Climbing out of the Darkness
By: R. Alexandr
Tags: Darkness, Progress, Therapy, Self Reflection

Understanding yourself is an ongoing process requiring self-reflection and continuous effort.

Photo by Trym Nilsen on Unsplash

A few years ago, I needed some understanding. Understanding why I reacted to life events the way I did. Understanding why I no longer wanted to live in this world, but also, could not finish the planning process for how I would die. Understanding how to take steps to move forward when all I wanted to do was stop. Understanding how, despite my best efforts, people that I cared about kept deserting me. Understanding how to make real friends at 50+ years of age when my introverted self strongly resisted meeting new people in any kind of social setting. Understanding how to allow myself to take emotional risks when I have been conditioned by how they have usually resulted in abject failure and excruciating anguish.

Starting in my early 30s, I started what would end up being a decade of traditional talk-therapy. At one point, I was even referred to a psychiatrist to explore taking medication to combat depression-like behaviors. Even though I resist all meds, I thought it was best to try this path. Medication didn’t really work for me, and I stopped after several months. The decade of therapy did help me quite a bit. Mostly, it helped me put names to things I had not consciously processed before from a mental health perspective. It helped me step back and realize that bad things could happen to me and not because of me. It helped me establish the first kernel of self-worth that was not based on what I could do or what role I had. Being of value for just being was and still is not a comfortable idea for me. If I’m candid, I would tell you that I believe this of other people but not myself. Being able to express this, however, is progress considering where I started. I started therapy for one reason only. I was scared that I was unable to feel love “the right way” for my 4-year-old child. One of the first things I said to that therapist is, “I think I’m broken. I don’t feel things the way that other people describe them.”

Twenty years later, I still don’t feel things the way other people describe them, but I know that one big reason is because of how my introverted personality works. I don’t feel things the same way and that’s okay because it is the way I am wired. It’s not because I am defective. I kind of get that about me now. But getting it was not helping with the more recent “understanding myself” crisis I found myself in just a few short years ago. So, I found someone else to help me try and sort through things.

This person was a completely different kind of therapist. One that worked with unknowns that raised my skeptical-hackles. However, I was trying to figure out my own unknowns, and I read something on her website that spoke my uncertainty. She said, even if you don’t believe in some of the things we’ll be doing, it’s okay, the process will still work for you. I have been expected or told to believe in so many things in my life. I found it refreshing to have someone acknowledge that belief was not asked for or even required. After a brief introductory session on how hypnotherapy works and what to expect, I was given a homework assignment to bring to our first real-working session.

I feel obligated to note that the term hypnotherapy can conjure images of carnival hypnotists or of being subconsciously programmed to stop smoking or act like a chicken. It is not that. There are many resources to help explain the difference; look them up. With hypnotherapy, your conscious mind is fully aware of what is going on, and you must be willing to participate. The hypnotherapist cannot whammy you with mind-control and make you rob banks without remembering what happened. I also feel obligated to state, again, that you are not required to believe in anything other or mystical. In my experience, the process allowed my conscious mind to take a back seat and watch while my subconscious provided truths. Which, by the by, were mostly unknown or unremembered by my conscious mind. Meaning, I was often surprised at answers to questions when I truly had no idea what the answer might be. It was a super-weird and absolutely fascinating experience. Plus, as opposed to traditional talk-therapy, there was no need to experience reliving the traumatic event or emotions.

The homework assignment was the key to getting started. My task was to make a list of every physical or mental trauma I could think of that I had experienced in my lifetime. This was not a time to reminisce about past pain. It was simply to list things that happened that brought emotional pain into my life. It didn’t matter if it was a huge event (crashing in a hang-gliding incident) or objectively smaller (losing a high school friend because he wanted to hang out more with the girl he liked). Putting that kind of list together is an interesting experience. Everything got one line and little explanation — just a note of the even (i.e., dropped friend off at rehab after a relapse when I was utterly unprepared for the experience). In the next session, we talked briefly about each one. Specifically, about the feelings that were in play within each scenario.

This first experience was surreal in that it allowed me to step back and analyze each event without getting caught up in the emotions. It was also cathartic in that it helped to identify common themes throughout different experiences. This was just a starting point in the work we’ve done together. In and of itself, though, the exercise of creating the list and analyzing it from a different angle was extremely enlightening. Retrospectively, looking back through my life, while not dwelling on specifics, reveals how much I’ve made it through, how much I have overcome, and how getting through the dark times helps with understanding myself, my priorities, and what I need from others. Getting those things defined for yourself is extremely important when you are trying to move forward in a way that does not mirror where you have been. This exercise produced a guideline of topics to work through and helped me gain some of that elusive understanding that I craved. Over time, the work we did helped me climb out of the darkness.

I cannot say that everything is fixed, humans do not work that way, but I can say that I am lighter than I was and better able to value myself for more than the roles that I play. Well…sometimes I can. I’m a work in progress and still learning to focus more on the journey of living rather than being consumed with reaching some mythical final destination.