Why therapy might stop working for you

Therapy saved my life. It gave me a space to allow myself to feel again, safely.
I think everyone should go to therapy.
But, I have been in near-constant therapy all my life. And I needed it.
But once I was able to sleep through the night thanks to it, stopped flinching at loud sounds and stopped using drugs, therapy didn’t hit the same anymore.
So when I stopped a year ago, I asked myself:
Why now?

It’s not about changing how you feel.
It’s about not taking your feelings so seriously.

Once I was out of crisis, I would find myself in sessions recounting situations I was already fine with. Therapy had given me the skills to self-regulate and reparent.
And yes, there were still things that needed work.
The self-hating thoughts, the low self-esteem.
But staying in therapy for the sake of it wasn’t going to change that.
Living was.
And going through every single shame attack made them bigger than they needed to be.

I am not my thoughts or my feelings.
They are waves, I am ocean.

Before therapy, I was too terrified to feel a single ripple of feeling.
I thought I would drown if I let down my wall – now I know I am an excellent swimmer.
Now my mind is a safe place, I can stop taking it so seriously.
If you are bigger than every thought that comes your way, why do you need to change them all? Understand them? Analyse them?

My thoughts are none of my business.

The thing that finally helped my low self-esteem was letting it be.
Fine, some of my thoughts think I do not love myself.
So what?
Let my thoughts think what they want – I know better than to listen.
I know how to pick my battles.
And I choose the happy thoughts, the joy and love. Those are the ones I listen to and engage with, and I can do that now, thanks to therapy.