Tag: therapy

5 Lessons from Five Years of Therapy

Marlena Sauceda

This month marks five years since I had my first conversation and began meeting with a therapist on a regular basis. I have written about my experience somewhat in reflecting on my anxiety, and I have publicly advocated for therapy and mental healthcare online for years, but I have not yet shared in very great detail about my journey. Therapy has become more normalized recently; I could not believe my ears last summer when I heard the so-called POTUS on the radio, saying that mental health is just as important as physical health. But awareness and access are two different things, and for many people a lack of knowledge about the process may be the biggest thing standing in their way of seeking therapy.

To mark this anniversary, I thought I’d share five lessons that I’ve learned over the past five years of accessing therapy and working on my mental health. I hope this helps you feel validated in your own therapy experience, or provides the insights you’re seeking if you’re just starting to wonder if therapy might be for you.

1. There’s nothing “wrong” with you

I hope you know this, but in case you don’t, let’s start here. Therapy is not just for when people experience very serious mental health episodes, and it’s not just for people actively going through a difficult or traumatic time. While many people may find their way to therapy after a devastating loss, or a hard break-up, or some other traumatic incident, you don’t have to actively be going through something in order to seek therapy, and accessing therapy does not mean there’s anything “wrong” with you.

When I started therapy I was recently engaged, had just purchased a home, and was on my way to a promotion at work. It was one of the best times of my life. It had been several months since I first recognized that I may have anxiety, and my upcoming marriage made me feel a sudden sense of urgency to access the mental health care I needed to live my best life. I had considered therapy once before, as a teenager, but was deterred by the stigma around it and believed I was fine. Five years ago I was relieved, even excited, when I made my first therapy appointment and proudly shared about it on social media. I was met with some reactions that made me feel like I was sharing that I had some kind of terminal disease, and it made me realize that some people still believe therapy is only for when you are in dire straits.

2. Be selective

After getting over the stigma and finally accepting that I could benefit from therapy, came the enormous task of finding a therapist. My first thought was my then-employer’s Employee Assistance Program (EAP), which many companies and organizations offer. These programs provide employees with (usually) free access to sessions with licensed counselors or therapists, and may be a great option. There are also affordable options for virtual therapists offered through many services, some of which allow you to set certain criteria or specialties. I knew that I wanted to find a therapist who shared some aspects of my cultural identity, so that I would not have to spend time during sessions explaining things, and who specialized in some of the specific issues that I was dealing with.

I found my first therapist using PsychologyToday.com, which has a directory that allows you to be very specific with the criteria you set, including certain identities, specialties, ages, therapy types, and languages. It also shows you pricing options, so you can find something within your budget if therapy is not included in your healthcare plan. You can get even more specific with directories like LatinxTherapy.com, or TherapyforBlackGirls.com. Therapy is an investment, and being selective in finding a therapist will help ensure that you’re getting the most out of it.

3. Set clear goals

Okay, so you’ve found a therapist you can afford, specializing in what you need, who is accepting new clients; congratulations! Now what? Most likely you’ll start with a consultation, your therapist may send you some forms to complete an assessment, or you may have a brief meeting to discuss your concerns. In your first “official” meeting, whether it’s in-person or virtual, your therapist should discuss your goals with you. What are you hoping to get out of therapy? How do you want your life to be different 6 months to a year from now?

Having clear goals allows you and your therapist to have clarity in your treatment plan, and provides a benchmark for you to measure progress against. I remember being so surprised after my first year of therapy, when my therapist asked me to review the goals I had set in our first session together. It felt as if I had manifested all of these things that were now true or almost true, but in fact I had spent hours upon hours in therapy sessions and in every day life steadily progressing toward those goals. It’s important to continuously review and reset your goals to ensure that you continue to get what you need out of your investment in therapy, and to enable your therapist to adjust your treatment and incorporate new or different techniques.

4. Check your expectations

It’s important to be realistic with your expectations. In my experience, a therapy session often leaves me feeling less anxious – it can also leave me feeling emotionally exhausted, or angry, and on one occasion even more anxious. Attending therapy is not a one-stop shop solution to your mental wellness; it requires practice, after care, and lifestyle changes. You wouldn’t expect that a single visit to the doctor is enough to heal your physical ailments. You might also have to go pick up a prescription or OTC meds and take them, or need a cast or brace, or additional testing, or physical therapy, etc. So you shouldn’t expect that simply meeting with a therapist is going to solve all of your mental health issues. You will also need to implement healthy coping mechanisms, adopt habits that support your mental wellness and shed habits that don’t, and possibly even take medication or supplements.

