I always say that my therapist saved my life. I was in a pretty rough place when I started weekly sessions with my current therapist, and I've made leaps and bounds of improvement since I started treatment with her. So, to me, it felt like she saved my life.
A couple of weeks ago, I realized something. My therapist didn't save my life. I saved my own life. I don't mean this to sound ungrateful because I am more grateful than my therapist could ever guess. I just mean that I put in the work. My therapist gave me the tools and the information that I needed, which means she facilitated the changes I made, but I went home and I put in all the hard work to save myself from drowning in my own mind. I chose to take everything she had given me and use it to get better. I could have just shrugged everything off and not used any of the tools she gave me, but I didn't. I chose to work on myself.
This realization came about in a terrifying. My therapist told me that she would be leaving private practice, which meant I wouldn't be seeing her anymore after a certain date. I knew this day would come, but I WAS NOT READY. I freaked out. I cried in her office. I had a panic attack in the car on the way home. I had flashbacks to Christmas break my freshman year of college when I literally couldn't function to the point that my mom thought I was having some kind of breakdown. I had to take medication.
My anxiety was so high at the thought of being on my own again that I started to spiral. How was I supposed to deal with losing the person that saved my life? How was I supposed to continue to grow and continue to get better and stay better if she wasn't there to help me when I needed her? What if I relapsed back to those awful, dark days that I don't even like to think about?
Then logic kicked in. I literally said, "Hold up...she didn't technically save my life...she just gave me the tools and information that I needed to save myself." I could breathe again. I wasn't going to just forget everything I learned from her after my last session with her. I'm going to keep all that for the rest of my life. That means that I'll be (mostly) fine when my time with my therapist is over. (I can also always find another therapist if I need help maintaining wellness or if I start struggling again.) I can continue to pull myself out of dark places and check my OCD and manage the anxiety ups and downs just like the I do the other 6 days of the week that I don't see her. Now, I see why she always liked to point out how hard I was always working to get better...for a moment like this, when I wasn't sure I could do it.
I told my therapist all these things at my next session. She might have even smiled about it. Her reply was, "I'm glad you realize that." She said it ever-so-calmly and in a matter-of-fact tone. She followed that with, "You're the one that's been doing the work." It felt weird to me that she knew that the whole time and I just realized it after an almost-spiral. She obviously had much more faith in me than I had in myself this whole time.
It's weird to realize that I did a thing that I never thought I could do. I feel like some kind of superhero to myself or maybe some kind of warrior queen. It's also weird to know that my therapist has all this faith in me when I didn't have practically any in myself. I can do this. I can continue to save myself when I have to. I can keep up the work we started together. I don't need to be terrified.
I'll end with this: A therapist's job isn't to save us. A therapist's job is to help us learn to save ourselves. That one small clarification makes all the difference to me. Therapists show us the tools, but we put in the hard work. We keep those tools and practices even when we no longer need the therapist so we can continue to put in the work it takes to get well.
