When I started therapy a little over two years ago, I did not think it was going to help me in any meaningful way. I only started so I would be able to access transition related healthcare. Generally to be able to transition, trans people need to get confirmation from a mental health professional that they are indeed trans (which is a system I still believe is extremely transphobic).
But despite my initial reservations about therapy, I actually found it to be extremely helpful. When I started therapy, I was depressed, anxious and suicidal. While therapy did not provide an instant fix to any of these problems, it gave me the tools to help myself.
As a society, we often think of therapy as being a form of conditioning. We picture a therapist telling a patient how they should think and act. My experience did not involve any of that. I've worked with two therapists and both of them never once told me that what I was doing was wrong. Instead they taught me strategies to help myself cope with my depression and anxiety. My second therapist once told me that she merely saw herself as a "scaffold" for helping people get better.
We also tend to think of therapy as very mechanical. We picture a stuffy old white guy absentmindedly taking notes on a clipboard as his patient talks. What I found was that therapy was actually a very intimate space. It is a space where you often share extremely intense emotions. There are even things I've told my therapists that I have not told anyone else.
Sharing such intimate details of your life often makes it hard not to develop some sort of a bond with your therapist. After just a little while, I found myself looking forward to the experience of just seeing my therapist. In the end, both of my therapists ended up leaving and I cried both times.
Sometimes people who have similar issues as me ask me for advice. The thing I always say is to try going to therapy. It is certainly not for everyone and many therapists are not great. But if my experience is anything to go by, it's something worth trying.