It’s also important to recognize that a therapist is not a life coach…or a friend. A therapist is not meant to tell you what to do or not do when you face a difficult decision or situation, and they’re not meant to always agree with you. This is why the previous tip is so important – if you have clear goals then your therapist can continuously hold you accountable to them, then your sessions will focus on how you can better manage your mental health and move toward your goals no matter the situation. It’s also important to spend time on your mental health outside of therapy. I have found that exercising, eating a healthy diet, spending quality time with loved ones, and limiting screen time are all also essential for me to feel mentally healthy, and I continue my learning outside of therapy by reading books relevant to my experience.

5. Don’t be afraid to start over

One of the best pieces of advice I received after starting therapy, was to not be afraid to change therapists. The thought was, at first, inconceivable, that I would enter into such a vulnerable relationship with someone and then, one day, end it. I felt happy enough with my first therapist, until I didn’t. My first therapist specialized in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), which focuses on mindsets, beliefs, and attitude, otherwise known as “talk therapy.” This was incredibly helpful at first, and provided plenty of space for me to talk through my experiences and gain greater insight into my anxiety. After a while, however, I felt like I wasn’t making much progress. Therapy began feeling like a chore, and I even found myself dreading my appointments. I took that as a definite sign it was time to move on and search for a new therapist.

I took a short break before starting again, and my experience with my second therapist has been that much better due to being informed by my experience with my first therapist. I realized that I need more than CBT, and sought someone who incorporated somatic therapy practices that focus on the mind-body connection and releasing pent-up emotions. I feel like I’ve made more progress in the last two years with my current therapist than I made in my first three years, even while meeting less frequently. As scary as it was to start the whole process over again, it was one of the most essential things I’ve done for my mental health.

I hope this helps you on your own mental health journey. I truly believe that everyone can benefit from some amount of therapy, and that the world would be a much better place if more people had access to mental healthcare.

Me and my anxiety

Marlena Sauceda

It’s difficult to explain to those who do not have anxiety what it’s truly like for those of us who do. Most folks know what it’s like to feel anxious. Butterflies in your stomach, your heart racing, maybe your palms get sweaty – a general feeling of anticipation that makes you feel unsettled in the moment.

Generalized anxiety disorder is different. For me, it is an undercurrent of that anxious feeling paired with an incessant narrative in a voice that is my own and isn’t – one which is quick to think of the worst case scenario for any occurrence, which tells me that the things I know and feel in my heart are to be questioned. My anxiety is very pronounced when I am in the car and someone else is driving; I feel a sense of impending doom with every merge, every uncontrolled left turn. The narrative in my mind tells me that at any second, another vehicle or a slip of the driver’s attention will bring an end to everything I know and love. When I travel to the land currently known as California, the place of my birth and where I spent most of my life, I am constantly on edge waiting for “the big one” to hit – the giant earthquake that I spent my childhood hearing about and preparing for with earthquake drills. I will be standing on a hilltop looking down & around at a beautiful vista, and in my mind’s eye I see the earth around me undulating, the trees swaying, buildings crumbling. All while at the same time, feeling gratitude and love for the beauty of the world around me.

Anxiety is not an invited feeling. It arrives even when you feel peace, happiness, safety. Yes, anxiety can be triggered by certain unwelcome events, but it also shows up when nothing has specifically triggered it. Those of us with anxiety can feel it when we’re on vacation, when we’re enjoying a birthday celebration, when we’re at a family gathering. It is often unrelated to our physical environment. The thing that those with anxiety have to learn to navigate, and those without anxiety have to learn to accept, is that anxiety is not a reflection of reality. The inner dialogue doesn’t care if you are physically safe, if you are surrounded by loved ones, if you are in a beautiful place. It can be kept at bay by self affirmations and supportive words from your loved ones, but when it’s really bad it can make it difficult to believe yourself and others about what is reality. It often doesn’t make any sense, and that’s what makes it difficult for those who don’t have anxiety to understand and empathize with those of us who do.

