[00:00:08] Speaker A: Welcome to 9834, the weekly podcast that lets you see what it's like to actually go to therapy. I'm Shannon Miller, a licensed clinical social worker currently in private practice, who has the privilege of sitting across from clients each and every day watching their therapeutic process unfold. We start each episode with the same question. What took you to therapy today? We're talking with Cindy, a 40 something year old woman living in northern Virginia, who says the going to a residential treatment program was the best decision she's ever made.
[00:00:38] Speaker B: What originally brought you to therapy? What were the things you wanted to work on?
[00:00:43] Speaker C: So I was at a place in my life where I was very unhappy with a lot of different things. I didn't have a day to day happiness. I hadn't for a long time. I had been in therapy before for depression and for anxiety, but I hadn't been for a while, and those were ramping back up. But one of the main sort of objectives that I had was to look at trying to find a path out of my marriage.
And my husband and I had been having some trouble. I wasn't communicating well with him, but I had just sort of come to the place where I felt like there was no fixing it. And so when I signed up first for therapy, that was one of my main objectives, was sort of helping me sort out how I was going to make that exit and some supports, to have some supports in place to do that and general unhappiness and depression. But again, that really was my primary goal in going in, is to have some support and some direction on how to do that in a healthy way.
[00:01:44] Speaker B: Okay, so then you started therapy, and what started unfolding for you? You go in for depression, anxiety, and looking for some strategies as you're sort of planning to exit your marriage. But I'm assuming therapy didn't stay just about those things. So where did it take you?
[00:02:01] Speaker C: Well, the funny thing was the therapy didn't really even start there. Like, I had my first couple of sessions, and obviously we talked in the beginning about what my goals were and sort of where I was, but I don't even really think I got a foot off the ground toward those goals.
Pretty early on, it became apparent to me that I had a lot of things that I had to sort out in my own life. I was not healthy in my thinking. I was not healthy in my behaviors and the choices that I was making.
And I was spinning out of control in a way that I did not really realize going in. I knew I wasn't happy, but my lifestyle was not healthy. And the way that I perceived what was going on in my life was very skewed because of that. So the first major undertaking when I started therapy was looking at those unhealthy behaviors and trying to address them, sort of looking at what they were doing to me in terms of my life and my perspective.
And pretty quickly after that, when I was able to start taking a healthier approach, it became clear to me that my perspective on life and what I wanted maybe wasn't as clear headed as I thought it was when I started.
[00:03:25] Speaker B: So can you share a little bit of how it was spinning out of control, what the unhealthy. Give us some specifics as to what was going on.
[00:03:33] Speaker C: So one of the biggest parts is I have a tendency to work way too hard. I think I have come to learn now that I have a better perspective, that a lot of us, probably in particular in this culture, are driven to a point that we never stop. And so when I started therapy, it was right before COVID and I was working really hard. I'm a lawyer in a law firm, and I was trying to hit my billable requirements and working on cases that were very emotionally taxing. I do family law.
And then as Covid hit, I took what was already a really heavy workload and went into overdrive because I had to manage how to run the firm and how to deal with COVID and how to pivot with that. And it came to a point that I was basically working nonstop. So that was super unhealthy, and sort of coupled with that was a complete lack of self care. So I wasn't sleeping well. I wasn't really even paying attention to how much sleep I was getting. I was drinking a lot, which I didn't even realize at the time. It's so interesting to look back now with a little bit of a clearer vision just how much sort of binge drinking I was doing. I wasn't taking any time to look at myself every day in terms of, am I eating well? Am I feeling okay? Am I exercising? Am I making space for myself? And so those were some of the really unhealthy habits and approaches, or whatever you want to call them, that I was engaging in that were problematic. I also had a lot of really negative self talk going on, which I've kind of always had and have started finally moving past.
So all of that sort of combined into me sort of being out of control.
I wasn't doing things intentionally or with intention. I was doing what I needed to do to survive in the moment by the skin of my teeth. Does that make sense?
