That first session, you just. I don't know. I think I was driven internally just to try to spit as much of it out as possible so my therapist would understand how much of a mess I am, how much work we had ahead of us. He was like, I'm warning you, one of those deals.

Welcome to therapy is my therapy, a podcast where licensed counselor Olivia and unlicensed client Tanya delve deep into real and.

Raw conversations in order to demystify what really happens in that 50 minutes hour. Heads up. This podcast contains strong language and sensitive topics related to mental health.

Hey, everyone. Tanya here. Therapy is weird. Think about it. You sit down in front of a complete stranger and you're required to bare your soul for 50 endless minutes. And once times up, you dust yourself off and just go back to the rest of your life like nothing happened. So its no wonder that people often ask, am I doing therapy wrong? Olivia and I decided to answer that question or at least try to give insight on what this journey can feel like. So we hit up Rob Murray. Rob is a graphic designer, airsoft, and mil sim influencer, and he recently began his therapy journey. We get into things like what landed him on the therapist couch, what his first few sessions felt like, and his all important realization that you can't just.

Think your way to healing.

Since we covered so much ground in this episode, we decided to divide it into two parts. Enjoy.

We're really happy to have you on, and I think it's going to be great having a beginner's perspective of what the therapy journey has been like for you so far. And if you want to just get started by giving us a little elevator speech of who you are, what you do, so the listeners can get an idea.

So, you know, first and foremost, thanks for having me. It's always fun talking mental health stuff. I mean, elevator pitch. So I'm Rob Murray, just a dude who lives in Canada as a career, I mean, corporate. So I'm a senior product manager of security products. Outside of that, I do a little bit of firearms, teaching and whatnot with another company I work with. Yeah. Is that. Is that what you wanted?

Yeah. Yeah, that's pretty good.

You can get into a bit more, too, about your extracurricular activities with airsoft and how we know each other.

Yeah, sure. So outside of my professional career, I was extremely lucky for a big chunk of my, I guess, adult life, you know, from about 30 until a couple years ago, I played an extra, a sport, or what I consider a sports, like paintball. It's called airsoft instead of big paintballs, it's just little tiny plastic BB's. No big deal. But I traveled around North America going to massive events at military facilities, at government training facilities, et cetera, et cetera. So again, it was just a hobby of mine that I fell into becoming, I guess, a temporary icon in it, just through social media, sort of when I started airsoft, this is like way back in 2010 kind of deal, and had switched finally from a BlackBerry to a real phone so I could install apps. So I got Instagram and for whatever reason, people started slowly following me over time. And then that led to things like sponsorships and flying me around and all that fun stuff. And then that led me into the firearms world, which is sort of the segue of how I met Tanya way down the road, being current times. From 2010, again, ive got this platform on a platform like Instagram, and mainly its a platform just to share what I like in the industry kind of deal and communicate with people. Thats a big part of, of what I used social media for. So it wasn't just like, hey, look at me. Yes, I was producing content, but with the feedback I've, I've always gotten over the last, like the last decade is, you know, my interactivity with the people that followed me. Like, I mean, I've got now friends all over the world that I met through social media, right. And I kept in touch with them, which, like I said, let me know, Tanya and more.

So the collective, apologies for hijacking your story, but through your appearances on the collective and me encountering your social media, we became friends. And this segues into the mental health month that the collective did. And you had posted a series regarding mental health, and you had mentioned that you were first starting therapy, or you're about to start therapy. So I think a good place to start would be when and why did you realize that you needed to go get help?