One of the best and only examples that I have seen of anxiety in media is on Issa Rae’s Insecure. I’m not sure if it’s intentional, but it feels as though it must be. There are multiple ways that the show depicts characters’ anxiety and anxious thoughts & feelings. One way is with flash forwards – scenes that seem real to start, then become very exaggerated versions of reality before flashing back to Issa’s character in the present, who was imagining the worst case scenario in a conversation she is anticipating or an action she is considering. This is a great example of what it’s like, to imagine a reality completely different from the one we know, where all of our worst fears come to fruition.

A frame from the TV show Insecure, showing the main character, Issa, from the shoulders up, off-center against a plain background.
A frame of Issa Rae’s character in Insecure

Another way is through cinematography – they frame a shot of a character so that the center of the frame is not their face, but instead a blank space that is meant to represent all of their unstated thoughts. This technique depicts why those of us with anxiety can seem to lack presence when we are around others, because so much of our mental capacity is spent on the inner dialogue of things we are too afraid to say out loud.

My anxiety is very different from my otherwise very logical and process-oriented brain. I will hear an odd sound in the night and my anxiety will convince me that it’s an intruder come to destroy everything I know and love, before I realize that it’s just the deep snores of my dog, or the ceiling fan, or the wind. What is often said and written about anxiety is that your brain and your body don’t know the difference between a real and a perceived threat. I have found that to be very much true. In those moments where I am convinced that a strange sound is death knocking at my door, my heart is racing, my jaw is clenched, my entire body is stiff waiting for the next sound that will confirm that the threat is real. Even after realizing that there is no threat, it can take several more minutes for my heart to stop racing, and for my mind and muscles to relax enough to let sleep take over.

I’ve seen recent posts on social media that claim that anxiety is beneficial, a survival instinct that we have refined over millennia, which can keep the anxious one safe or sound the alarm when something feels “off.” My anxiety has certainly helped me in some ways. It made me a great student and test taker, as I would cope with my anxiety by reading incessantly and consuming every piece of learning material accessible to me, so that by the time I sat down for a test I felt confident in my knowledge. My anxiety makes me a great employee – I am constantly thinking that I’ve missed something or forgotten something, so my organizational systems are robust and effective. I am good at thinking ahead to all of the possibilities for a given project, pilot, or organizational change, and trying to understand how other people might be affected. My anxiety makes me detail-oriented, thorough, and direct – traits which are for the most part rewarded in U.S. workplaces.

Beneficial, though? I would give up my anxiety in a second if I could. My anxiety disturbs my peace and impacts my relationships. It makes it difficult for me to build new relationships, to be present, to be confident. I am constantly working on being better at these things and confronting my anxiety, because it tells me that I am not worthy or deserving of others’ time and attention.

My anxiety is the main reason why I started therapy a couple of years ago. I finally recognized and labeled my anxiety, and began cognitive behavioral therapy, a common treatment for anxiety. I talk with my therapist about my anxiety, how it’s affecting my life, and I learn ways to manage and work with it. I try to maintain a meditation practice, and though I’m not very good at it, I at least have that in my toolbox to turn to in moments when I am feeling overwhelmed by my anxiety. I am getting better at recognizing my anxiety, interrupting the narrative, and letting go of the fear. I know that there are medications that I can take to treat my anxiety, but I prefer to learn how to manage it on my own, and I am grateful that my anxiety is very rarely debilitating. Writing is another way that I manage my anxiety. When I write I come back to myself, I tap into the voice in my head that is my own.

After recognizing and accepting my anxiety, then learning ways to work with and through it, I am feeling ready to move onto exploring the root causes of my anxiety. Understanding where my generalized anxiety disorder came from, and doing the work to heal my inner child, is the next great adventure on my mental health journey. I know that there isn’t a cure for my anxiety, and have accepted that this is a part of who I am. But I am determined to live my life joyfully and fearlessly, and to stop letting my anxiety control my actions, my time, and the way I see myself.

A round table decorated with dried lavender flowers, a succulent arrangement, tealights, glass champagne flutes, and lavender napkins.

Making it through one year of marriage in a pandemic

Marlena Sauceda

As March approaches, the world is marking one year of being in a pandemic, and I am marking one year of marriage. My partner and I became husband and wife on February 29, 2020; a gorgeous, sunny day on which we were able to gather under the sky with our friends and family to celebrate. While we’ve been together for 8 years now, this last year – our first married, spent almost entirely in a pandemic, has been both one of the most challenging and the most enriching.

