Therapy This Week

 Would you look at that - I have returned once more! It’s been a minute, and there has been too much, so let me sum up. The important bits for the purpose of this post is that I have been diagnosed with bipolar II (AKA, all the lows, not quite the highs) and autism in the last two years, so I’ve been working with a therapist to try and figure out what that all means for me now. Also, my Daisy-cat passed away suddenly a couple of months ago, and we recently welcomed a new member of the family, QWERTY. 

He’s living up to his name on a regular basis, but I got a keyboard cover to protect my laptop (or rather, to keep him from doing more new and exciting things to my laptop), and it’s been working out pretty well so far.

So! I’m working with Mar Rodriguez with Holistic Child and Family, and they are MARVELOUS. I highly recommend the practice, though they do currently have a 4+ month waitlist. In my opinion, totally worth the wait. Mar is fantastic, and working with a therapist who is also neurodivergent and is able to understand some of the difficulties that entails has been so validating, and it’s really helped me start to get a handle on what that means for me.

I’m realizing that it helps me a lot to talk things out after therapy to kind of synthesize things for myself, make sure I understand what we talked about. Unfortunately, that’s not really a thing most people are comfortable hearing about, either because mental health is still stigmatized, or because people just don’t want to go that deep with someone (or both). So naturally, I figured the next-best thing would be to babble on digital paper into the void of the internet. At least this way, I don’t have to see people get disinterested or uncomfortable and click away, so that’s useful for me.

The theme this week seemed to be identity, which is not an easy thing for me to pin down. Specifically, there were two parts - my identity as a disabled person, and my identity as a Christian and someone who lives to serve others. The disability piece is harder for me to claim, even though there are concrete reasons for me to take advantage of things like accessibility resources. What brought this up was flying to and from Atlanta for a training for work. Now, I have sciatica, which means that my back is frequently in a lot of pain, and walking through a huge honkin’ airport like Atlanta’s while carrying my bags is sure to aggravate it. To help with this, I use a cane when the pain is bad or when I know I’m going to need the extra support, so I was definitely using it in the airport both coming and going.

Flying out to Atlanta, my travel vibes were solidly positive. Flight was on time, the flight attendants were incredibly helpful - one even carried my bag to my seat and put it in the overhead for me when I boarded. And I did take advantage of the pre-boarding because it does take me longer to get down the aisle of an airplane with both cane and bag, so I was definitely appreciative of the extra help. It was a great start to the trip!

The flight home was not. I was in a lot of pain from five days of sitting in uncomfortable chairs (seriously, why is it impossible for churches to have comfortable seats?), and I was booking it to get to the gate because I was able to get on an earlier flight. I managed to pre-board again, and this time I asked a flight attendant if she could carry my bag back to my seat because I need the help. (Note - I don’t ask for help if I can possibly get by without it, so the fact that I was willing to ask for help was something I had been proud of.) She refused, telling me that if I couldn’t manage my bag, I needed to check it, and gave me enough attitude that I felt shamed for asking for help. It sent me into a spiral for the rest of my time on the plane, and made me feel guilty for using any of the accessibility resources I had used.

Mar reminded me of all the work disability advocates have done to get access to the resources I, and others like me, have the ability to use today, and that they wouldn’t have done that work if they didn’t want people to actually use the resources. In a way, it’s a disservice to all the work they’ve done to not at least consider using those tools when they’re available, and Mar reminded me that if people use them, it helps let the powers that be know that the resources need to keep being funded. Mar also took a minute to tell me that I hadn’t done anything wrong, which I greatly appreciated, even if there’s still a little part of me that’s not entirely convinced. After all, I asked for help, and I’m supposed to be able to pull myself up by my bootstraps and handle my own stuff - it’s the American way! (I know, I know - I’m a work in progress.)

Now onto the other thing. Part of the training event included hearing from a pastor who is trained as a therapist who works in clergy wellness (AKA keeping clergy from burning out). One of the things she mentioned was the theology of sacrifice - that in order to be a good Christian, you need to be willing to put others before yourself, to put yourself last, and to always be working in service to the Lord and your fellow man. I was raised with a pretty extreme version of this, with some added misogyny - I was raised in the Southern Baptist tradition, and women aren’t permitted to serve as clergy in that tradition. So, according to my grandmother, my aunt, and my Sunday School teachers, my role was to support the men who were leading the church, so that they could do their work. And as a child, I was to assist my parents in any way I could to keep from being a burden on them, because they had important work to do as well. It’s…a lot, looking at it laid out plainly.

Well, the clergy wellness trainer talked about this theology, and then said blatantly, “This is bad theology.” I almost felt a record scratch in my head when I heard that, because that’s not how it’s supposed to work, right? Being in service to others is the point, and you serve others by putting them before yourself, right?

Yeah. So, there’s a lot there to unpack, and I’m still working on figuring out how to still feel like I’m being a good, useful person while not always putting myself last. Mar suggested that we reframe supporting other people and helping them do their work as something I *do*, not something I *am*, and that could help. Part of it is that I’ve always had the feeling that while all the world’s a stage, I’m a stage manager, not an actor. I’m backstage making things run smoothly for the people onstage, and when a stage manager is good at their job, you don’t see them do their work - you just see the results. So there’s going to be a lot more discussion on this point, I’m pretty sure.

Well, that got longer than I anticipated. I have no idea if anyone will read this tome, but I feel a little better for having written it, so maybe that’s something? Who knows. I leave you with a picture of Nef as a reward for finishing the post. Until next time!