After years of receiving constant nag from my mom, few last weeks I eventually decided to see a therapist. I tried to manage my responses every single time she phoned me just to check on me and discuss the same thing over and over again. It was indeed truly exhausting. I did my best not to hurt her feeling by responding like a “yes person”.
Until few last week, I couldn’t help myself to tell the truth. I blabbered all things that bothered me for last few years and all things that made me so critical in thinking about the stuff. She once or twice agreed on my opinions. But for the last thing I said, I did make her cry and that made me feel so bad about letting it out. I felt so unsettled that night and couldn’t think that would be solvable within days.
Long story short, I spent 2.5 hours with my therapist with the bill that equaled to one decent pair of shoes, but I rather spent on the session than became crazy on my own. My friend called me after it and she asked me, why I saw therapist. My pretty much simple reason was I preferred talk to professional who understood the nature of psychological circumstances so I could get objective and reasonable idea about what and how things were going on. Talking to my friends or relatives might be good idea, but I absolutely was aware that common people had their own biases — this wasn’t what I was looking for.
My therapist saw there was anger about the stuff that still lingering in me and I hadn’t properly processed for decades. I admitted that it was hard for me and I had tried to clean that mess up on myself for years. But I still needed to process it all anyway. I am now taking my time to process the anger that felt, though it had past for years and I had let that go.
My therapist was a good and very skilled one. We also discussed about her other cases and she ended up asking me if I could relate to some of it. I could definitely relate to some of it, but there were cases that I couldn’t really get the gist of why the people felt that way. There’s fine difference between sympathy and empathy. Sympathy is about feeling “pity” for one’s difficulties and empathy is about being able to put ourselves on one’s shoes. Feeling deep empathy means being able to relate on what others’ experiences.
On the other day I asked one of my close friends about how we can help one’s sufferings. She beautifully answered me, we can’t help people who don’t even bother to help themselves. I was silenced by her response and I just nodded this true. I think there’s difference between waiting to be rescued and purposefully helping themselves. One reflects passive attitude and another is active attitude.
Admitting our sufferings — like what I did — is normal, but it doesn’t mean waiting and expecting others to rescue us. Otherwise, we’ll be forever damsel in distress, depend on others for our own existence, see ourselves as victim of our own life, and let life take its unfair course.
In a lot of moments in my life, I’ve barely witnessed the only person who can help myself is me. Close people around me lent me hands of course, but that was only that far. The rest was my job, I accepted my sufferings and stood up for myself. And I did it once again for myself by raising my hand for help.
