You'll want to read this one
One thing I don't share easily, or really to just anyone, is that I went to counseling for about three years during nursing school and after. The part about going to counseling isn't the part that makes it challenging to share, but the reasons why I thought I needed to go to counseling. Talking about this and opening it up will make me extremely vulnerable to anyone who reads this, however, if it helps someone struggling like I did, feel like I do now after counseling, then my vulnerability is well worth it.
It wasn't an easy choice to decide that I needed to go to counseling. It was a lot of heartache, depression and extreme anxiety. However, on top of that, I had a good cousin tell me it's not normal, and a good friend pretty much tell me - I think you have issues, I think you need to talk to a counselor, you may even have 'fear of abandonment'.
So back up, what kind of issues did I have? First of all, the kinds of 'men' or boys I dates were not good. They usually had some issues. They usually needed some kind of "fixing" or some kind of issue that I felt I needed to help them with. And when I couldn't, I was the one that got hurt. I would try my absolute HARDEST to make that relationship work. And when it would fall and crumble I took it incredibly hard (fear of abandonment) I would essentially throw myself into an anxiety attack. Not only that, but I would also put myself into this shame spiral. Why wasn't I good enough? Why wasn't I worth it? What's wrong with me that he left? Questions like this would go through my head at extreme speeds that would literally kill me from the inside out. My own thoughts about myself were tearing me apart.
I went to Meredith (name has been changed) my counselor for the first time, and I decided I would be as open as I could be, because I wanted to get better. It took me a long time to actually go into my first session of counseling. I was so nervous about it, and anxious - because lets be real, thats just the way I work.
So the overall experience of counseling was amazing! I will go into more and more details, but I don't know how Meredith did it, but she gave me things to think about weekly, "homework assignments". Continuously, we would talk about this shame spiral I would go through, and how it would start and how I needed to learn to get myself out of this cycle.
We dug deep. Real deep. I had to relive a lot of stuff from my childhood. So the reason I always felt the need to "fix" these guys was because I never was able to fix my dad. For those of you that don't know, my dad was an alcoholic. I never thought that it impacted me as deeply as I now know it did. I dealt with it, I knew he had a problem and I thought I knew that there was nothing I could do about it. Well through counseling I learned that I deep down thought that I thought I should have been able to fix him. That if I was "good enough" he would have changed and gotten himself healthy. That if I was perfect, he would turn himself around. Or if I was "worth it" he would have gone to get help and stop drinking. But that didn't happen, he died before that happened. So I ended up projecting that onto my significant others. And thats where all those thoughts came from, of needing to be good enough, or if I'm worth it then this will happen, etc.
Essentially, I had to work through all of these issues I had with my dad to be able to date a person as I am deep down and if we break up, and I went through this cycle again, I would have to learn to pull myself out of this spiral.
As easy as this may sound for any "normal" person, this was far from easy. Even three years out, I still struggle with this from time to time. This was the pattern I had for 20 some years. It literally took teaching myself positive self talk and getting rid of negative self talk. Telling myself why I am worth it, or why I am good enough. Why it's okay that I am not perfect.
Something that goes along with being perfect, was in relationships I would worry about messing up in the smallest ways. I'd be worried about saying one small thing wrong, or doing a simple thing incorrectly. Literally the smallest things that a "normal" thinking person wouldn't even take a second thought about. I would worry that this action, or this slip of being perfect would make my significant other think completely different of me, and they would break things off and leave me. One thing Meredith would always say to me, or remind me of was something on the lines of, what if they did that to you -- would that cause you to leave them, or think differently of them? My answer would always be, "no, of course not". And with that validating my irrational thinking.
This is the constant struggles I would go through. It wasn't here and there, it was pretty much constant. It wasn't always just significant others, but it did show up in other relationships too, however, definitely showed majorly in romantic relationships.
I do think this blog post has gotten long, and I am slightly nervous about posting this to the world. But like I said, if this can help one person, I will make myself vulnerable. Maybe it will just give a slight insight into my life.
