Maybe You Should Talk to Someone

Summary

Introduction

What if the person you're paying to help you get it together is actually falling apart herself? This is the story of a therapist who finds herself on the other side of the couch, discovering that even the most 'together' experts are frequently tripping over their own lives.

The Decoy and the Breakdown

The author's own relationship ended abruptly over breakfast, transforming her from a composed therapist into someone frantically googling her ex and sobbing on her office floor. This personal crisis forced her to confront the reality that even mental health professionals can become unreliable narrators of their own lives, desperately seeking someone to validate their victimhood rather than challenge their perspective.

Most people enter therapy with a "presenting problem"—blaming external factors like partners, bosses, or circumstances for their misery. However, these issues are typically decoys that distract from deeper, more frightening truths about mortality, loneliness, and personal responsibility. We craft our stories to protect our egos, hoping therapists will join our "team" and confirm that everyone else is the problem.

The crucial shift happens when we stop asking "what did they do to me?" and start asking "why am I here?" This transition from external blame to internal examination is both painful and necessary. Simply recognizing you have a problem isn't the same as solving it—real change requires moving beyond the surface-level crises we use as shields and confronting the person in the mirror.

Meeting the 'Others' in the Waiting Room

John was a high-powered producer who seemed designed to be hated - rude, dismissive, constantly checking his phone during therapy sessions. But his abrasive behavior was actually a defense mechanism, a way of rejecting others before they could reject him. The author realized she had to practice "wise compassion" instead of "idiot compassion" - directly confronting John's bullying behavior rather than politely avoiding the truth.

While struggling to find empathy for John's narcissism, the author recognized she was doing the same thing with her own therapist Wendell - hiding behind her "high-functioning" label and clinical language as her own form of defensiveness. She discovered that the people who irritate us most are often reflecting our own hidden wounds. John's anger and achievement-focused mask reminded her of her own ways of avoiding grief and sadness.

Once the author stopped judging John's behavior and started seeing his underlying fear, he became more present in sessions. The key insight is that we all wear masks to keep people at a safe distance, then wonder why we feel lonely. The people we judge most harshly often mirror parts of ourselves we don't want to acknowledge - John wasn't really an idiot, but a man who had lost something precious and was using anger to stay warm against the cold emptiness of sadness.

The Speed of Life and the Certainty of Death

Julie discovered she had terminal cancer shortly after her honeymoon, forcing her to confront mortality in a way most people avoid. Her life became a series of impossible "Would You Rather" choices—lose her breasts or her life, endure another year of pain or leave her husband now. Through these terrible options, she learned the only thing she truly owned was her response to what happened to her.

Instead of pursuing bucket list dreams or focusing on her prestigious academic career, Julie chose to work at a grocery store because she craved simple human connection. She wanted to be the person who genuinely asked customers about their day while scanning groceries. Facing death stripped away all the "someday" plans and prestige, revealing that what mattered most was being truly seen by other people while she was still here.

Julie's story reveals that we all live with the same ticking clock—hers was just louder. She refused labels like "warrior" or "brave" because they allowed healthy people to distance themselves from her reality. Her radical clarity about mortality showed that most of us live in self-made hallways, waiting for doors to open that we've never even tried. The lesson: stop editing your life for an audience and start living it for yourself, because life is always happening "during"—there is no "after."

The Prison of Familiarity

Most people claim they want happiness, but many are actually more comfortable with misery because it's familiar and predictable. Happiness feels scary because it requires responsibility to maintain it and carries the risk of loss. This shows up in both major life patterns and small daily habits—like clinging to our own crumpled tissue when fresh ones are available, because admitting relief is possible means confronting that we've been choosing to suffer.

Change requires a period of "unknowing" where we must let go of our familiar identity stories—victim, smart one, the one who gets abandoned. Rita, a patient planning suicide, exemplified this by staying trapped in guilt over decades-old mistakes rather than facing the vulnerability of trying again. Like a prisoner shaking locked bars while ignoring the open sides of their cell, we often refuse to walk out of self-imposed prisons because freedom means taking full responsibility for our choices.

