The End of Therapy, The End of The Beginning... Again

Six weeks ago, I decided to try something slightly ridiculous.

I became both the therapist and the client.

Similar to the structured way I plan other people's therapy approaches, except I was the one with both the questions and the answers, the suggestions and the decisions. A very deliberate and informed form of self-help.

Each week I picked a different approach and sat with it properly, instead of skimming past things the way I sometimes might when life is busy and uncomfortable.

I didn’t start it because I was in total crisis, but I know the signs for myself and I knew it might be just around the corner. Tight chest, easy to anger and becoming vocal with everyone I spoke to about every small inconvenience.

And I suppose I thought that if I worked through the right sequence of ideas — starting with the therapies that I think of as small in the beginning, and then putting the big life-changers near the end — I would ease a little in the first 3 weeks and then ramp up to the hard stuff.

It didn’t really work like that.

Each week did something, but not in the way I expected.

The ones I considered 'small' were so effective that they awakened a part of me I hadn't come across in a long time and sort of... Remembered who I am (I know, full cheese).

Some things softened.
Some things sharpened.
Some things I’d been avoiding became a bit harder to ignore.

But by the time I got to the final week, the one I thought would pull everything together, there was a strange feeling of déjà vu, because I'd started just covering old ground that I know I've learned about myself in years of therapy prior.

The last two weeks didn't do that much for me, not because it wasn’t useful, just because it wasn’t new.

I think that was the first real shift.

Not everything needs another layer of understanding.

Sometimes you’ve already understood the things you need to, but it's easy to get lost along the way trying to reach that version of yourself. Aligning to expectations or living in a way that your surroundings enforce, rather than pursuing the things that once made you feel alive.

What I noticed, if I’m honest, is that I don’t really struggle with meaning, or knowing my values. I struggle with how to align to them in a world that expects me to honour different meaning or traditions.

There’s a familiar energy that ignites in me when something is new, or uncertain, or needed. When someone needs help and I can see a way to give it. When something doesn’t quite work and I know I can figure out how to make it better. When I’m learning, or building, or moving.

It’s quite a specific feeling. Curiosity, mostly, a bit of excitement underneath it... And it doesn’t last forever.

That’s the part I think I’ve spent years questioning.

Because once that initial 'fixer phase' fades, everything else feels heavier. Not terrible, just... Flat.

Repetition of a task that was once new and resolved a problem feels more like something I should be doing, rather than something I want to be doing. Fixing a problem really interests me, maintaining it doesn't so much.

I used to think that was a problem with me. That I was restless, or non-committal, or always looking for something better. But I don’t think that’s quite it. I think I just reach the point where the meaningful part has already happened and then sometimes, I stay anyway out of a sense of duty, knowing the part that feeds my soul is now behind me.

I knew quite early on, that some things in my life didn’t quite fit anymore and I also knew that nothing about those people, places and situations was objectively wrong.

For one of those situations in particular, I was able to make the change I needed during the therapy process.

There was love and care and a familiarity I rarely spend long enough to experience. But there was also a sense that I was shaping myself around it, because that's what 'normal' looks like — That's what we're supposed to do.

It wasn't the kind of decision that comes with a clear right answer. Just two options that both cost something.

Stay, and keep moving away from a life that feels like my own. Or leave, and lose something... Someone, that matters.

I left, with a full understanding of what that meant. There’s a version of life I don’t get to have now. And I think that’s the part people don’t always talk about when they speak about “choosing yourself”. I know this is the right thing, but what's right for me can't always meet in the middle with what's right for someone else too and that often means you lose the whole person, not just the parts you can't handle.

So, as an honest review, no, this hasn’t tied everything up neatly. I don’t have a perfectly structured plan. I haven’t suddenly become more decisive or certain about my future, or how to move forward in the other places and situations that have run their course.

But something is clearer.

I don’t need to keep trying to build a life that looks like it should. The expected one where people settle in the place that seems logical rather than move with the waves that swell underneath our everyday.

I need a life that moves. One that lets things begin, matter, and end without needing to turn them into something permanent.

Ten years ago I got my first tattoo... "This too shall pass" on my hip, with a little paper aeroplane. 

Ten years ago, I knew something that ten weeks or ten months ago I wasn't aligning to anymore.

Nothing is permanent. Everything ends, whether by choice or by force. Everything we now know will one day be different and we can decide how much of that happens because of the choices we make and how much of it is because it moved before we did.

This whole process has just brought me back to something I already knew, but was no longer aligning myself to.

But I did need it. I can now recognise and understand my thoughts, feelings and behaviours again, because I had lost my way. I was holding on to things that will never be mine in the end anyway. Things that aren't even aligned to what makes me feel alive.

So this isn’t really an ending.

Because at the end, the King and the Pawn go back in the same box. So I know I'll be reunited with all of the players that mattered in my game at the end. And in the meantime, I am grateful for every part that has been played.