To All the Therapists I've Paid Before
I've been in therapy for more than 18 years. I've had a whole host of therapists, which I will try to remember and summarize below:
-The first therapist's office I ever stepped into was in Berkeley, California. I chose her because she worked on a sliding scale, and she was what I could afford. She was extremely green, and I was extremely mentally unwell, so it was not the best match. She'd not yet developed enough skill in kicking off sessions, so when I came in she just kind of...stared at me. Cocked her head to one side and waited for me to talk. It was unnerving, but we persisted.
When I told her that I needed to stop our sessions, that I could no longer afford to come in, she took it personally. She got visibly angry and told me she believed I was terminating because "we were doing the hard work" and I was running away from it. Which was not the case. This interaction left me feeling guilty and, frankly, soured on psychologists.
-I saw another therapist, in San Francisco, who recommended EMDR to help me process traumatic memories. She explained that I'd need to be free from smoking cannabis for at least 48 hours for the EMDR therapy to be effective. I couldn't go more than a handful of hours at a time without getting stoned off my face, so I left her practice and never went back.
-Then there was the guy in SF who I saw in the basement of his house out in the Sunset. After two sessions he read my litany of diagnoses from a sheet of paper without looking me in the eye: generalized anxiety disorder, complex post-traumatic stress disorder, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Had I been honest about my daily drug use I'm sure he'd have listed substance abuse disorder in there, as well, but I kept that part to myself.
-One of my favorites was the shrink in the Mission District of San Francisco, who was stylish and direct ("Please have your check fillout out and ready to go prior to coming into my office."), and who introduced me to the Enneagram. She based her entire practice around it, which is unconventional to say the least, since it is not an evidence-based modality. Nonetheless, I enjoyed our sessions and would have continued going to her had I not moved to New York. (I'm an Enneagram 4, by the way.)
-After moving to New York, there was my therapist in SoHo, who was average at best. She gave me life advice, which is not really what a therapist is supposed to do. I was pregnant when I was going to her and she told me no less than 10 times "don't become a short-order cook" for my kid. I remember leaving her office with a wet, swollen face from crying, and I'm sure the space to vent helped, but our entire relationship was unremarkable. I ended up ghosting her.
-After giving birth my cannabis addiction grew a second head and became a monster like I'd never seen before. I needed help. I sought out a therapist, this one on the Upper West Side, who specialized in substance abuse. I spilled it all in my first session, told him everything about how bad my use had gotten. With the other therapists I would hide how much I used, terrified of being told to stop, but with him I laid it all out to bare. In our second session he couldn't remember my name. "Stephanie, right? Drinking problem?" I didn't have a drinking problem, and my name is not Stephanie. I never went back.
-I've been with my current therapist for over seven years. I first started seeing him in the Meatpacking District in a basement office with bizarre art on the walls. But he left that practice and we've been doing telehealth (Facetime) calls ever since. I got sober while in his care, and getting sober healed about 90% of my problems. Turns out the anxiety I was trying to manage with weed was -- what do you know? -- being exacerbated exponentially by the weed. I finally found one that stuck.
Sometimes I wonder if I'll be in therapy forever. Maybe. It wouldn't be the worst thing.