I guess. Let me start with the overarching statement, right? Is that like, you know, there's probably a good ten or 15 years of me thinking about it, and that's like almost tragic to think back. I mean, like, I've been struggling with things, thinking I'm fine for like 1015 years without asking for help. Right. I think that's pretty common in this space for the average person. But what really started it is I had a bit of a, I don't know, breakdown this past spring, and the spring is the significant sort of period of time. So not to jump the shark or that, right. But April of this year was the one year anniversary of my brother's suicide. I did really well with. Maybe I should check my language. I thought I was doing very well over the last year, handling everything. I was that one in the family that became the rock. So I was spearheading a lot of things and whatnot. And at the time, I kind of equated that to doing well. This stoicism that I brought to the table and getting things done sort of attitude around a very terrible event. Right? And that continued throughout the year. Like, that feeling of, like, you know, I handled this pretty well. And I attribute that, you know, some background info here. Grew up in kind of a poopy house situation, like a living situation when I was growing up as a kid. So, like, I kind of looked back and I was like, mandy, all that sucked. But at least it prepared me a little bit for this kind of deal. And then when this spring rolled around, it was. It was tough. I don't know what happened, but my brain just sort of went upside down. And I think the quintessential moment, it's weird where these things come from, right? And that is through social media. I just so happen to know the lead singer of one of my favorite bands on the planet. He started playing airsoft five years ago, and I became his mentor. It was really weird to. They were doing a 20th anniversary tour, and he invited myself and one of my other buddies from the industry down to Michigan to backstage, whole nine yards, right, at one of their shows. And then we were hanging out in the tour bus afterwards, and we got into these topics, like, he's big on mental health, too. He was talking about what he had just been through, right? So there's a bunch of fallout from that. And he was just kind of telling me his story. It just hit me like a sledgehammer in the face because I was right in the middle of that. Obviously, I was hiding it well for an event like a concert, but he was saying it to me. At the moment in my life, I was really struggling quietly with it. And I'd been searching for, like, months previous to find a therapist, you know, going on all the websites that said, like, here's your menu of therapists kind of deal. And I don't know what I'm looking for. I'm seeing faces and I'm seeing qualifications, but, like, I don't know anything. But when I came home from that concert, you know, not immediately, but, like, a week or two later, I finally pulled the trigger, and I just contacted a therapist. She's still my therapist. But. But, I mean, I just contacted one of the ones I'd researched, and here I am.

A lot of what you're talking about is, like you said, a very common experience of people for a very long time thinking, oh, that might be something that would be helpful. I could probably use that. But I. The process itself is overwhelming and stigmatized, so there's so many reasons to just put it off. And so I think that adds a whole other layer to it. And then I often hear, at least with clients, is that the cause? One of the first things I asked when they have an intake is what made you pick up the phone now, if you've been having issues, what was the inflection point that made you realize now is the time? And it's very similar to what you're talking about. Wherever there's a loss or a big change or transition, and they do the whole thing of, I can be strong about it. I can be the rock. I don't need help. I'm just going to kind of bubble up and go through life and think I'm fine. And then something happens that seems small, and they just snap, and it becomes this realization of, oh, God, I need to do this. And so it sounds like that kind of made you just jump in, even if you weren't sure if the therapist was best or, you know, if you really knew exactly that that was going to be what you needed to. And so I guess I'm just curious, when you did have that first session, what did that look like? What were your fears about how it was going to look? And did those end up being true, or did it end up being different than what you thought it was?

