A few weeks ago my husband attended an event without me. When he came home after and told me about how he met someone new and shared with them that I was a therapist. My husband smiled and told me that when he mentioned he was married to a therapist, the person responded that “she must be therapizing you all the time! I can’t imagine what that must be like” insinuating annoyance at the prospect.
I wasn’t surprised by the interaction, as it hasn’t been the first time someone in my life has heard that I am a therapist and wondered if perhaps that meant I was some kind of magician. And I don’t blame them. For those unfamiliar, “therapy” seems like something preternatural.
If, like me, you were introduced to therapy through learning about big names like Sigmund Freud and the other masters of the intellectually inaccessible “unconscious” world in which therapy exists, it would make sense why one would want to keep therapy at an arm's length. In earlier forms therapy was popularized by, and performed with the elite. Stereotypes were of educated men working their magic on hysterical patients, and imperceptibly altering their state. People clapped and awed at the spectacle of it all, while I imagine internally thanking their lucky stars they weren’t on the therapist's couch themselves.
For much of my life, I too saw therapy as this methodical, mysterious thing. Someone enters a dark room, and emerges somehow changed. It did feel inaccessible, and also made me wonder if I was capable of doing it. Until the veil of mystery was lifted, and I realized through being a client myself what therapy is, and what it isn’t.
In situations where I hear similar reactions to my husband that day, I like to share that “therapy” is, in fact, happening on a daily basis all around us, without any of us realizing. The reality is that each time someone offers a listening ear, starts a new hobby, repairs a relationship after a fight with a friend, asks others for help, or in those gatherings that feel safe, warm, and filled with the laughter of loved ones; that is all therapy. What happens in the therapist's office isn't entirely different.
In truth, therapy is not something saved for certain people or only done by those degreed who know the right words, or the most current modalities. Therapy is an experience, and it can happen anywhere at any time with anyone. Therapy is the experience. It is the experience of connecting to others, the experience of doing new and difficult things. It is the shattering that follows change, and the repair that comes after that. Therapy is already an innate part of being alive, and yes, you are already doing it.
With all of that said, I think the question that begs to be asked is that if all of this is true, why does anyone do therapy for “real”? And the answer is simply because of consent. Of all the professions that exist, there are few in which a person enthusiastically, consistently consents to riding sidecar as a person propels themselves through the deepest and sometimes darkest trenches of their life. While some of the people in our lives may elect to be there for some of our experiences some of the time, they may also value reprieve from it. For a therapist, this is not the case. Becoming a therapist calls upon a person to take joy and delight in another person. All of that person, without questioning them, becoming swallowed by bias, or wishing for reprieve from them.
Some people will follow up discoveries about me being a therapist and what therapy is by saying, “Man, that must be draining having to be on all the time and listen to all that hard stuff. That’s a lot.” and I tell them, actually, it’s not hard at all. It’s the easiest, and most natural thing I’ve ever done.
It was the therapist in me that wanted to get a degree to practice, it is not the degree that made me a therapist. Yes, the degree affords me the ability to do something so natural to me as my livelihood, and of course teaches me tact, but being a therapist is indeed just who I am. The therapist parts of me are not severable from the other parts.
With gratitude, my husband is someone who has learned about the ins and outs of therapy, and what being a therapist entails. As he continued sharing his interaction with me, he laughed and furrowed his brows, reflecting on the comment “Like, obviously you therapize me?” he continued “You’re literally a therapist, and why would that be a bad thing?” We both giggled and allowed for a brief pause to regain our composure before I carried on.
“So, how are you?” I asked naturally.