The Gift of Therapy

Many of you have already begun to make plans or anticipate what the holidays will entail with family and friends. What kind of feelings you will have when you think about who you will see. Maybe it is who you will remember, or don’t want to remember. What your bank account will look like at the end of December. How you will manage the work/life balance. Dread, obligation, anger, grief, the list goes on I’m sure.

To be honest, my patients start talking about this at the beginning of October. They start thinking through what kind of triggers they will experience, what kind of boundaries they will need to set, and what happens when people don’t respect them. Or even what happens when they don’t hold their own boundaries. It’s messy. It’s complicated. But it is worth your time to invest yourself in your well-being. Why? Because no one will do that work for you. No one is in charge of your happiness and peace but you.

Many people don’t recognize how stressed they are until after they have gone through the holidays. Folks don’t recognize that some of the stress they have held over the months leading up to the New Year could have been prevented. Stress is very sneaky. But you can see it if you are paying attention. It hides in the body, it hides in the corners of your mind. It is there when we don’t look, and it is there when we do look for it.

One of the values of therapy is that we can begin to look at stress in an environment (the therapy room) with someone who is trained to deal with stress. Therapy still holds the stigma that ‘you must be flawed and weak if you can’t fix your own problems.’ Yet, the current mindset is that the world is on fire and we are all trying to cope with how to live in it. We have slowly become more accustomed to acknowledging our need for help, our vulnerability in this day and age, our fragility trying to exist in a fastly changing society.

It can still seem cliche to go see a ‘shrink,’ to get my head fixed so I can get back on track. Yet, there is something very appealing about letting down and not having to hold all of the heaviness of life with someone else. And eventually, being able to have agency in how you might live your life in a way that feels lighter. In a way that feels more authentic and honest. But it begins with the curiosity that there might be another way to do this holiday season. It starts with acknowledging that you don’t want to grin and bear it; that you want to find another way to see yourself through. You were actually not meant to hustle, to hide, or even to agree with the expectations that are set for you. You were not meant to live in fear of what it means to be yourself. Perhaps it is time to take yourself seriously and call things what they are. Perhaps it is time to recognize your own need for healing in places that you have kept in the dark. Let the holidays bring forth a new opportunity for real joy and hope.

About the Author:

Kate McGill is a mental health therapist serving individuals and couples internationally.

Kate McGill
Kate McGill Counseling
312.493.5711
katemcgillcounseling@gmail.com