When considering if it was a “good” therapy session or not, I usually ask myself one thing – if I left feeling better than I came.
Now, how I feel about something isn’t necessarily an appropriate measurement of how successful something was or not, but it is a question I rely on a lot. Therapy can be hard, and I can leave feeling upset or stressed or anxious, but that doesn’t mean it was “bad”. It just means it was hard. And hard is okay.
But last night I did leave feeling better than I came, and that’s typically always indicative of a “good” session.
She was a little hard on me, she asked some hard questions and called me on my shit, but that’s always a good thing. Usually. When our relationship is good, I can handle pretty much whatever happens and whatever gets thrown at me. Not too long ago, our relationship was in a pretty rocky place, and I wasn’t sure if we’d ever get back to this place again. But we have, and I’m always going to be grateful for that.
We talked about last week when my husband came, about alcohol, and what my plan is for that with the baby being so close to due, we talked about feelings…always a fun time there…and we talked about how I need to be better at knowing what I need and asking for it (directly), and about how I need to accept what’s good enough.
That’s always a hard one for me…accepting when things are good enough. I’m always chasing more, wanting more, looking for something else, something better. It’s the reason I fall so hard into addiction, because whatever I’m doing isn’t enough.
I can tell I’m becoming more and more avoidant lately, too. Even with the things I’m not typically avoidant with…I am now. And that stresses me out.
I want to be better at facing things head on, and I don’t know what’s changed that I’m running from things instead of dealing with them.
I want to do better, and I am motivated to do better. Things are scary right now, and things are going to be changing quickly. It’s all I can do to just hang on and…to deal with my shit.
But for now, I’m going to try to find things that are good enough. Nothing will ever be as “good” as alcohol and other things are…but I can work on finding other (healthy) things that still feel good.
So, for now, that’s my plan. Keep finding the small things that don’t feel awful, and focus on that.
I’m glad therapy seemed to have gone well, sometimes it feels like that’s all I have. Like, I’m just really bad at life in general, and if therapy goes well, then maybe that means I can do better.
I’ll take any ounce of hope I can get.
I’m glad the shitty doctor’s appointment was at least sort of balanced out by a good therapy appointment.
Yeah, at least something went well. It definitely would’ve been rough if everything went wrong yesterday..
Interesting read here. I can say addiction and avoidance are never the answer to dealing with things, just talk to someone close , open up you will feel better and start being typically normal again👏
Yes, it does usually always feel better to be open and actually talk about things. It’s just hard to actually open up about the things that I know I need to.