Therapy and Enabling

(This post is intensely personal and involves addiction, if these topics are triggering for you please be mindful.)

I’ve been working with my therapist these past few weeks trying to make a plan and make some changes in my marriage. My husband is struggling with an alcohol addiction and I am struggling with codependence. We have been stuck in this cycle for a long while, it’s time for some change.

Each week after my session I write a note to myself about the things that stood out or the moments I don’t want to forget. I’ve always done this after therapy sessions, it helps me focus on the work, I come back to it throughout the week while I’m processing, and it reminds me later of all the work I’ve done.

On tumblr I shared these session notes after the first time my husband and I went to couples counselling, and again when I went through counselling for PTSD after a car accident with my children. Each time so many folks reached out to say it was helpful for them to have insight to someone else’s process, especially when these are usually private things we don’t share.

Here are the notes from my first three sessions this month.

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Session 1

I hate this feeling, like my nerves are all raw and exposed. This vibration of emotions. But I needed to start, and that first dive in is the hardest.

I have homework:

•to remember that shame is living here and remember that shame is the lens

•to imagine what my identity looks like on my own, without him

The first one is harder because I forget. It’s easier to see the anger than the shame underneath. But I can be gentler with the shame, more empathetic to the shame than I can be to the anger. It’s good advice.

The second one isn’t too tough. I’ve been building my own identity for a long time. I love who I am, and who I’m becoming. I’m that person with or without him. The identity piece that’s hard for me to hold on to is our family being intact. There’s such a shame (ah...) for me in admitting defeat, throwing in the towel.

She stopped me mid-sentence once. I said “It was easier before the lockdown because” and she said quickly “I seem to recall it wasn’t easy at all.” Just like that. Like a fact. Not a feeling. It wasn’t easy. She’s right.

It’s hard to spill your guts and then “time’s up”, step out into the harsh sunlight now and go about your day. But I’m doing it. I’m doing the work.

Session 2

What the fuck. I feel like a mess. She didn’t tell me what I wanted to hear. She gave me the scary answers instead. The truth made me cry. There’s no loophole or cheat or easy answer. I just have to do it.

I vented and ranted and said fuck too many times and listed all of the unacceptable infuriating grievances and complaints. She listened. She agreed. And then she said “We’ve diagnosed him thoroughly now. What are we going to do?” She looked at me for the answer.

And there’s no loophole or cheat or easy answer. I just have to do it.

Session 3

So many tears and so much advice. She said “be angry” and as I started to try tears streamed down my face. So much easier to be sad than angry. Sad comes easily. Anger is harder to conjure.

I made a plan. I talked myself out of the plan in a hundred ways, and then I went back to my plan. The universe is bringing change whether I like it or not.

I hate confrontation, I hate rocking the boat, she reminds me that sometimes the boat needs to be rocked.

“Don’t think of yourself as fighting for a boundary, think of yourself as holding a boundary, defending it.” I like this visual much better.