Published October 12, 2019

The longer I live, the more people I realize that I have neglected to thank, or to thank enough. One is my therapist. As has been the case throughout my six-plus years of work with her, I find myself writing something deeply personal even as I hope to speak to universal truths that resonate for others. That means you.

So as I write what feels like a love letter to my therapist, there is an implied cc: all therapists. That may well mean yours, too.

Hello!

Thank you. I can’t say it enough. I don’t say it enough. But I wouldn’t be here if not for you. As you no doubt know, this is true of the therapist I saw before seeing you, and the one before that. My bookshelves and journal pages and neural pathways and retraced steps form a road map with several guides, and while it’s true that you have made space for creating the biggest impact, they all helped make possible every joyful moment of my self-discovery in recent years.

But let’s get back to you.

A long time ago, you helped me to continue on this journey by making available to me a discounted rate so I could afford to keep scheduling sessions, if more infrequently and, during harder times, on a break-glass-in-case-of-emergency basis. Going a step further, telling me “Don’t let your inability to pay or to pay in full keep you from making an appointment if you need” has had its own therapeutic effect, even if I didn’t take advantage of that offer every time I wanted to. Just knowing that lifeline was out there gave me the courage to push forward at times when simply getting out of bed to be in the world for another day was almost too much for me.

We have worked together for so long, there is a comfort in knowing that you won’t misinterpret the four-letter word in the term “love letter” as I use it here. We have been through the dance of projection, the gift of your identification and willingness to use yourself as an imperfect example and guide, the many definitions of love, and my understanding of the archetypes and myths evoked by your appearance in my dreams and sometimes overwhelming desires. We have been intellectually honest with each other, and true to the gut-level forces bringing me back again and again to your office, and we have cultivated respectful boundaries that we sometimes have to explore and walk along to fully activate them. So much of the credit for that belongs to you.

I know that this is not easy for you. The office I saw you in most recently was the third you have had since our work together began in 2013, and if memory serves, you worked out of another during a period of time when I was on a break from therapy. Rising rents and the demands of everyday life affect therapists and other providers, too, not just those who need help. Having to move to keep your practice viable is part of your largely unseen work, and one that I appreciate and understand. It’s possible that among the reasons for this is your willingness to see those of us who can no longer pay full price. I know, too, that it’s not only you who has made sacrifices to allow me and others to continue to come for therapy and pay a discounted rate, if at all (forgoing the occasional night out? a massage? the tattoo you meant to get years ago?), but also your family (a better vacation? one more birthday gift? an occasional treat? more regular deposits into a savings account?). There is so much that I will never know that I know enough to be thankful for. So a solemn thank-you goes out to your family and friends, as well.

You have given me tools for the days and nights between sessions. You have laughed at the right moments, in just the right way, even when hearing about the conversations between us that happened in my apartment or car or in the hospital, where I had to take an educated guess as to your half of the exchange. And oh! We both have had medical scares in the past year, and your ability to relate to mine and to share yours with me strengthened our work-forged bond and became another example of your selflessness in becoming involved in sessions on a granular, personal level.

You have skillfully maintained boundaries when I wobbled in the direction of crossing them out of pain or out of ignorance, and this speaks to your education, training and work years before we ever met. Considering all that I know about you and your vocation, and what I cannot know, I’m certain that you will never be adequately compensated for everything you’ve poured into your work. But I know too that you are rewarded in ways that keep you coming back. Thank goddess!

You have done this work amid the rise of a political and cultural climate that exposed your clients to heightened reminders of trauma and abuse, all with the imprimatur and encouragement of the highest levels of government — and underscored and worsened their vulnerabilities while exposing them to new and even more aggressive discrimination and violence emboldened by that scary climate. And you have had to go to work, day in and day out, to help us even as the new normal must feel threatening to you and your loved ones.

Thank you for that. I know that there must be a new type of aloneness that has come with that, and I hope that you have been able to spend time with peers who could be there for you amid that kind of isolation, and that you could be there for them. I know that it’s a place that you could only visit with us in a limited way.

Things feel so tentative in life, so precarious, so temporary, that every time I leave your office lately, I wonder if it might prove to be the last time. If so, I have been thinking, why leave so many important things unsaid? Hence this long-overdue letter. (Speaking of long, thank you for your patience with wordy sentences, essays and in-session stories, and for your encouragement for me to keep writing!)

Please share this love letter, if you are comfortable doing so, with colleagues and others in the healing arts if it’s possible to do so without violating ethical rules and therapist-patient confidentiality. I suspect hat you are creative enough to find a way. If your peers are like me, hearing someone say to them, “Thank you, I appreciate what you do that you might imagine goes unnoticed,” is among the best of validations, maybe even with emotions bubbling up to confirm that.

But you deserve to hear it first. Thank you, from the bottom of the heart of the me that wouldn’t be possible without you.

CarlyJ

Image of therapist’s couch by Neonic Flower/via Shutterstock.