If you remember my post about my goals for 2018 I said that this year is about “self-care” and that one of the things I was going to do was start seeing a therapist.
Well, I saw my therapist for my first full session last week and I thought it’d be good to document my sessions here on the blog. If you’ve been following me for a while you’ll know that I think a lot; too much!
Coming away from my therapy sessions is going to give me lots to reflect on. Now, I’m not going to be posting what I talk about in sessions as I feel that’d be too personal. What I thought would be useful was to share my reflections about myself here 🙂
Growing up
One of the themes that came up from this first session was that I’ve spent a lot of my life trying to please other people. The problem with this is that I’ve pleased them, but ended up feeling hurt and frustrated because I wasn’t honouring what I wanted or how I felt.
I’m not talking about stamping my feet when I don’t get my own way, here. I’m talking about important decisions where I’ve rejected how I feel for the sake of not wanting to hurt other people. The end result is that I’ve felt dis-empowered, a bit like I felt as a child.
So, one of the discussions during the session was about taking the reigns and being the adult that I am. It’s not that I don’t know what I want; I do! It’s about trying to move through the fear and saying what I really want despite the worry of how others may react. And that’s when we come full circle to me fearing the reaction because of hurting people’s feelings, so I go against what I want to keep them happy.
I’m under no illusions that this will be easy. I’ve put myself second for a long time and the prospect of being assertive about my needs feels scary right now.
I’m hoping during the course of therapy that I’ll be able to put this into practice in different situations, and prove that it’s not the end of the world if people aren’t supportive of what I want.
Wish me luck! I look forward to you joining me on my journey 🙂
Mind over Meta 
Good luck for your journey! I hope that you start doing things which simply make you happy. And I hope for myself that one day I become strong enough to take this same journey.
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Thank you, and all the best to you too 🙂
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Good luck!
I really hope it helps, and i really think it will 🙂
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Thank you!
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GO you! I love this. It isn’t easy to step away from pleasing others to please yourself. I still struggle with it. Part of me thinks it’s easier to serve another “master” than to truly know and act on what I want. It’s an interesting idea to keep working through.
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Thanks Angela, yes it’s definitely a work in progress and something I struggle with a lot. Maybe I won’t eliminate it completely, but working towards putting myself first MORE is a good way to go 🙂
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