My Poor Brain
I’ve been in some form of counseling and/or therapy since I was around 13 years old. I’m now 28, which means I’ve been doing it for… a long time. I know it’s an extremely common thing to do now, to see a therapist to “work on yourself.” To take medication for a myriad of different mental illnesses. To be honest about your mental health. I’ve been working on myself for over a decade, and I’m still not done.
I was, to put it succinctly, a very angry teen. My parents were confused; I’ve always been opinionated and hungry for independence, but I never took my feelings out on anyone in a serious way until I was in the throes of adolescence. There were screaming matches, hours of crying. For someone who’s disabled in all four limbs, I hit and kicked pretty hard — I’m not a violent person, but at times I reached a point where I didn’t know how else to express myself. They were convinced I was just emotional, bratty, combative, immature. The truth is, I needed an outlet.
I doubt any teenager feels understood by the adults around them; being disabled just added another layer to my confusion. It felt like literally no one understood me, not even my closest friends or family. They had no idea what it was like to be me, to live in my body with my limitations. People tended to see my generally agreeable, content personality and assume there’s nothing else going on inside (and they still do). I wanted someone to hear me, to grasp that all I wanted was to have some freedom, that I wasn’t asking for much.
My first therapist was my school’s social worker, one of the coolest people I’d ever met to that point. When I skipped gym and sat in her office once a week — at my mom’s insistence, which I think the guidance office understood but the administration didn’t — I felt taken seriously for the first time. I could say whatever I wanted about what was going on inside my head, and for my introverted teen self that was huge. I remember crying a lot; I don’t know if I was as much of an oversharer as I am now. I don’t think I knew how to explain all of what I felt, so there were things I left out or didn’t fully touch on: being lonely, knowing I’m different but wanting to be treated equally, how I felt about my body, the times I wondered if people would have an easier time if I wasn’t around…
My feelings tend to go out of control when I’m in times of change and transition. I was back in therapy again before I started college, after my traumatic brain injury, after finishing undergrad, and in grad school. I shouldn’t have taken so many breaks, but I was stubborn and reached a point where I didn’t think I needed it anymore. I also never thought I’d need medication to cope; again, I was stubborn and convinced that how I felt wasn’t “bad enough” to warrant it. I just thought swinging from anxiety to depression in a vicious cycle was normal for me, and that I’d eventually land in the middle. I’ve been on medication since I was 24. I’m seeing a therapist again after a bit of a break and I think I’m finally going to hit my sweet spot — it’s only been a few weeks, but I have a pretty heightened ability to read people and the therapist I’m seeing is lovely.
The truth is, I’ll probably always need some form of counseling. As I’ve gone through therapy and as I’ve grown up, I’ve come to realize that a good majority of the things that shaped me have been traumatic. Most kids don’t get put through half a dozen surgeries before 10 years old, they don’t injure themselves as much as I did, their bodies can do exactly what their brains want. I’ve dealt with it all fairly well, but I don’t think I’ve really allowed myself to unpack exactly how it made me this person. Why I think and feel the way I do, why I go through the world with the outlook I have, and what I’m going to do about it. Before now it’s all felt kind of… circumstantial; I’ve had so much on my plate that digging into who I am felt secondary.
I’ve pretty much had to figure out who I am on my own — in the same messy, fast, jump in with both feet way that I seem to be doing everything lately. It’s taken me a long time because in high school while everyone else was being dumb and making mistakes and bonding with each other, I was too busy hating myself. I don’t think I wanted to know who I was as a teen; until I was in my 20s it was too difficult to express myself. I have a lot of learning and unlearning to do. There’s so much that I’ve only barely gotten to because psychiatrists and psychologists have explained it away or minimized its importance. There’s so much I’ve pushed away into a back corner of my brain so I didn’t have to deal with it.
I don’t know if I feel entirely ready to unpack it all and lay it out bare, but it has to happen. It’s the only way I’m going to grow.
The title of this essay comes from this Foo Fighters deep cut, which accompanied many a teenage crying session. Feel free to scream.