Therapists Have Feelings, Too
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I want to share a little bit of my story and how I became a therapist. It all started before I was born, actually. Generation after generation of negative relationship patterns, and my parents fell right into it.
Don't get me wrong, I love them. I still have contact with them and care for them very much. But I had to work for that, because what they gave my siblings and I was not an easy start, emotionally. Imagine two strong-willed, independent, and somewhat (others may say a lot) narcissistic people coming together to create three children (I am the youngest). They both loved all of us, but were more focused on their hatred for each other. At age 7, they divorced and I sat in front of a judge who was asking me who I felt safe with, who I wanted to spend more time with, and who I ultimately would live with.
My older siblings chose no contact. Our father was verbally abusive, and physically aggressive. He did not hit us, but it always felt like it was coming. They felt unsafe with him. Wanted nothing to do with him, but always yearned for that relationship. They lived primarily with our mother. I lived with our mother and visited our father on a strict visitation schedule because neither of them would concede: every other day, every other weekend...for my entire childhood and adolescence. I lived out of duffle bags and never felt like I could be still.
Our mother overcompensated for our Navy Veteran, always right, my way or the highway father. She let us do basically anything we wanted. My brother turned to addiction at age 16. He had about 10 years of an opiate addiction. In and out of rehabs, in and out of our family home with our mother. His addiction started when I was 7. They tried to shield me from it, but there's only so much you can do to hide the emotional turmoil that comes with addiction. My sister started dating guys when I was about 11/12. She also has an autoimmune disease called Scleroderma.
Before I continue, please know that I do not say any of the following in a way to discount either of their experiences. They will probably both get their own blog post. This post is to help explain me. So, between a brother with opiate addiction, a sister with a chronic illness and acting out behaviors with guys, and two step-siblings in our mother's new marriage who were also acting out, I, as the youngest, did not have attention from our mother. As the only child at my father's, until he got into a relationship with a woman who had a kid (a couple years younger than me) and the had a kid with him (who is the same age as my step-daughter: 10), I got ALL of his attention.
Both of my parents liked to make me feel like I could save them. Something called parentification (cue the overhead rainbow meme from Spongebob). Mix this together with my diagnosed Major Depressive Disorder, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and you have the makings of a therapist! Did I come to this field due to my own issues? Yes. Have I been able to solve my own issues now that I am a therapist? No. I did not consciously come into the field to fix myself, but in the process of becoming a therapist I learned that therapists need their own therapists.
They actually teach you that in therapist school. It is a recommendation that all budding therapists obtain their own therapist. Why? Because our clients deserve a blank canvas to splatter paint their problems onto; not a muddy, crusted, and completely covered canvas that is full of our own problems. The moral of this story is, I am a therapist because I want to be the person I needed when I was younger, for others, so maybe they won't have to find their own way like I did (which was a long, dark, scary road that almost resulted in my death...no exaggeration, I will make another post about it if you are interested in reading).
Being a therapist is my beautiful destination from the difficult road of my past.
Thanks for reading :)
-Raven
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