I never liked to write in therapy. I was never the one who went into sessions with a pen and notebook, moreover, I was the one who went in with a bad attitude for at least the first half of my therapy-going career. It just made me feel weird. I'm the type of person who will highlight the whole page of a textbook because it's all important. What do you mean I have to pick and choose? It felt like an impossible task to have to sit in therapy and get something out of it and also pay attention to what I should write down. I also didn't want any therapist to question what I was writing down. Maybe this is part of why I always felt my therapy sessions weren't as successful as they could have been.
Zoom therapy became a thing. The Covid-19 pandemic that took over and ruined everything resulted in therapists, psychiatrists, and clinicians sitting behind a screen to help people sort through their life's deepest traumas instead of in a neatly kept office with a leather couch and aroma diffuser.
I did my weekly Zoom therapy calls at my desk where nearby was a plethora of post-it notes. So I began to write. They were lavender post-it notes. When my therapist said something that made me think, No wait, that's really smart, I wish I could remember that," onto the post-it notes it went.
But one day I realized that mostly, it wasn't wise tidbits of advice that I wrote down - though they were sometimes, it was mostly direct quotes of both my therapist and psychiatrist simply just validating me. "You were treated very unfairly," one read. This felt like proof to me -- like I could go up to anyone on the street or in the mall with the lavender post-its in my hand and say, "LOOK!! LOOK HERE. I'M NOT CRAZY. MY PSYCHIATRIST -- THE TYPE OF DOCTOR WHO STUDIES THE BRAIN, THE TYPE OF DOCTOR WHO TREATS CRAZY PEOPLE AGREES WITH ME, I AM NOT CRAZY! I WAS TREATED UNFAIRLY! LOOK RIGHT HERE AT THIS POST-IT NOTE! IT'S NOT ALL IN MY HEAD! IT'S NOT JUST ME."
It wasn't just me in my head. It never was. I wish I could have seen that sooner. I just didn't know anyone else who was hurting like I was, and so I felt alone, but I was sane the whole time. Myself and my feelings were valid the whole damn time. The whole damn time.