[00:05:33] Speaker B: It does. Can you share a little bit about the negative self talk? Like, quite literally, what was the rhetoric that would spin in your mind?
[00:05:43] Speaker C: So it was, I'm not doing enough. I'm not achieving enough at work. I'm not there for my children enough. I'm not thin enough.
I'm just those kinds of things. And the really hard part about it was I would wake up in the morning, and the first thoughts that came into my head were that, like, my whole day was colored through the lens of all the things that I wasn't doing properly or wasn't accomplishing well enough.
[00:06:13] Speaker B: Basically, I'm not enough. And whatever that enough is could always change. But you were always falling short.
[00:06:20] Speaker C: Yes, absolutely.
[00:06:22] Speaker B: That's hard to wake up to those thoughts.
[00:06:24] Speaker C: It was awful.
And it took a lot of time to retrain myself. It took a lot of intention on my part. Every morning, waking up, having that instant thought, and then training myself or retraining myself to take a step back and look at that negative self thought maybe a little more objectively, or to wake up and make an intentional effort to think positively or to think of my day in a hopeful way rather than a self defeated way.
It took a while.
[00:07:05] Speaker B: So you went into therapy basically because depression, anxiety, and those things, and you start figuring out, okay, I've got this raging negative self talk that's going on, I'm working myself to death. I'm not taking care of myself at all.
Talk to me a little bit about the anxiety. What was driving that? Or what did you start peeling off the layers and discover about the anxiety?
[00:07:34] Speaker C: Yeah. So the anxiety, I think, was partly tied to the negative self talk. Right. If I never could satisfy myself in terms of doing what I needed to do or achieving things properly, that would create anxiety.
Honestly, I think my lack of sleep and my need on any time that I had free time to go and drink with a girlfriend of mine, I think that contributed to my anxiety. I wasn't ever getting any downtime to process or rest or regenerate, and that was difficult.
I also talked a decent amount at some point in time with my therapist about this scarcity mentality that she sort of talked to me about, which I think fed into my need to be constantly working.
It's kind of silly. In the business that I'm in, there's never going to be a shortage of work. And on a logical level, I know that. But anytime my caseload started dwindling or my hours started going down, I went into an instant panic about, what if this is it? What if nobody's coming to me anymore? Am I not going to be productive? Am I going to lose my job? Am I going to lose my business?
And so all those things were feeding in. And then just because life doesn't ever go the way you expect it to, on top of all of that, I got diagnosed with breast cancer almost a year into my therapy.
[00:09:08] Speaker B: Oh, my goodness.
[00:09:09] Speaker C: Yeah. And I'm healthy. I'm fine now.
Which probably was the best time that I could have had that thrown at me, because I was already actively in therapy, had a good, developed, established relationship with my therapist, but that sort of threw a layer on top of it. And Heidi said to me, this is going to be. At some point, she said tactfully, this is going to be a blessing in disguise for you. And I thought, she must be crazy, but it kind of was, because it forced me to take that step back from work. It forced me to take care of myself in ways. I'm not saying I wouldn't have gotten there, but I do think that that life twist allowed me to do it at an accelerated rate for.
[00:09:55] Speaker B: So did. Through your work with Heidi, did you ever discover the roots of that scarcity mentality?
[00:10:01] Speaker C: I don't know if we discovered the root of the scarcity mentality.
I do think that we uncovered the roots of the negative self talk, which was having been in a childhood with two abusive parents, both physically and mentally, I hesitate to use this word because I hear it every freaking day in my job, and I'm sure you do, too. But I'm pretty sure my mother was a narcissist.
[00:10:31] Speaker B: That's the word of the year for 2024.
[00:10:33] Speaker C: And I feel like a dumb ass for saying it, but it just is.
Whether she was or whether she wasn't, I just had a lot of people around me who were the very people who are supposed to support you, who were constantly cutting me down.
[00:10:51] Speaker B: So the breast cancer forces you to slow down and take time away from work. Did it force you to completely stop working, or was it what happened there?