If you've made it this far, I truly thank you for reading this. It shows that you are interested in my life, and care enough to see where my crazy life is at.
xoxo, breezy
It wasn't an easy choice to decide that I needed to go to counseling. It was a lot of heartache, depression and extreme anxiety. However, on top of that, I had a good cousin tell me it's not normal, and a good friend pretty much tell me - I think you have issues, I think you need to talk to a counselor, you may even have 'fear of abandonment'.
So back up, what kind of issues did I have? First of all, the kinds of 'men' or boys I dates were not good. They usually had some issues. They usually needed some kind of "fixing" or some kind of issue that I felt I needed to help them with. And when I couldn't, I was the one that got hurt. I would try my absolute HARDEST to make that relationship work. And when it would fall and crumble I took it incredibly hard (fear of abandonment) I would essentially throw myself into an anxiety attack. Not only that, but I would also put myself into this shame spiral. Why wasn't I good enough? Why wasn't I worth it? What's wrong with me that he left? Questions like this would go through my head at extreme speeds that would literally kill me from the inside out. My own thoughts about myself were tearing me apart.
I went to Meredith (name has been changed) my counselor for the first time, and I decided I would be as open as I could be, because I wanted to get better. It took me a long time to actually go into my first session of counseling. I was so nervous about it, and anxious - because lets be real, thats just the way I work.
So the overall experience of counseling was amazing! I will go into more and more details, but I don't know how Meredith did it, but she gave me things to think about weekly, "homework assignments". Continuously, we would talk about this shame spiral I would go through, and how it would start and how I needed to learn to get myself out of this cycle.
We dug deep. Real deep. I had to relive a lot of stuff from my childhood. So the reason I always felt the need to "fix" these guys was because I never was able to fix my dad. For those of you that don't know, my dad was an alcoholic. I never thought that it impacted me as deeply as I now know it did. I dealt with it, I knew he had a problem and I thought I knew that there was nothing I could do about it. Well through counseling I learned that I deep down thought that I thought I should have been able to fix him. That if I was "good enough" he would have changed and gotten himself healthy. That if I was perfect, he would turn himself around. Or if I was "worth it" he would have gone to get help and stop drinking. But that didn't happen, he died before that happened. So I ended up projecting that onto my significant others. And thats where all those thoughts came from, of needing to be good enough, or if I'm worth it then this will happen, etc.
Essentially, I had to work through all of these issues I had with my dad to be able to date a person as I am deep down and if we break up, and I went through this cycle again, I would have to learn to pull myself out of this spiral.
As easy as this may sound for any "normal" person, this was far from easy. Even three years out, I still struggle with this from time to time. This was the pattern I had for 20 some years. It literally took teaching myself positive self talk and getting rid of negative self talk. Telling myself why I am worth it, or why I am good enough. Why it's okay that I am not perfect.
Something that goes along with being perfect, was in relationships I would worry about messing up in the smallest ways. I'd be worried about saying one small thing wrong, or doing a simple thing incorrectly. Literally the smallest things that a "normal" thinking person wouldn't even take a second thought about. I would worry that this action, or this slip of being perfect would make my significant other think completely different of me, and they would break things off and leave me. One thing Meredith would always say to me, or remind me of was something on the lines of, what if they did that to you -- would that cause you to leave them, or think differently of them? My answer would always be, "no, of course not". And with that validating my irrational thinking.
This is the constant struggles I would go through. It wasn't here and there, it was pretty much constant. It wasn't always just significant others, but it did show up in other relationships too, however, definitely showed majorly in romantic relationships.
I do think this blog post has gotten long, and I am slightly nervous about posting this to the world. But like I said, if this can help one person, I will make myself vulnerable. Maybe it will just give a slight insight into my life.
If you've made it this far, I truly thank you for reading this. It shows that you are interested in my life, and care enough to see where my crazy life is at.
xoxo, breezy
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