I used to think therapy was only for “weak people” and that “mental health” was for those looking to try on straight jackets.
I would read personal development books about body language, how to persuade people and be in positions of power and leadership.
What I didn’t know was I was overcompensating for a CORE identity injury.
An injury that comes from discarding authenticity to being something that looks perfect from the outside.
An injury that only exposed itself in intimate relationships.
It took a few failed relationships to realize that my inner world needed therapy, that I needed help from another human being as a minimum.
My obsession with looking good worked in my professional life and was exhausting my relationship life.
My therapists at the time didn’t have straight jackets in my size and they were able to expose blind spots in my relating and identity that paved the way for deeper therapy and personal development.
It wasn’t until I experienced some very basic gestalt processes that I realized there was an entirely new world of relating available from this body that I could not find by myself.
I discovered that one cannot master the outer world without including their inner world.
My relationships gradually deepened and layer by layer by tending to this CORE injury; write my own rules and authentically relate to create my own individual expression.
To this day I recommend and speak to the value of getting help in the form of therapy. There is no weakness here, it takes a great deal of courage to open the heart and give words to the hurts of the past.
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