[00:11:06] Speaker C: I remember when I got ready. So, as part of my treatment, I was actually really lucky. So I had it on one side. I ended up opting for a bilateral mastectomy because I did not want to deal with this again. And because I was able to do that, I didn't have to go through chemo or radiation, which I consider a very, very lucky turn of events. But the long and the short of it was for various reasons, I ended up having to have three surgeries within a period of like four or five months. I took the time off for the surgeries, which was not difficult to do from a mental perspective. For me, I was being cut open and sewn back up, but I had.
[00:11:46] Speaker B: Show to somebody else and then there can be excusable. It's a tangible thing. Surely I can be forgiven for this transgression.
[00:11:55] Speaker C: Exactly right. Including from myself. Exactly.
But I had these grand ideas. So the idea was, well, I'm having my surgery. I'll take a few days and I'll recover, and then I'll go back to work. I had my breasts removed and implants put in, which is major surgery. And going into that, I was like, yeah, I'll take a week off and then I'm going to go back to work. And Heidi kind of chuckled at me. I did probably force myself to go back earlier than I should have, but by the time it came to my second surgery, which came about because I got an infection in one of the implants, I realized that pushing myself to go back after a few days was not going to help anything. So I really had to have sort of another hard knocks lesson before I was able to scale things back in what I think a reasonable person would consider a reasonable period of time.
[00:12:52] Speaker B: And so then, after recovering from breast cancer and all of the surgeries, have you been able to maintain that better balance in work?
[00:12:59] Speaker C: I have, and it's taken a lot of work. So my last surgery was end of February of 2022, and I'm still a work in progress in that regard. I've always been that way. I'm 48 years old. I have to retrain myself, and I guess it just takes a while. But in talking it through with Heidi and sort of really being cognizant of it, even though it feels a little uncomfortable for me because it is not my norm from the first 46 years of my life, it is in the forefront of my mind on a day to day basis. And I do think I'm doing a much better job of controlling my workload. I've also changed jobs.
I'm doing the same thing.
I'm hoping at some point in the not too distant future to change my profession entirely. But I used to be in a position of having to run a business, and I have moved now to a place where I'm practicing but not responsible for running the business. And so the level of demand that is on me is also substantially reduced, which was a breath of fresh air from the first day I started this new job.
[00:14:08] Speaker B: And was that an intentional decision on your part to sort of reframe how you're going to approach work?
[00:14:13] Speaker C: Yes, absolutely. Because I knew if I continued that way that I could have all the best therapy in the world and give me a little time. I'm going to spin myself right back up into the very same place I started. I mean, I just knew I would go back into a complete 360 if I allowed myself to fall back on those unhealthy work habits.
[00:14:33] Speaker B: So that hour every week wasn't the hardest part of it. It was then all the stuff that had to happen and all the other hours of the week of making those hard decisions.
[00:14:42] Speaker C: I mean, absolutely. I personally believe that therapy really only works if you're willing to put in the work outside of the sessions, too. I mean, I've definitely, over time, had some really hard sessions. But you're not going to get better if you don't implement the things you talk about in your day to day life. And that's hard.
[00:15:03] Speaker B: Right. And confronting the self. Right. Confronting what's really going on, not the version of it that we share with others or try to convince ourselves of. It's the truth of what's going on.
[00:15:15] Speaker C: Yeah. And I will say, and I know everybody's different and has different styles and preferences, but one of the reasons why I think I got along really well and really appreciated the work that Heidi has done with me is because she's super direct and I need somebody to call me out on my bs. I don't want a therapist who's going to tiptoe around it. And so that was incredibly helpful for me, for her to call me out and say, listen, look at how you're looking at this and sort of illustrate to me in those sessions how preposterous some of my ideas and perspectives were.
[00:15:49] Speaker B: And so where are you at today with everything? With both therapy and the changes that you've made, general depression and anxiety are still a thing. Is extricating yourself from the marriage still a thing?
