Our family moved from a large city to a very small town when I was ten years old, my sister eight, and my brother fourteen. To say it was an upheaval and traumatizing doesn’t even begin to touch the level of impact it had on all three of us. We know now our parents were doing their best for our family, and I am glad I spent half of my childhood in that small town, but it was very difficult. It took me a few years to feel settled, like I belonged, had my own space and friends. I don’t fully grasp the deep scars it left on my siblings, particularly my brother.

I was just-turned eighteen, and had just graduated from high school when my parents split up. If I’m being honest, they probably should have separated when I was nine or ten (maybe that was part of the impetus for the move – a reset and restart of sorts?). They came back from a weekend away in Reno, had a huge blowout fight – which was extremely abnormal for them as they never fought, ever, in my memory – and that was that. That was the end. Just over two months later, I left for college, a five-plus hour drive away from home. I felt the guilt of leaving, starting my own life to a certain extent while my parents were suffering at home, while my sister was the only kid left at home to endure the fallout.

College is an adjustment on its own. Add the normal childhood trauma, as well as my parents’ divorce, feeling torn between two (or three) worlds, the struggle to learn how to study in an entirely different way, and to accept that school was going to be more difficult than it had been for years, feeling like a failure, in addition to an eating disorder exacerbated by all of the above, and by my second semester of my first year, I was a train wreck.

I was in my tennis class and had the mother of all meltdowns. The instructor/coach pulled me from the courts to a bench in the shade. He said something like, “This seems like more than not being able to hit a tennis ball where you want it consistently.” I huddled into a heap of tears on that bench. No one besides my closest friends knew what was going on at home. No one really had bothered to look deep enough. We were all so caught up in studying, having fun, experiencing life away from home for the first time. At home, it never felt we children were able to need deeply, to show strong emotion. That coach let me cry it out for a good bit, then said to me, “I think you need to talk with someone,” once I gave him a brief picture of what was going on in my baby-adult life. This is more than one person can deal with on her own. He prayed with me (I went to a private Christian college my first two years of school), excused me from tennis for the rest of the day, and sent me back to my dorm room. Later that day, my Resident Director came to my room with a number to call – the on-campus therapist.

That was my entry into therapy. It wasn’t a magic pill by any means, but having someone to talk with, someone outside of my circle/family, someone who didn’t judge me, judge my parents but rather just let me work through things was life-altering. It didn’t fix everything immediately. It would be years before those hurts were more easily managed. Of course, in the way of life, there would be new hurts to come along. Back to therapy.

I don’t know who I’d be, how damaged I would still be if I hadn’t had that coach set me on a road out of that space, introducing me to therapy. I know plenty of people who don’t believe in therapy, in talking things through with a professional. I know plenty of people who don’t think it’s a viable option for them. To each their own I guess. Therapy is work. It’s scary telling someone you don’t know your issues, what’s happened in your life. It’s scary and it’s work, and then you’re given work so you can get to the root of your issues, learn to manage them and/or your responses to triggers. I still encourage people to seek it out, if they’re at all inclined. It saved me.

I’ve spent the past couple of years thinking about that childhood as I try to figure out why I feel the way I do sometimes, my reactions to situations and other people. I haven’t gone back to therapy, but I have taken that toolkit back out I was given so long ago, the things I learned in therapy in college, right after, and as a young mom. There was a situation last week (not an emergency or anything, just a situation) in which someone I know was struggling with something that wasn’t really a problem but more of an inconvenience. They were extremely frustrated in the moment. I knew it was more than just that immediate problem. I also knew it wasn’t my job to fix everything for them – logistically there was no way I could fix it, but even in theory, I couldn’t fix it. But I felt my whole body tighten, my heart begin to race. I recognized my reaction for what it was – my need to manage everything, to make everything perfect for everyone in my life so they’re never inconvenienced or unhappy, and feeling like it’s my failure if something goes wrong for them. I noticed that reaction, and then made myself stay quiet. I wasn’t there to solve the problem for them. I didn’t have to solve the problem for them. They weren’t asking me to solve the problem for them. They just wanted me to be there while they worked through the problem. I made myself NOT try fix it. I told myself their inconvenience was NOT my failure, and I breathed. Thank you, therapy.

Therapy doesn’t make us perfect, doesn’t make us “healed.” It doesn’t make it so we never have bad reactions or emotional responses. It doesn’t make us stop feeling those feelings. It just helps us recognize and then change the destructive reactions. It’s not that I ALWAYS can do what I did in the moment the other day. But it gave me those tools, helped me recognized my own patterns. To that coach whose name I couldn’t recall if I tried, and that first therapist, I thank you deeply.