone who understands you and also wants the best for your life and personal growth, and then you’re golden.