[00:16:04] Speaker C: So I think depression and anxiety will probably always be a little bit of a thing for me, but it is absolutely under control. The funny part is that my main goal going into that was to exit my marriage, and that's not something I'm considering doing now. We've actually been able to reconnect. And a big part of that, I think, was me getting out of my own way. I mean, not only have I done the work that I've already shared with you, I actually ended up, because of all the other things that were going on in my life. I actually ended up going to inpatient treatment for a few days, which I don't think I would have done had my therapist not sort of encouraged me to. But I was very seriously considering ending my life at some point about a year ago. And so I really had to hit that rock bottom. But I had a good foundation prior to that. And when I came out of that, I've continued to do a lot of work on myself and have a lot of grace with myself.
And I'm in a lot going on in life right now, but I'm in a much better place.
[00:17:23] Speaker B: Fantastic. So just to read it, breast cancer wasn't the turning point for you?
[00:17:27] Speaker C: Cancer was a turning point, okay.
[00:17:31] Speaker B: But there were more yet to come after that.
[00:17:33] Speaker C: I think the hospitalization was one, too, backtracking a little bit. I had the breast cancer. That was a real eye opener for me in terms of self care and in terms of work life balance. But then I was still, at that point in time, when I got through all of that, focused on the idea that I was going to end my marriage. And so I told my husband that I was done, and it was a couple of months after that that I sort of went back down again, ended up in this inpatient treatment. And I'm very lucky that I have somebody who said, listen, you're my best friend. I know you just told me, get lost, but I'm not going to abandon you. And he was very supportive, and that brought us a lot closer together. And I think part of the reason that I was able to see past these goals that I had set out that maybe weren't right for me is because I had done all that work in between the time that I started therapy and the time that all that stuff hit me.
[00:18:39] Speaker B: And so what was inpatient like for you?
Can you describe that experience to whatever degree you're comfortable describing?
[00:18:48] Speaker C: I am an open book. I am happy to describe it. I can tell you going into it was absolutely terrifying.
I went involuntarily, which I'm sure it would have been even more terrifying if I hadn't. And I went in, it was nighttime. Everybody was sleeping. They put me in a room with somebody else. I thought to myself, it's going to be weird. This woman's going to wake up and have this other person in her room. I was really, really frightened.
And in the morning when I woke up, I listened. I laid in bed and listened to things going on in there and various people with various sort of conditions and afflictions and stuff like that. And I remained terrified.
But in the three days that I was in there, it was one of the most life changing experiences I've ever had. It was amazing.
[00:19:38] Speaker B: What made it that way?
[00:19:40] Speaker C: A couple of things.
One was being in a place where other people were really struggling. And I went in. What do I want to say?
With no pretenses, right?
You're just in there and everything's hanging out and emotionally and most everybody else just lets their stuff hang out and you feel safe from judgment.
And in all honesty, it gave me another force break. Like, I just was cut off. I mean, I talked to my husband and even my son once on the phone when I was in there, but you're cut off from everything. It forced me to really spend some good compressed time working on myself.
So that was one really special part of it, was being in there with people who were also really struggling and feeling not alone.
But honestly, for me, it's also one of the things that I love about. It's one of the most proudest moments of my life that I went in and did that because I think it changed everything for me.
And I think we have such a stigma around mental health issues and treatments, which is so sad.
And I think there's probably a lot of people who could benefit from that kind of treatment who will never go because it makes you defective or not okay, or it makes you an other whatever it does.
And I also think there was probably a component of maybe I haven't given enough weight to how serious my issues are until you wake up in a place like that and go, oh, my God, how did I get here?
It just sounds so funny to say because I think most people would do just about anything that they could to avoid being in a place like that. And it truly was one of the most life changing experiences for me in a really good way.
Yeah.
[00:21:56] Speaker B: How was it for you when you came out with the residential treatment plan?
[00:21:59] Speaker C: Scary. Really scary.
I cried my eyes out when I left. I mean, I'm, full disclosure, I'm a crier. I cry at Kleenex commercials and stuff like that.
But I was really upset when I left.