The path forward involves grieving the life we thought we were supposed to have and moving past "idiot compassion"—the self-pity that keeps us stuck. True change means editing our life script and accepting that our prison cells are unlocked, even when walking into the unknown feels more terrifying than staying in familiar misery.

Wounded Healers and the Mirror Effect

The Secret of Wounded Healers Therapists aren't expert observers looking down from above—they're fellow travelers dealing with similar struggles. The author's sessions with her therapist Wendell constantly reminded her of this reality. When she tried to use professional "therapist code" to avoid real emotional work, he would literally kick her foot to bring her back to authentic engagement. The therapeutic relationship works because both people are human and flawed, not because one has achieved some perfect state of mental health.

Mirrors and Projection in Healing The author became obsessed with changes in Wendell's office—new furniture, different decor—which she realized was "projective identification," putting her own internal renovation onto his physical space. The real breakthrough comes through "feeling felt"—when someone truly sees you beyond your defenses and drama. When Wendell told her he liked her "neshama" (soul), he was seeing past her surface anxieties to her core self. This kind of deep recognition is both healing and terrifying because it removes places to hide.

Living in the During There's no finish line where you become "fixed" and stop working on yourself—we're all "in the during" of continuous growth. The author learned this by holding mirrors for her patients while using their journeys to illuminate her own wounds. When her difficult patient John finally opened up about losing his son, both their griefs became sources of connection rather than shame. Building a new internal world requires the courage to edit your life script and examine the parts of your story you usually skip over.

The Courage to Edit the Script

John's breakthrough came when he stopped performing and started grieving. As a writer who lost his son, he had been channeling his self-directed anger into rage at the world, unable to find words for his own tragedy. Real healing began when he allowed himself to narrate a sad story rather than play the hero in a hollow one, shifting from victim to author of his future.

Healing requires mourning the life you thought you'd have—the relationships, health, or outcomes that didn't materialize. Progress isn't linear from sadness to happiness; it's a spiral where you revisit the same pain but with better tools each time. Your psychological immune system naturally seeks meaning in loss, but you must stop picking at the scabs of resentment and feel pain without letting it define you.

Many people live according to scripts written in childhood, still trying to prove they're the "smart one" or seeking approval from those long gone. True healing means editing these narratives—not changing the past, but changing how you tell it. The author's own experience with a cold breakup email illustrates this choice: remain the "jilted woman" forever, or write a new chapter where you're more than just a character in someone else's plot.

The Termination of the Alliance

In therapy, "termination" refers to the end of treatment—ideally a graduation rather than an abrupt cutoff. The author experienced two profound goodbyes: saying farewell to Julie, her dying patient, taught her that love remains even when the person leaves, while ending therapy with her own therapist Wendell showed her she had internalized his guidance and no longer needed external validation.

Successful termination isn't about forgetting the therapeutic relationship, but integrating the lessons and perspective into your own identity. The author realized she had transformed from the broken woman who first entered Wendell's office—she was still "in the during" of life's challenges but no longer feared difficult moments. The goal is to develop your own internal dialogue and coping skills rather than depending on the therapist's presence.

All relationships are temporary, whether they end through death, breakup, or successful therapy completion. The pain of loss is the cost of meaningful connection, but if you've done the emotional work, you don't leave empty-handed—you gain new ways of seeing yourself and the world, along with a more compassionate inner voice that continues the conversation long after the formal relationship ends.

Living 'In the During'

Mental health isn't about reaching a perfect state where you never feel sad or anxious again. Instead, it's about developing the capacity to experience all human emotions without fear. There's no "happily ever after" destination—only the ongoing practice of staying present and awake to your own life as it unfolds.

We are constantly evolving, and the person you are today is just a draft, not a final version. You don't need to wait for a crisis to start rewriting your story—you're already "in the during" right now. The key is finding the courage to be vulnerable and let yourself be truly seen by others and yourself. While you might be an unreliable narrator of your own life, you're still the only one who can write your authentic truth and pick up the pen to create your next chapter.