Well, I guess. Let me. I want to cap something off that you said there, if that's okay. Again, if we're speaking to the beginner on this one. Right. Like, understand, too, that my hesitation to go into therapy is not coming from a place where I wasn't supported or unfamiliar. Like, my brother was in therapy for a long time. I was very well aware of the concept. I mean, my dad had always said, like, maybe it's something you have to think about. Like, I've had really good support structures in that arena. Right. And I'm also a person that was very honest to myself saying, like, yes, therapy would be good for you, and yet I still couldn't do it for a very long time. Right. And, like, that's important for people to understand because there's a lot of people that are also afraid of therapy. So it's it's hard, but it's hard for everybody. I think in most cases, or at least was for me. And I'm a little bit better situated up here about the concept of therapy than I think many average people are because of the stigmatization and all the lack of support structures. So, yeah, like I said, I didn't know what I was choosing. Like, I did understand that from doing some of that research. The helpful thing about the sort of directories that we have, at least in Canada with mental health professionals, is that, like, it lists out the specialties and modalities. While I don't really purely understand all the modalities, right, I'm not a psychologist understanding someone's specialty. Like do they deal with male PTSD? Do they deal with, with childhood trauma? Do they deal with XYZ? That it was a really important first step for me to make this giant bucket of talking heads, like little head shots into like a smaller, more manageable decision pool. Now, the first session wasn't a full session, it was actually a, we probably spent about 20 minutes, as in an initial meeting, a trial, a, hey, can we talk to each other's faces kind of deal and like, what will therapy look like? Or what do we want to go after? Right, that vetting process, I guess. And I don't know if that's normal. This is my first time on that journey. It seems pretty normal, but we did that, to be frank. I don't know what I came out of that with, right. Like, other than the thought that I'm going to seek this therapeutic sort of pathway, but things like, ultimately, do I know in that 1st 20 minutes if I'm truly going to understand or get along with this person that's going to be accepting my baggage and help me sort through it. I don't know. I don't know what that felt like. And it's going to be a common theme for the first few therapy sessions for me. So in any case, I just, I don't know if it was a lack of not knowing or like, if I'm going to have this same feeling at the end of four or five of these little trial things, why don't I just say let's do it right? So my therapist's name is Susan, she's younger, she's probably like below thirties. The first couple sessions, I struggled. The first couple, I don't mean like struggled. Like, it was hard for me to keep going. Like I had total faith in it. It's not like I ever thought like maybe I should go get a different therapist or stop therapy. But for the first couple sessions, it was hard for me to recognize what it should feel like. I don't know how to explain it any other way other than I just didn't know what I didn't know. I still kind of don't know what it's supposed to feel like. Right. And I've. I've told her this before, too, right? I'm like, I don't know how I should be thinking about our sessions or, like, how I feel in between sessions. And then when I come back, like, I don't know how I'm supposed to. I don't know what is. What it is supposed to be. You know, we're just doing it. I mean, that was the initial feeling of it.

Any case, that makes a lot of sense, and that is a very common theme of clients who it's their first time in therapy is. I've had them ask, I hear that you validate my feelings, but what do I do with it? This doesn't make sense. Like, how am I going to get better from talking about this? And it's very jarring when you're new at it, because it feels like you're just holding your heart and soul and all of your deepest feelings open for an hour, and then you're shutting it again, and you're like, all right, I guess I'll see you next week. It's super strange. And, you know, obviously, in the beginning, a lot of it is rapport building and making sure that you trust this other person enough that you feel comfortable getting deeper into it. But it is definitely a strange feeling for everyone. And like you said, the 20 minutes consultation that it sounds like you had before starting, that's a very common thing, too, that therapists will offer so that people get an idea of, like, who you are, and you're not gonna be able to tell right away, generally if you can fully trust them, but you can get some sense of a vibe of, does this feel like the kind of person I can talk to? Does even their personality seem like a fit for me? Because if it's like, a person that you're like, oh, they don't really seem like a person I can have a long conversation with about something casual, like the weather. That's gonna be hard to feel like you can open up more. So that's definitely a process that I think can be really helpful.

I think the other strange thing about my process that I realized, and this is nothing to do, really, in the end with gender, but, I mean, I found myself explicitly knowing that finding a female therapist versus a male one. And again, like, I've got a lot of really deep relationships with male friends. Again, I run a pretty open circle in terms of what we share with each other because we're just those types of people. We like to take care of each other and be honest. But even within that honesty with my male friend group, the social constructs pop in and it's a much smaller circle of openness than, say, with my female friends. So I just innately felt like, I mean, I don't even want to bark up the tree of a male therapist, even though male therapists probably way more equipped to have those conversations. Compared to, like, what I'm experiencing with my male friend group, I tend to be a little bit more emotionally vulnerable around females. It wasn't like I was waking up every morning being like, gonna find me a female therapist. It's just what I ended up landing on. Just, I think I was naturally drawn to it. It wasn't like I accepted and excluded dudes from the list of things, but it just totally felt like I was weighted towards one side.

