I Mastered Therapy! Here's What I Learned.
This post contains lethal doses of sarcasm if read irresponsibly.
I had given up on traditional therapy after three sessions of showing up nine beers deep and watching my clinical psychologist doze off whenever I began exploring my tendency to compliment attractive women for their shoes, and then immediately Naruto run in the opposite direction and crawl into the nearest storm drain. So I asked Dr. Ashbury who her therapist was and went to see them. From there, I asked each successive shrink the same question, hoping I would eventually meet the final boss therapist and defeat them with my absolute trainwreck of a life.
The motivation to begin these sessions came from hate-watching one of those Jubilee videos and, like, four Zoomer goth chicks said everyone needs to go to therapy and they wouldn’t go out with anyone who wasn’t on SSRIs. I figured this would be an easy way to date in upper socioeconomic groups without looking elitist. It took me a while to come around to paying $150 an hour to talk about my problems with someone who will pathologize my behavior, especially when it doesn’t cost me anything to have pretend arguments with myself in the shower. I haven’t lost the resolve to find the final boss therapist despite the rise of TikTok therapy-speak and the endless barrage of pencil-necked turbodorks leveraging neurodivergence for clout. One time at a coffee shop, I overheard someone say, “Being grossed out by another person’s energy and mentality is such a real thing. Normalize not vibing to someone’s toxic behavioral gaslighting so you can have the space necessary to manifest mental energy.” I will do everything in my power to stigmatize the word normalize.
At one point, I convinced myself that the real cure to neuroticism is when you finally understand that consequences are a social construct and you can do literally whatever you want if you impose your will on your environment hard enough. This revelation empowered me to self-undiagnose myself and, you know, manifest a more positive aura. I went off my meds, and nope, definitely bipolar. As soon as the jail cell slammed in my face, I realized the gorilla I kidnapped and force-fed acid to was actually a non-verbal autistic child. At least I know he didn’t talk to the cops. I will eventually find that rat and explain to them why snitching is bitch-made problematic, and use a pair of pliers and some rope to reinforce some boundaries of my own.
Anyhow, it took three years, 10 therapists, and several iterations of borderline personality disorders to get here, but I stand before the office door of the final boss therapist. The waiting room has a blistering amount of natural light, reflecting off the white marble floors in a way that might blind you if you stare at it for too long. I revel in the glory of completing this journey, one that was initially personal but grew to involve an ensemble of companions that unearthed several avenues of character development and plot twists.
I’m not entirely sure what to expect.
Will this person be awe-inspiring?
Will they have keen insights into the depths of my soul?
Will they tell me to download a meditation app?
I open the door, and to my surprise, Fran Lebowitz is sitting on a red suede couch in an otherwise empty room, and I can hear the crackling of an orange ember drag toward her puckered lips as she takes a prolonged puff of her Nat Sherman. She reclines back and asks, “Was this really about confronting the final boss, or was this about all the therapists you made along the way?”
Being forced to stare into your own void is something mildly traumatic, but is also essentially antithetical to what Jonah Hill would do, so I will do so purely out of spite, mostly because reading the text exchange between him and Sarah Brady was its own form of emotional abuse. I begin to think about the red flags I put out into the universe—like telling women at the grocery store that I like their shoes and if they don’t hear me, I follow them into the parking lot and then once they get in their car, I knock on their window because these queens need to know their worth. I was under the impression that I was showing tenacity and my allyship in dismantling patriarchal systems of oppression. Apparently, this seduction technique does NOT work if you look like a Redditor.
As I continue my self-reflection, I realize that maybe I was too hard on Dr. Ashbury. She did listen to my troubles semi-attentively—sure, I suppose, that’s because I paid her, but I felt something real for the first time in a while when she asked me, “What do you think you should do?” I did develop a mild crush on her, which my other therapists have told me is on par with the love of your life being the cashier who smiled at you this morning.
With a greater sense of self-awareness, I began trauma-dumping to Fran.
“I’m in a place where I’m trying to honor my needs and act in alignment with what feels right within the scope of my life, and I’m afraid the boundaries between myself and all my closest friends no longer seem to fit in that framework. I can no longer hold the emotional space that any relationship demands of me. However, I don’t want to have any sort of uncomfortable and triggering conversation with them, because accounting for their emotional needs demands a mental load that is both exhausting and beyond the scope of what I can offer. I realize that setting the boundaries between my needs and their expectations has been toxic and demanding of all my relationships. I consider myself an empath, but I find myself lacking the bandwidth to continue caring when I clearly don’t. I realize that I am the problem, but I will ghost them for both our sakes and run away to Alaska. This is a genuine life choice made out of my newly-found growth mindset, and this is in no way related to facing a court date for that kidnapping-an-autistic-kid charge. I understand that I can do better. I will BE better.”
I feel I must book in for therapy with Fran...... 🚬
I work with someone that talks like this. They should be hit with a shoe.