And it was scary because even in the short time that I was in there, it came to feel safe. And when you go outside of a place like that and you don't have all the built in supports and the group therapy at whatever time, every day or whatever it is, I was a little worried because I had been going in with thoughts of self harm. I was a little worried that when I came out, I would go right back to that.
At the time, I think I was also a little worried about for the people who knew what they would think of it, for the people who didn't know, what if they found out?
But I was. Your fears come true, you know, in that regard, they really didn't. My family was very supportive. My husband was amazing.
Even my kids, I have two boys who are teenagers. They were both so supportive. And I'm going to tell you something, Shannon. I started telling people where I was like, I didn't think I was going to do that. I thought it was going to be, like my dirty little secret, but it was liberating to tell. Mean, you know, I didn't scream it from the mountaintops, obviously, but for people who were around and saw, I told a number of them, and it felt really liberating. And sort of selfishly, I felt like I was maybe helping the cause of destigmatizing some of this stuff.
Of course.
[00:23:46] Speaker B: That's fantastic.
[00:23:48] Speaker C: Yeah. And not one person, not one judged me.
If I got any kind of emotional response from people, it was just, we're so glad you took care of yourself. There was no negative that I experienced. There was no judgment, which I was kind of surprised about.
[00:24:04] Speaker B: But please, the tide is turning.
[00:24:06] Speaker C: I think it really feels that way.
I know I've got a lot of stuff ahead, but I feel a lot better. And I would like to think that the world is maybe changing a little bit, too, because this is becoming a much more public thing. And I love when people in positions of power and public put themselves out there because I think it normalizes it for everybody else.
[00:24:34] Speaker B: And you were a woman in a position of power that decided to take herself offline for three days to take care of herself and then didn't hide it.
[00:24:47] Speaker C: Yeah. Didn't feel like I had much power when I went into that place. But I think you're right.
I was a business owner and a professional person and a parent, and the boss took herself. Yeah.
[00:25:02] Speaker B: Offline.
And so where are you at today with everything? How are you integrating therapy into your life today? Or even are you still.
[00:25:13] Speaker C: Where I am today is I'm taking things step by step in terms of finding a couple of different places where there's room for improvement, whether it be in having patience with myself, whether it be in just self care, whether it be in modeling that for my children.
But it feels much more attainable because I'm in a much more stable place right now than I have been in the last couple of years. I'm continuing in therapy because I definitely have some other issues that I'm going to have to sort of work through and I'm continuing to do. But it feels really good at this point, knowing that I can accomplish these kinds of changes and get this kind of clarity. Because when I look back for the last three or more years of therapy that I've had and sort of see measure where I started and where I am right now and see the big difference, it reinforces to me that taking these additional steps and working on these additional issues is something that I can do, and it's going to be difficult, and the work is going to be 100% worth it. Thank you.
Of course. And for what it's worth, sometimes I get in my own way, but I also think it's really interesting. When I was thinking about sort of us having this conversation today, it is really interesting to me that when I went into therapy, I was sort of pointing the finger in a lot of different directions, but none of them at myself in terms of my depression or dissatisfaction with life. And so much of those problems were created or exacerbated by me, and I had no idea of that going in and was resistant to the idea of it when it was first suggested. But I had a lot of work.
[00:27:10] Speaker B: To do on myself, as we all do, right?
[00:27:13] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:27:14] Speaker B: Sometimes the hardest place to look is in the mirror.
[00:27:18] Speaker C: That's true.
[00:27:19] Speaker B: Well, thank you for sharing with us.
[00:27:21] Speaker C: Of course.
[00:27:29] Speaker A: Hey, listener, I have a secret for you. Heidi, the therapist referenced in today's podcast, is on staff here at oppressity expat therapy. If you're not content with the relationship that you currently have with your therapist or you're new to therapy, check out apricity expat therapy. Specifically Heidi. She has immediate availability and is licensed in Colorado, Virginia, and Wisconsin, meaning that if you're an expatriate, she can definitely see you. If you are currently located in any of those states, she can also see you. We also have other therapists on staff that have immediate availability as well. Check us
[email protected].