And I would imagine that's okay. I would give myself the grace and the latitude to just say whatever it needs for me to feel comfortable enough and to build a rapport with someone. That's what I'm going to pursue. It could be that they only wear purple shoes. If that's what it takes, then that's what it takes for me to open up. And I wanted to just hop back really quickly to when you were talking about your first session, because this is where it gets really fascinating for me as I've been in the game long enough, I think I had counted. It ended up being about nine therapists total that I've seen over the years. And the first session, I forgot what that feels like of. Yes, the first session with Katherine, my therapist, was awkward and you're feeling each other out, but it is sort of. I had become a black belt in scrambling out of emotional vulnerability. So I went into that with already quite a few therapists worth of experience. And I knew I needed help, but my mentality was, I'm going to go in and she's going to fix me and I am going to do exactly zero of the work in terms of opening up to her or trusting her. It's really interesting that you went in with an open mind because I don't know if that's endemic to people who are just starting therapy when they don't know what they don't know. Versus someone who has had a wealth of good, bad, neutral experiences where they've learned to sort of be adept at dodging the actual process of digging deep. I don't know if, Olivia, if you want to talk about if there are any differences between people who don't know what they don't know and people who have been through the system a few times and go, oh, yeah, I know how this dance goes. I'm here because I have to be, but you're not getting anything out of me.

Yeah. And there's so many factors that affect it. And I think, like what you talked about earlier, if you had support in your life that encouraged you to go to therapy and that you had positive messages about it growing up and through those formational periods of your life that it wasn't something you pulled the trigger on because you maybe weren't ready, but it was something that you knew if you did it, you would have support with it. And you had that backing of in your head. You believed it already to be something that could be helpful. Whereas, Tanya, I know we've talked about in your past that was not the same level of support growing up of. You didn't necessarily have a space where people said, yes, you should go to therapy. That would be really helpful for you. And seemed like for me, growing up, therapy was like, if you go there, they will tell you that you're bad and they'll fix you. And I think that has a huge effect on, one, whether or not people go, and two, how you present in that first session. And like you said, tanya, you've had so many therapists before that that at some point you kind of just get desensitized by it. And it's like, all right, like, what do you have for me? The roles kind of reverse of you feeling like, well, I've tried all these people, like, what can you do for me that they couldn't do for me? So I think the first time you see a therapist is a really big moment because this is the first person. It's like your first boyfriend or girlfriend. It is the first person you are showing this part of yourself to. And so that's why it's a really big deal that therapists are showing up every time as if this is the first time someone is coming into contact with the field. Because if you have your first therapist be a really bad one who is not listening and not present and harms you further. That can keep people away from the field, or it can make it so that when they do try a new therapist. They're very closed off, and it's a lot more work for them to unlearn that stuff. So, I mean, that's what I've seen just with clients of people who have done it before are sometimes very skeptical, but also people who are new are sometimes very skeptical. So there's a lot of things that play a role with it.

