The work to know yourself
How therapy and therapist training always leads me back to the same piece of advice.
Most of the work happens outside the therapy room. I mull over what my therapist said, turn it over like a stone in my mind to reveal a white seam or a blanket of moss. Most often I forget what she said, what I said, and I go back the next week and ask her to remind me, because I know it was important, and find that even though I forgot the words, I remembered the feeling of it anyway. The stone lodged itself in the river bed.
I have changed so much over the last three years and I’m changing still. I don’t notice it always, but Mark does, and when he points it out to me it feels gratifying. Here is proof that the rumination and the journaling and the talking are remapping my brain, digging up those old, weed-choked roads that my brain once wandered down, the ones that made me depressed and anxious and kept me safe but didn’t serve me. Now I hack through the wild lands on either side, clear new paths for my mind to follow.
It all sounds rather dramatic, but nothing captures the work of therapy like a metaphor. How else can you capture something so intangible? I go, I talk, I listen and I leave lighter, if not a little tired. Soon, it’ll be me sat in the other chair.
I can mark the progress though with some things. Writing feels much less scary, much less vulnerable. I can catch negative thought patterns in the act. I can pull myself back from the brink of stress. And if you were to ask me how I’ve done it all I’d say, again: talking, listening, journaling, thinking. Therapy and the things adjacent to it. I can promise you that whoever carved ‘Know thyself’ into the walls of Delphi’s Temple of Apollo knew what they were on about. It is the only thing we can do if we want to live truthfully.
I think that’s the only advice we need. Know yourself, and everything becomes clearer, everything gets easier. Things still go wrong, life still hurls curveballs, loss happens, but you can weather it all if you know what’s right and true for you. I see a lot of posts and articles floating about on the internet about the ‘authentic self’, and whilst these mean well, they are often nothing but empty platitudes. ‘Follow your dreams, do what’s right for you, be who you are’ - which is great, if you know the answer to any of that. But too often we subsume the opinions of others, and of society. We think, ‘I know who I am. I’m someone who gets up at 6am and drinks a green smoothie and does sun salutations and spends two hours eating breakfast and doing my makeup before I sit down at my desk and work diligently for seven hours. When I log off, I go for a run, then cook myself a vegetarian, homemade dinner before reading a self-help book and going to bed at 9:30pm, where I fall asleep instantly.’ For this version of ourselves, curveballs don’t exist. Jobs like nursing and teaching don’t exist. Neither do challenging emotions or pessimistic thoughts, or out of the blue phone calls, or knee pain, or a lack of motivation. Society tells us, if we do all of these things, then we’re living life well, we’re doing self-care. This is the rubber-stamped ‘good life’. We don’t stop to ask ourselves if we really want - if we can really do - any of this.
This isn’t to say we shouldn’t do things that support and nurture us, but we have to stop and ask if we’re doing these things simply because we think we should. ‘Should’ is the key word here - find a ‘should’, and you’ll find a value or opinion you’ve picked up from elsewhere. Sometimes it’s a good one: we should exercise because it keeps our body and mind healthy. But what about that job you work yourself to the bone for? What about that dinner you simply don’t enjoy? What about that 4am wake up to cram in your smoothie and sun salutations before you get the kids up?
This is all to say, I have spent the last three years interrogating the core of me, and the best advice I can give is this: know yourself. Listen, question, read, journal and talk. It is a life’s work, but it’s the only work worth doing. It’s often painful, and lately it’s been exhuming dormant feelings of anger for me, of time lost. But that I have had the chance to start this is enough. After all, I remind myself, it is the only work guaranteed to work, because it’s the only thing that brings me closer to the life I want to live.
the mumble and muse. is a Substack newsletter from trainee therapist, writer and perfectionist Caitlin Evans. You can subscribe for free.
Practicing therapy not only helps with mental health but grows many skills along the way. The journaling you do has helped you learn to write, rephrase, and create. I see it in this post, your writing is incredible! The lessons you learned show wisdom, after all, what better than to listen, question, read, journal, and talk? thank you so much for sharing and revealing the true side of your therapy journey.