To be completely honest, there were times when I wondered if we would make it. Yes, I loved this man enough to want to spend my life with him, but did I love him enough to spend all day, every day, confined to our house together, for an indefinite amount of time? I wasn’t sure. Pandemic life isn’t the life that any of us signed up for. And living together, when you each have your own work schedules and routines and lives that take place away from home, is much different from living together when you both work and sleep and eat and recreate in the same 1000 or so square feet. When, if you leave the house and spend time around other people, you’re risking your life and/or the lives of the people around you.

We have made it, so far. I know this pandemic life isn’t nearly over, but I’m pretty proud of how we have grown in love and in life through this past year. I know that it’s an unpopular opinion for me, as a millennial cis-woman, to be happily married, to a millennial cis-man. So many articles and even recent Twitter threads have shown that married cis-women in heterosexual relationships are having a horrible time right now. Cis-men have been happy to sit back and allow their cis-women partners to take on the majority of the cleaning, cooking, child-rearing responsibilities, even when they don’t work as much, or at all.

While my husband isn’t perfect (nobody is, perfection is a myth rooted in white supremacy), he at least understands the importance of cleaning up after yourself and sharing the responsibilities of nourishing and maintaining a household. Pre-pandemic, my husband would wake up every weekday, get ready for work, make coffee, sometimes a smoothie, occasionally boil a few eggs, and grab the dinner leftovers that he had packed for lunch before leaving to work for the day. I would eat whatever I wanted for breakfast as I started my work day at home (I’ve worked from home for nearly 4 years now), heat up leftovers, or make a salad or a sandwich for lunch, and cook dinner throughout the week. I washed whatever dishes I used during the day, and my partner usually cleaned up after dinner. It felt easy, fair, and I love to cook, so being mainly responsible for the main meal of the day was no problem.

When the pandemic began, and my husband started working from home as well, things changed. He struggled with work-life balance before, and when the line between work and home became completely blurred, that balance was non-existent. His morning routine changed from getting up, getting ready, and helping with breakfast, to getting up, walking to his desk in our second bedroom, and starting his work day. At first he marveled at the fact that not needing to commute meant he could spend more time working. He is a mortgage loan originator, and with record low interest rates on mortgages, he has had plenty of work to do and could easily work 60+ hours per week. I, in our honeymoon phase in the first several weeks of the pandemic, was okay with making breakfast and lunch and taking it to him at his desk – for a time. Fairly quickly, though, I realized that if I didn’t have time to make coffee, or breakfast, or lunch – he wouldn’t. There were multiple days where I would just grab something quick and eat at my desk, and he wouldn’t eat anything at all until 1:00 or 2:00 pm.

What had felt like an evenly shared responsibility before, had become entirely my responsibility – to figure out what the heck to eat 3 times a day, 7 days a week. Every week. I found myself doing 100% of the cooking, but also washing about 50% of the dishes. By mid-summer we came up with a solution. My husband found an affordable, local, meal prep service, and suggested we order meals to make this task a little easier. I was reluctant at first, but the meals were decent and I relented to the fact that it is okay to accept help, especially in the middle of a pandemic. We began ordering 8 meals per week from them, taking the place of 4 lunches and/or dinners. When I say affordable, I mean affordable, like $50 – $60 per week for the meals, which cut our grocery bill in half to $45 – $50 per week. My husband makes coffee and a smoothie, boiled eggs, or toast for breakfast, we take turns making/heating up lunch throughout the week, and I cook dinner two to three days during the week. We support local restaurants on the weekends, and spend some time meal prepping together on Sundays. I take care of the breakfast and lunch dishes, and he takes care of the dinner dishes. All of this has helped this task return to being a shared responsibility. It’s also helped us eat healthier meals, makes keeping the kitchen clean relatively painless, and prevents arguments rooted in unspoken resentment about who’s not carrying their weight.