Well, in addition to that, you guys made me think about something here, about my experience in that first one. So, like a another side of that. So you guys are right. I have very supportive environment. I was informed about therapy, so there was an opposite effect that I had to kind of fight for the first, I'd say one or two sessions. So two parts. First part is, I don't even know where to begin again. I had waited a long time. Im 40 years old. Okay. Ive been thinking about or positing that I should go get help for a long time. And it was just this middle part of my life sort of stabilized, which then confuses youre, like, oh, I must have accidentally fixed myself. So no worries, right. But that waiting, plus the time id already spent developing the things that tormented me or traumatized me. Right. Like that 1st 20 years of my life living at home, I accumulated a lot of baggage those first couple sessions, I don't even know where we begin and what that feels like. That first session, you just. I don't know. I think I was driven internally just to try to spit as much of it out as possible so my therapist would understand how much of a mess I am, how much work we had ahead of us. It was like, I'm warning you, one of those deals. But the other side, and this is more the point I want to make again, for people who are looking to get into help, right? So, like, let's say. Let's say you've got a supportive environment like Rob, and let's say you understand therapy is probably a good thing. Just like Rob. Well, Rob struggled with what I should expect as an outcome, even from that first therapy session. Like, I literally had to fight this feeling that, like, I walked away from that first therapy session going, I don't feel any fucking better. And I know it was not a logical thought or expectation, but it was weird. Like, here I had been in this first session, I had, you know, to your point, Olivia, I bared my soul or wore my heart on my sleeve or whatever kind of cliche phrase we want to use for that. I walked away going, like, I don't feel like we accomplished anything. Right? And, yes, looking back, yes, it's all rapport building and whatnot. And, you know, Rome wasn't built the day. But it's weird how my brain thought that a piece of this puzzle would be put back in the box after this session and it just wasn't the case. And it wasn't the case for many sessions. For as logical of a person as I am, it was almost intriguing how illogical my brain in seeking and wanting relief from what I'd been struggling with, how actively it wanted some solution to come out of even a single session. And then to your point, Tanya, I mean, this one I still struggle with, and I'm like six, seven deep, and I go every, every two to three weeks kind of deal. This idea that someone doing the work, I don't even know what that work looks like for the most part, right? Like, I don't know what it feels like. I have homework every single time and I think I do it, but, like, I don't. I don't know if it's working. Like, I don't know if I'm doing it right. You know, all the. All the standard stuff, like, oh, let's become friends with the little child firefighter inside you trying to control the crisis. I don't. I don't know what that person sounds like. I know he's in there, but I don't know. So, like, those first sessions, they weren't really clear and I don't think they're supposed to be. But I think a lot of people, if they don't understand that that's what it's going to be, it can feel like a detractor. I mean, if we bring it down to the basics, right, of life, you expend as much energy as minimally necessary to survive, right? So if you don't get some positive outcome, rather immediately, in most circumstances, a living thing is not going to try to continue doing the behavior, right? So it's important to have some awareness that there is no magic, you know? To your point, Olivia, like, go to therapy and they will fix you. Like, it's not really like that. It's not like building something like it is, but it's not like I put these four blocks and I've got the start of a foundation. It's not as tangible as that. Like, you just kind of have to trust that it's going to feel like you have no clue what's going on around you for a while in that. The start of that process, or at least again, was for me, I can.

Definitely resonate with that experience, as I've said on previous episodes, I walked in with the spiel, is what I call it. I just unload. I'm like, here you go. I'm irreparable. I'm broken. There is no fixing it. And I just realized that it's a weird analogy, but it's the equivalent of going to an MMA fighter and just going, I see red, bro, you can't handle this smoke. You can't do this. Because therapists, they've been through it. They've seen some things, and. And Olivia can speak more to that. So that was one of the points. And the other thing that really resonated with me, even after, or maybe perhaps augmented by all those experiences with other therapists, is that the first few sessions with Catherine, I was stymied by the fact that I walked away not being sure that anything was fixed. I thought that just talking and venting about how angry I am at my mom or whomever, that would fix it. That would be it. That is the work. And I had this idea that there was some sort of guarantee where 30 minutes to fix your mommy issues or your money back when it comes to therapy, and it turns out that not the case. Olivia, if you want to just reiterate about the I see red bro mentality that people have and maybe the motivations as to why they think that you may not be able to handle it, all that stuff.

Yeah. And, you know, like you said, your therapist seems young, and that is an issue I have come across before where I look very young, and I am young, and I think that that is a little bit concerning to some clients, especially ones who are decades older than me. There's this belief of, how can you possibly help me? How can you possibly be able to hold all of the pain that I've been through in these 40 years when you are not that age? Or, like, how can I trust that you have been through enough that this is not going to scare you or overwhelm you? So I think that's something that comes up a lot where clients will do exactly what you said of intake session one. They just say everything that has ever happened and really try to dig home that there are these horrors in their life, and there are. But I think it's almost like a subconscious test of, can you hold my pain? Are you going to continue to look at me when I'm sharing this with you? Because I think a lot of people's experience with regular people, friends, whatever the Internet is, that when you share really heavy things, they are physically and metaphorically turning their head because for them to keep looking would require them to also confront the possibility that those things can or have happened to them. And so I think that is the glue in the beginning of therapy before there's really that understanding of, like, well, how is any of this really going to help? I think what keeps people in it is seeing that this is a person that you can say anything to, and they are not going to be, I don't want to say phased by it, because we clearly care and are going to be hurt to hear that you're hurt, but they're not going to look away. And so I think that has, in my experience, been the thing that helps bridge that gap between session one. And, like, when it starts feeling like it's not as jumbled, it's interesting.

