That must have been very lonely.

Sooooooo,

I’ve been going to a therapist.

Between mom dying,

dad nearly dying,

husband struggling with PTSD,

husband out of work for a year,

one teenager,

one preteen,

etc. etc. etc.

it seems I rather hit the wall regarding what I could handle without an assist.

So I let the social worker from hospice (who helped us care for mom) talk me into joining a bereavement group and going to see a therapist.

The bereavement group was amazing. It was an 8-week, closed session group and although we officially ended two months ago we have continued to get together for dinner periodically. We had a Autumnal Equinox dinner party on September 23rd. I may discuss more about my gals later but the title of this post is something my therapist said to me this week.

In discussing my teen years, after I told him about some events and various aspects of my life at that point, he said, That must have been very lonely.”

I instinctively wanted to deny that, immediately, but… in the quarter second I thought about it, I realized,

it was!

My immunity (bordering on disdain) for attempts to manipulate through disapproval or guilt, and my extreme sensitivity (and disgust) for hypocracy, especially among ultra-conservative Christians, could probably both be attributed directly to situations in my teen years. I regard these as positives that came from negatives, but I’ve never really thought much  about how living it through it felt, retrospectively.

Then I think,

so what if it was lonely? I wasn’t being sent off to death camps or killings fields. I wasn’t being sexually or physically abused. So what is the point of dwelling on this? Beside provoking maudlin self-pity, anger, or fresh annoyance at the adults in my life at that stage, what is the benefit?

I tend to think therapy is only a benefit when you are using it in a cognitive-behavioral mode. As in, how you think effects how you feel, how you feel and think effects how you act. If you change your mindset  and your focus you can change how you act and how you feel.

So I had some unhappy experiences as a teenager, hello, is it possible to survive those years WITHOUT some? 

and, what am I supposed to do about it NOW?

This is why I’m not a big fan of talk therapy.

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