Finding A Therapist
Sometimes you need to call in reinforcements to survive long term. With that understanding, I went to visit my therapist for the first time later that day. From the moment we met I knew she would change everything for me though I didn’t understand it yet. She came highly recommended by several people I loved and as fate would have it had been right in front of me the whole time. Everything about our connection felt like the stars aligning for me. What I mean by that is that her office was directly across the street from where I had been working for ages. Eric and I had sat on the porch drinking coffee staring at her window without even knowing she was there. She'd met him & our dog Bowie a million times when they were out walking.
When I started doing the hard work of healing, I came to realize that I had a ton of limiting beliefs that had been holding me back all my life. The harmful words my dad had dished out on a daily basis in my childhood were on a loop inside my brain. Until that point, I believed deep down that my dad was right about everything he said about me. I believed that I was unlovable and would never have any friends even when my life was full of them. I believed I wasn’t smart or deserving of anything good. All that was complete and total bullshit.
Sound engineers and therapists have a lot in common if you ask me. I like to imagine my therapist at the mixing board helping me make sense of all the chaos. If there’s feedback through the speakers, she is helping me figure out where it’s coming from. She helps me decipher what needs to be amplified. She helps me see what is causing the desired sound to diminish. She helps me pick out parts & dial in on the leads. The sound quality of my internal dialogue is so much better since she’s come into my life.
Listening to paired-down arrangements of popular music is one of my favorite pastimes. I see it as getting to the heart of the song which is exactly what my therapist does for me. She assists me in letting go of the reverb of trauma by mixing out the PTSD-induced effects distorting my thoughts and turning the volume on my intuition up to eleven. She organizes the sound bites rattling around my brain and orchestrates them into something more beautiful than I could ever imagine. She teaches me to find balance, keep my heart open & step into the glorious spotlight of my own life.
She shines with an inner radiance that feels incredibly sacred. Holding space to truly see, hear and understand another is nothing short of a miracle. God wasn’t playing when he said “be still and know”. The inner peace she has given me is priceless. Redemption is found in the calm within the chaos.