What do you think? "Tere: Celebrating 10 Years in Therapy!" Because recently, when I decided to head back to therapy, it hit me that in October, it'll be 10 years since I first entered therapy, and like all commemorative years of significant things in my life, I'm feeling reflective about the choice I made back then and what it did for my life. I went into therapy for the sake of my marriage, at least initially. I was newly wed, and two things happened at the same time that made it clear to me that I needed professional help: I realized that marriage sucked, and 9/11. And surprisingly, they were related. I'd spent the first six months of my marriage in limbo. I didn't know what it meant to be married, to be a wife, and what I was supposed to do or be in this new role. I was 23 and had gone from living with my parents to living with a guy, and I had no idea what to do. I said "but I don't feel married" so many times that my (ex)husband went from being amused to being pretty freaked out. Even though I knew none of this had anything to do with my feelings for him or my desire to be married to him, I understood that it looked kinda bad. Things were getting more and more stressful as I waited for the magical secrets of marriage to be revealed to me. And then 9/11 happened. And the thing about 9/11 for me was that it called back - in a forceful, ugly, unignorable way - a whole host of issues from my childhood. I grew up with really irrational fears about crime and war (fwiw, children should never be allowed to watch the news), and while I realized how extreme my fears were as I got older and had a better understanding of the world, 9/11 was a manifestation of everything I'd feared as a child. My insomnia returned; I was jittery and paranoid and totally unable to put the tragedy in any rational perspective. And these things were making me a terrible wife. On top of the struggle I'd faced in fitting myself into this new role, I was now not functioning too well, and it made me irritable and uncommunicative. After a few weeks of this, my husband sat me down and told me I needed help. When I brushed him off, he gave me his bottom line: either I entered therapy, or he'd end the marriage. (That he refused to get help when this exact scene played out between us, roles reversed, six-and-a-half years later, is a kick in the gut that was not, and obviously won't ever be, since I'm bringing it up now, lost on me). Of course, I entered therapy. Immediately. My marriage was at stake, and I knew, even as I felt very resistant to the whole thing, that I was now part of something bigger than just myself, and that I owed it to my husband and my brand-new marriage to admit I had shxt to deal with and then do just that: deal with it. That's how it began. Within a few sessions, I saw that I truly did need this, that I could stand to gain a great deal from this experience if I approached it openly. It took many months for me to feel like it was doing anything for me, or like anything was changing, really. But there came a point, probably about nine months in, where I became aware of... something. Hard to describe, but I felt good in my skin, in a way I'd never felt before. It was something very personal that had nothing to do with anything specific going on in my life. I suppose now that maybe I was feeling the first glimmers of actual resolution, or at least, a deeper understanding about myself and the choices I'd made. At that time, while I was really mature about some things, there were areas where I was not, not anything close to it, and therapy was something that helped me grow the hell up. I had to gain a better understanding of some things to make peace with them, but I also had to get over myself and become a functioning adult. There came a point where I realized that therapy would be a very extended thing with me. While there are some things that are as resolved as they're going to get (which basically means that they continue to be, and will always be, problematic, but my attitude about and reaction to them is totally different - healthier), the years since I entered therapy have been filled with situations (first split with husband, reuniting with him, pregnancy, motherhood, marriage permanently ending, for starters) that have kept me going back. I'll get a few months in, take an extended break, then head back when it's once again necessary. Along the way, I've developed a few theories that I think are generally true. I'll admit that I've become one of those (annoying, I know) people who thinks just about everyone needs therapy. But you know what? Most people really do need therapy. I don't think many of us are equipped with healthy coping mechanisms, and really, whatever serious damage we suffer as kids is really, really going to eff us up as adults unless we make some kind of peace with it. (Sure, some people don't need it as much as others, but even those could stand a session or five with a professional.) But before you can make peace with it, you have to admit it's there, face it, and then, you know, deal with it somehow. And this is a really scary thing. So scary, actually, that it can derail the entire process. My second theory is about just this: if you get to the point where you genuinely face some of these things, it can be so frightening and painful that you kinda hit a crossroad: you either take a deep breath and dive into therapy, in a way very different (more sincere, more determined, more courageous) than whatever attitude you'd had about it before, or you're so (subconsciously) terrified that you stop. Because you were able to talk about the issues and gain a bit of clarity, you convince yourself you're "cured" and carry on without it. But really, nothing is actually resolved, and it's all just going to keep coming back. These are generalities, of course, but I've seen these patterns play out in people over and over again. I catch myself saying "they need therapy" (about various people in various situations, up to and including people I don't even know, like, you know, celebrities) quite a bit, and I mean it. Meanwhile, yes. It's almost a decade since I decided to grow up, own my shxt, and do something about it. And indeed, I celebrate.