As a client, I've been protective of certain parts of my life.
I was nervous about exposing aspects of my family, my relationships, my culture, and my community.
I was afraid that to talk about all of it would mean the dysfunction embedded within them would be exposed, and that exposure would cause a rupture in relationships that I couldn't come back from.
As a therapist, I admire my clients courage to expose different parts of who they are, to be vulnerable, and to be wiling to take risks and reveal aspects of their lives that they would otherwise keep hidden to survive.
In therapy, we develop new levels of safety in reaching new levels of vulnerability when we push beyond our comfort zones and what we deemed as safe.
In therapy, we evaluate the gaps between how you think and perceive and how different it can be from the family, community, and people you were conditioned to be loyal to, to need, and to gravitate to for support. In that gap, there is potential for growth and also the blessing and challenge of disconnecting from what you were taught. There is a natural separation when we are talking about growth.
Being separated, not fitting in, or being different have not been used to define family or community or team.
Through growth, I'm learning that differences are actually what make up the uniqueness of family, of community, and of team.
The similarities initiate the connection while the differences can maintain the connection.
Similarities help us find each other;
Differences help us grow.
Similarities attach us to the cycle;
Differences helps us evaluate the cycle;
Differences help us change the cycle.
Similarities give us the bonds we need to learn the story;
Differences help us to create new stories;
Differences help us to treat our old stories differently;
Differences help us to value the parts of our story that were under-appreciated;
Differences help us to value the parts of our story that were overlooked.
May therapy reveal the differences that you have ran from, or for whatever reasons have not fully acknowledged or accepted about yourself or the people you are in relationship with.
When you join with therapy, you can stop seeing it as an opponent that you have to devalue or under-appreciate. Therapy is meant to help you pull out the better version of you and influence the better versions of others to come out as well.
What's worth more 'You vs. Therapy' or 'You and Therapy'?