Actually, you put it that way because I hadn't thought of it that way. So, spoiler alert. For anybody who's thinking about going to therapy, you will have this light bulb of, I didn't think of it that way before quite often, if my early experience is any indicator. Okay, so just spoiler alert. So Olivia, being a therapist, you just triggered it once more. And what I mean by that is, like, I walked into that first session, I mean, not really any different than what you just explained it, but the narrative in my head was something a little bit. A little bit different. And it was like, oh, like, this is probably what I have to do. Like, I have to show this person the scope of what we're working with. You know, not consciously, because I'm sitting here testing the trust, but frankly, now that you say it like that, that is absolutely, I think where it was coming from is this idea that, can you handle my library, this thing that I struggle with every day and I carry it every day and mostly hide it from everyone. Yeah. I think in the end, I was testing the waters, like, can you deal with what I've had to deal with? And I get that you don't have to carry it, but to even listen to it, and if you can't begin to listen to it, then how can we help me? And again, I was. I entered it just being like, oh, well, this is just a part of the professional process. I should probably tell them all the chapters of the book and then we'll target them later. But I think it absolutely was a test, now that I think of it. And I never thought of it like that until today. So thank you.

Yeah, she'll do that to you.

Yeah, it's really not on purpose?

No, but that's a skill in itself, I think, in this arena, as I'm coming to find. Like, I mean, that is why I'm still with my current therapist, is what I've recognized. Is it? Over the last few sessions, there's more and more of those moments that I just talked about where it's not that we're actually talking about new information. It's actually stuff that I'm very, very educated on in terms of my own personal life experience and how I've synthesized conclusions about those things. No matter all of that knowledge and self awareness. Like, I. I'm getting more and more of those moments from, like, man, Susan. Like, I just never thought about it from that particular angle. It was an unknown unknown to me. It wasn't like I had the thought and then walked away. Like, literally just new perspectives on things I thought I understood, and I still understand them. But that new perspective is a new layer to that understanding.

Yeah, I like to think about it like a Rubik's cube. When clients walk into therapy, that's what I picture sometimes. And I think it's really helpful for me because I'm never viewing them as a thing that needs to be fixed. It's just that we need to rearrange some beliefs and some experiences so that you're able to function better. You already have all the pieces that you need. It's just that maybe the way that you think about them is harming you. And the way that you are experiencing things are feeling really out of place. And I can help you figure out the path to putting them back in place so that you feel more settled.

Well, in the Rubik's cube analogies, actually, again, hadn't thought of it that way, but that's a really good example, right? Like, if you mix a Rubik's cube up, most people will look at a Rubik's cube and be like, what do I even turn first? And the answer to what you turn next only becomes clearer the more you turn. So the more things you put into place, the next move becomes more clear, and the easiest moves are the ones that are at the end. But the first move is like, I can turn anything here. It's just still going to be a jumbled mess of colors, man.

Yeah, it all feels confusing, and it feels like any move you make is still going to leave you with just a mess of colors. The end goal is, yes. To have it kind of like a completed Rubik's cube where you can see each parts of your life in a really organized format. But life is never going to just let you keep a completed Rubik's cube all the time. Things are going to happen that are going to jumble it again. And I think the function of therapy is to make it easier for you to be able to put it back together when those things happen. Right. And recognize that when huge things happen, like the loss of a sibling, there's going to be things that can never go back together. You know, maybe you're losing some colors off of it, but you can still have a person there to help you manage it in a way that you're not going back to square one. I had this horrible thing happen. Let's just go back to square one. It doesn't matter. Everything is over. It's like, okay, well, how can we have you move forward with things while recognizing that life might be a little harder? Because now you're like, we peeled the paint off of one of the colors. That kind of idea.