Cooking and dishes aren’t the only things that became challenging, of course. Having no alone time has been difficult for me, a super introvert who needs to spend a lot of time just doing my own thing. Not being able to hang out with friends (without risking our lives or the lives of those around us) has been difficult for my husband, a super social ambivert who has a very close group of friends, who are like family. So I manufacture alone time while he manufactures connection. Specifically, he got a PlayStation and started playing Call of Duty online with his friends on the TV in our second bedroom. He works way more hours than I do, so I get enough time to myself throughout the week, and on weekends I am perfectly happy with him playing video games for a few hours while I watch my shows or listen to podcasts or write or read or do a home organizing project.

Making intentional time to be present together has been essential as well. From taking our fur-child Bernie on walks together every afternoon during the week, without phones, to finding ways to spend time together beyond watching TV or cleaning. We’ve worked on puzzles together, played a conversation card game, or two-person board games like Scrabble and Rummikub. On the weekends, our pandemic-friendly outings consist of picking a park to drive to for a walk or a hike, occasionally picking up takeout to eat at the park. Even making the bed together in the morning, or playing with Bernie before we go to bed at night, have been opportunities for us to have quality time even when we are around each other all of the time. We still watch TV together, of course, we are millennials and I truly enjoy film and television as art forms, but making time to spend engaging with just each other has helped us continue to communicate, get to know each other, and deepen our bond.

It was also important for us to have some conversations we hadn’t had before, even in 7+ years of being in relationship with one another. Binding ourselves together legally and financially required us to have frank conversations about how we manage our income, how much debt we had, our expenses, what our financial goals are. Early in April we sat down and talked through what we wanted to accomplish in the next few years, ensuring we were clear on how we wanted to be in partnership with each other, and what it would take from both of us to get there. And we’ve continued to have those conversations, as the need to make financial decisions and choices has come up. Knowing that we’re aligned here has helped to alleviate stress when the possibility of layoffs came up at work, and as we’ve dreamed together about where we want our careers to go in the next few years.

Then there were the conversations about racism and white supremacy that happened in many households beginning last summer. I have been thinking and talking about dismantling white supremacy for several years, and dragging my husband along the way. But the movement for Black lives and against police brutality, and the campaign of the former president of the U.S., provided so many more opportunities for both of us to confront the ways in which we’ve benefited from white privilege, and how we were operating in ways that were “not racist”, and not antiracist. These have been some of the most tense moments, when I realized that, while we had been having conversations here and there, it was as though we had been speaking different languages.

While I had been listening to podcasts, reading, and learning through Diversity, Equity, and Inclusiveness work at my job over the last 3+ years, he was mostly living life in the oblivious way that many not-racist white men do. This movement for racial equity forced us to get on the same page about needing to be actively antiracist, about how we must dismantle the beliefs rooted in white supremacy culture within ourselves, how to support each other in doing so in productive ways, and provided the opportunity for us to get clear on how, if we have them, we intend to raise our children. It was difficult at first, heartbreaking at moments, but eventually we arrived at a place where we recognized how much there remains for each of us to learn, and concluded that we must do it together. When he started questioning why I was watching The Crown (“isn’t this white supremacy?”), I realized this is both a blessing and a curse.

And through it all, therapy. Phone appointments with my therapist help me get out of my head for a bit, and learning how to manage my anxiety in healthier ways has helped me improve immensely at communicating my needs, understanding what is at the root of my reactions, and inviting my partner in on my healing. It has even helped him understand more about the ways in which he needs to heal as well.

Of course, I must recognize how much privilege is present here. We are both employed, in jobs that pay a comfortable living wage and allow us to work from the safety of our home. We do not have children, and I firmly believe that having access to contraception and reproductive healthcare, in a country without universal healthcare, is a privilege. Having access to therapy is also a privilege. Not having any underlying conditions, and not being within a demographic that puts us at greater risk in this pandemic, are privileges. Even living near enough to relatives to have been able to see family a handful of times over the course of the year feels like a privilege right now. While several people close to us have gotten sick with COVID-19, some of them incredibly so, not one of the over 500,000 individuals who have lost their lives to this virus in the U.S. has been someone who we have had to mourn.

It certainly hasn’t been easy, but having a caring and loving partner who is ready and willing to grow with me has kept me going over this last year. As we approach our wedding anniversary, I am filled with joy and gratitude at having chosen this incredible person to spend my life with, and filled with excitement for the dreams that we’ve been dreaming together. While I look forward to the days when we can enjoy fulfilling social lives once again, I have truly cherished this opportunity to spend time learning how to love one another even more fully.