Therapy Session - $60 I’m desperately missing

Wed, 20 Feb 2008 14:53:30 GMT

With all of the emotional things I’ve been experiencing over this past month I decided to go see a “special” therapist that would be geared towards something that I think I might be going through. Little did I know that my trip there would turn into something that would leave me feeling even more vulnerable and with a certified stamp of “stupid” on my forehead.

You know how they tell you to always listen to your gut instinct and if you don’t you have to suffer the consequences? Well, that was me at 7:30 last night. I found myself walking down a deserted hallway in a small strip mall. The entrance way was nothing but two glass doors with a shopping cart parked nearby. As I walked down this hallway I started getting this eerie feeling that I was par taking in a pivotal scene of a movie where the girl is “investigating” a noise she heard down this scary hallway only to be killed minutes later and the whole audience is screaming at her to “DON’T DO IT!!!!” As I passed the abandoned shops with black curtains hanging over the windows a little voice in my head said, “turn around, go back home where it’s safe.” Instead I kept moving forward.

When I finally reached the glass door that I was looking for I followed the typed directions on the paper that read, “Please knock and have a seat. I’ll be with you shortly.” I then sat on the wooden bench in the desolate hallway for about five minutes before a woman poked her head out of the glass door and said, “Honey, give me about five minutes, ok?” I mumbled my consent and waited for her return.

I stared at the wall while I waited, thought about what I was going to say to this ‘professional’, and hang on to my hopes that she would be part of the answer of getting the help that I’ve been so desperately searching for. Five minutes turned to ten, ten turned to fifteen, and fifteen then turned to twenty. The thought, “I should go. Who cares if she peers back out here and finds an empty bench? Something doesn’t seem right about all of this”, ran through my head more than once and I quieted my mind and reprimanded myself for being a coward and looking for an easy way out of an uncomfortable situation.

Brave woman that I am (later to find out that not so much “brave” as “stupid”) I waited it out until finally two women emerged from the mysterious glass doors. The Therapist ushering another Client out the door with consoling words of, “I’ll see you next week.” The Therapist then looked down at me and told me she was ready for me. I followed her into a room that I can only describe as a failed attempt at an apartment. There was a big couch, several different chairs, a coffee table, shelves, a desk, and a rocking chair, which The Therapist sat in and told me to sit wherever I liked.

She asked me a lot of questions about my life, family, work, and romance situation. She followed the rules of what a good therapist asks and I started to think maybe my instincts were wrong and this was going to be a good first step. Until 20 or 30 minutes later she was using words like, “Depression”, “Medication”, “My PCP”, and I suddenly felt the part of a horror movie again where the main character is being lured in by a daemon that is earning the naïve girl’s trust by relating to the girl’s feelings and experiences and suddenly the girl is being brained washed, or worse yet, has been bitten by the daemon and is now a mindless zombie.

As this feeling crept over me and took hold fast (every particle of my being telling me to run) The Therapist continued to talk about her own depression, her own bankruptcy, and how she doesn’t like insurance companies. Before I knew what was happening I was handing over $60 and being ushered out of those same mysterious glass doors, I was looking at an hour ago wondering what lurked behind them, into the equally scary hallway.

“Vulnerable”, “Naïve”, “Stupid”, “Empty”, “Burned”, and “Bruised” don’t even begin to describe what I’m feeling right now. That was an hour and a half of my life I will never get back, $60 I will never see again, and my papers with all of my personal information on them that I now wish I could go get and shred into a million pieces. Now in hindsight I wish I had turned around the moment I felt that bad feeling while I walked down the hallway.

The Therapist wants to see me again next Monday at 6:30, I’m calling her tomorrow to tell her I’m moving to Arizona and will no longer be able to use her services.

The moral of the story: LISTEN TO YOUR GUT!!!!!

~ Fat Chick

A Fat Chick Trying to Find Herself: STUPID

Therapy Session - $60 I’m desperately missing