That was brilliant. And just hearing this exchange between both of you, I had my own light bulb moment where the Rubik's cube analogy and, and rob you talking about how the next move is just as long as you start, and then it eventually will fall into place as the therapist, and you figure it out. And it feels like jiu jitsu. When you don't have a chance to study your opponent, you just start somewhere. Usually it's not some crazy, aggressive flying triangle where you just dive right in. It is opening grips. You feel each other out. That's what all of fighting, that's what all of relating is. You initially just feel each other out, figure it out. And the way I was listening to you talk about how you unloaded was fascinating because I had a lot of, that is, will you look away? And also I had a self protective instinct where I was, stay the fuck away from me. Even though I came to you for help. Yeah, it's just really fascinating to see the different, I guess, flavors and an aside. Where do you start? Because we talk about how no one knows how to start. Usually we think we have to unload. And it's not that it's wrong per se, but are there other paths that don't involve just going bleh? Emotional bouquet ing is what I refer to it as. Are there other ways that you can have an intake or first few initial sessions that you can experiment and see how that feels for you?

My experience is that everyone kind of does it differently. And I try not to dictate what the experience is going to look like because some people, I think, really do need to throw everything at you and see how you respond. And other people are the total opposite. They give me nothing. And they say that they're there for something that feels more surface level, like social anxiety or troubles with focus or things like that. That. Not that they're not bad, they're just more cut and dry. And then we do that work for months, and then all of a sudden, one day, bomb gets dropped, and there's some heavy abuse, neglect, trauma that has been there that they just weren't ready yet. And so I don't think there's a right or wrong way to do it. And that's why I always say, like, the clients are the expert in their own life. I'm just meeting you. I am a stranger to you. Even if you share your whole life story with me, I'm still a stranger. I didn't go through those things with you. I'm just hearing you say them. So you're the only person who's gonna know when you're ready to go certain places. And that might mean that you feel really comfortable telling me what happened on session one, but you're not going to feel comfortable about actually diving into how that's affected you until session 20, I think with, is there a right or wrong way? No, I think it's like, whatever feels like this is what needs to come out of my mouth right now. That's what I encourage clients to say.

I think for myself what was driving it was because I didn't know where we were going. That unloading was like, I might as well tell you everything. You pick where you think we need to start first, right? Like, let me give you the whole picture, and you tell me what the right path through this is. Right. Rather than withholding information and things. Like, again, I just didn't know how to do it any different. Like I said, I'm a pretty open person, and I believe more data is better, so I spit it out in that regard. Now, to your point, Olivia. At the same time, I was very good at self identifying what problems came from the story that I was telling, the part that I'm still not that great at. And it's a part that we're working on in my therapy. It's one of those questions you jokingly get annoyed at your therapist because they're so persistent about, but, like, how things feel. And I don't mean, like, even necessarily how you think they feel or the concept of being aware of the emotion, but literally how they physically and physiologically feel in those moments is a constant question we come back to. And that's the part that's taking time, not only because obviously, there's a part of me that's extremely guarded. It's how I survived. But there's also going back to the common thread statement, I don't know what it's supposed to feel like sometimes. What I discovered is that awareness of the acute feeling where it feels, how it feels, when it feels. Right. Like, literally, we've talked, like, where in your body does it hurt kind of deal. Right? Like, I. I still struggle with that portion just because. I don't know. Part of my survival was I knew I carried all this baggage and how we learned to survive. Carrying this warehouse full of baggage. As you disassociate or you learn coping mechanisms to actually detach, not from the concept of what you're feeling, but the literal feeling of it, because for me, it was the direct result of the feelings were too intense. The part that you can't control, obviously, you can't control when you're sad or upset or whatever, but, like, literally, the feeling was too intense. You tend to run and hide from it. And I did that for almost 40 years. Right. So it becomes the safe place to be. It's like, oh, I'm fine.

