#23 Thank you, therapy.

To feel truly comfortable in my own skin

It took me a long time to feel truly comfortable in my own skin. And I never would have gotten here were it not for therapy. There’s a lot of talk about mental health these days, and I frequently question where perhaps we’re now too eager to share our trauma and pursue our personal wellness above our obligations to others. As I wrote in a blog post earlier this year:

Popular culture today has, in the words of Parul Sehgal, “elevated trauma from a sign of moral defect to a source of moral authority, even a kind of expertise.” At its best, the cultural shift opens up genuine intimacy between friends, emotional self-awareness, and improved mental health. At its worst, we seek status by performing victimhood, treating each conversation as if it were therapy, and obsessing over the pain of the past while minimizing our agency in shaping the possibility of our future.

And so I was apprehensive when Luis and I decided to discuss our experiences with therapy in an episode of our buddy podcast, The Twelve Inquiries. But then Luis sent me his edit of the conversation and I was happy with how it turned out. As I listened, I kept thinking how I would have benefitted from hearing it, or something like it, in my 20s. Back then, it extremely was rare to hear anyone admit to seeing a therapist. Even today, it’s still rare to hear men in our 40s openly describe our coping mechanisms, our experiences with therapists, and our struggles to develop more honest narratives about our behaviors.

I feel a little vulnerable putting this one out there. At the same time, I’m proud of us for being vulnerable without wearing our hearts on our sleeves.

It takes us five or ten minutes before we find our conversational groove and I’m not sure how this one will land for others, but I hope that it’s useful to somebody out there. As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts — either in the comments below or by responding directly to the email.