So, a long time ago in a land far, far away, I thought one would get married, pop out a few babies and go off with the mister, hand-in-hand skipping down the streets of a gated, suburban neighbor to live happily ever after. Wrong, well minus the gated neighborhood part. Marriage and motherhood is not a Disney movie (latest Disney mention from last month here) and sometimes we need a little bit of a network to help us get through it all.
I think I’ve been blessed to have a great group of friends in my life; some of their lives have evolved in parallel tracks to mine, others have not, but regardless of the milestones in their life, I’ve always leaned on them in times of stress. Well, lately, I haven’t been as willing to share the intimate (I don’t mean anything inappropriate) details of my life with my friends. Maybe because things aren’t perfect, maybe because I feel like I’ve made a lot of mistakes as a mother traveling so much, maybe because everyone is busy, too….I don’t know. One thing I do know, though, is that it’s kind-of a sad day when you realize you’re too busy for those hour-long phone calls with friends and their relationship advice may not be the best advice and you can’t get through one phone conversation before someone inevitably has to go because of a toddler or another distraction. So, what’s a girl to do?
Well, there are self help books. Do you remember when you were in high school and you were dealing with boy issues or friend issues and it seemed as though every song you heard on the radio was playing just for you? Well, that’s kind of my take on self help books, too. You go to Barnes and Noble (our fav is the one by Lakeline Mall) and it’s like every.single.book. is for you. Unless you want to spend a grand on books or sit on the floor of B&N and read through a few options, that’s not the easiest approach to working through any issues you’re dealing with.
So, how about therapy?
That’s what I did…yesterday. I’ll be honest, I felt a tiny bit insecure that I’ve “resulted” to therapy to help sort out the million thoughts in my mind, but at the end of the day…it was awesome.
The therapist I visited with sat there, listened to me ramble and pushed back appropriately. She asked me tough questions and really enabled me to see why I make some of the decisions I make.
A few tools, which I’m sure she won’t mind if I share, that she shared with me are the following:
1. The Love Languages. We’ve blogged about the love languages before, and she reemphasized the importance of knowing what makes you feel full and fulfilled.
2. The Myers-Briggs test. Those of us who work may be familiar with this test because it seems to be (at least in the communications world I’ve grown up in) the most popular form of assessing personalities. In the work setting, this allows the manager to see the strengths and weaknesses and how team members may balance each other out and support one another. Similar to in the work setting, this test, and the one above, can be performed on your spouse, children, lover, partner, etc. and learn how to best interact with their personality for the best relationship and communication. I couldn’t find a better free test…sorry for sending you to a janky looking website.
3. The Road Map (game). I put game in parenthesis because it’s not really a game, but it felt like one and that’s probably why I truly enjoyed it (I’m a really competitive game player.) During this activity, I was able to identify different parts of my past and why they are so important to me. Ex: “Who is your favorite relative?” And while it seems simple, all of those little things make up who you are and rediscovering that and talking about it was refreshing.
All in all I found my therapy session to be wildly productive and I am looking forward to heading back.
Have you ever been to therapy? What was your experience like?