Yeah, Olivia and I were both laughing because. Not at you, but just because this is very a don't get me started part of it, because it was fucking enraging for the first year. I was fuming at myself and probably let it out to her too. What the fuck does this matter? Why do you keep repeating this? This is annoying. And I think that is something that, at the risk of sounding arrogant, more intellectually driven. People tend to use their brain to understand the situation and their logic. And due to the survival mechanisms that they cultivated, they cut off the emotional tie. But your brain is your body, and your body is your brain, and it is hard. I can't say how your journey is going to go, but for me, the journey is still ongoing. And, yeah, at first it was confusion, frustration, terror, because now she has essentially passed my guard, and now I am exceedingly vulnerable. And it's very much learning a new language and developing a dialogue with myself, one that I never felt I was safe enough to cultivate outside of very few specific moments. And I'm still learning. It is fascinating how much information there is in physical sensations.

You said something I want to touch on because it speaks very specifically to my inner workings. Right. So you talked about this logical brain kind of thing. I have a very powerful, illogical brain. It's helped me in my professional career analyzing things. I'm very good with human behavior. I am one of those quintessential people. I step in a room and I know who you are, but understanding, that's a skill set developed by a small child always trying to predict what bullshit was coming down the pipe, right? So, like, I can't even turn that off now. That also then led to a life of being very intellectually stimulated. So, like, I learn a lot. Again, I walked into this therapy journey with a very, very good self awareness of all the little dark corners. The thing I struggled and continue to struggle with, even though I'm getting better at it, because I've got a therapist to help me through these things in the process. But, like, I still struggle with the thought that I know all of my b's. I'm so good at knowing all my b's, so how come I can't change it? It's one that I struggle with because in all other facets of my life, within reason, right? Like, I've got a lot of baggage. So I'm not a perfectly successful person because I hold myself back and all that sort of stuff. But I mean, I truly was like, man, I've achieved all these things that I've wanted to do and, you know, relatively well rounded person, all these sort of things. Like, I can create stuff with my hands if I want to kind of deal. And why can't I unmix the soup that's in my head, even though I know everything? I could. I could tell you all of the traumas, but that doesn't matter. Most of the people I run into, like my friend circles, a lot of them are pretty astute, too, but they struggle with that same thing.

Being logical is almost something that makes therapy harder because you can't intellectualize your experience and think that that is going to be enough to heal from it. It's helpful to know, okay, this thing has happened to me. This is how it affects me. It makes it really hard for me to show up in relationships or focus or be vulnerable with people or, you know, whatever. But using the inner child example, it's like the difference between saying, I know there is a kid starving in that room, and I know there's a kid starving in that room, I'm going to go sit in that room and feed him. Being able to not just be aware of it, but to go and act on that healing of yourself. Yes, this horrible thing has happened to me. I need to sit with it. And that is the worst feeling, right? Of actually feeling it in your body again and bringing yourself back to that state of, like, being seven years old and feeling so unheard or neglected or abused. It's not something that you can just do anywhere. That's why therapy is helpful, because you are really opening a door that is very hard to be closed then. So having a safe space to do that is very important. But that actual process of feeling it in your body and really feeling that inner child in those parts of yourself and sitting with them rather than just recognizing that they're there, is, in my experience, the thing that creates lasting change. Because you are able to really, truly allow your body to see that you are no longer there, right? Instead of pointing it out and knowing that you're stuck, it's recognizing that you don't have to stay in that house that you grew up in. You can unstick yourself and be actually present in your current life. And it's a very hard, hard process. But I think that's why it's so important to feel it in your body and not just intellectualize it. But that journey is very infuriating because it's not logical. And when you explain it to someone, they're like, how is that possibly going to help me? And I'm like, I don't know, but you can try it.

And that concludes this episode of therapy is my therapy. If you enjoyed today's episode, please consider subscribing so you never miss an update. Once again, thanks for tuning in. The content discussed on this podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only and does not act as a replacement for therapy. Although we may share tools that have worked for us and talk about symptoms that we've experienced, it is not meant to be used for diagnostic purposes and does not constitute medical advice.