If I’m So Smart, Why Do I Need Psychotherapy?
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Things are looking crazy these days. It’s hard to know what to think, what to do, or how to be. There are so many issues worldwide that need attention. So many.
What should smart super-sensitive, empathetic, creative, insightful, emotional humans do?
Well, being the obsessed-with-psychotherapy psychotherapist that I am, you can guess what I’m about to say. Hang in there with me.
What if you start with yourself and your family? What if you take some time to examine your very own fears, doubts and despair? What if you take a trip into your past to understand the legacy your dysfunctional family handed to you? Locate your true Self, and pull her/him out from under the rubble.
Think about it. If all humans would recover the self-acceptance, compassion and creativity that was smooshed or buried or broken or clobbered during those early years, might we create a path to a better world?
Heck, yeah.
Now, I know that what I’m asking isn’t easy. It takes great courage to make this journey. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
And, in case you’re wondering: Examining the multiple ways you were clobbered isn’t about blaming your parents willy-nilly, or irreverently dismantling the lovely coping strategies you’ve so cleverly designed, or slashing open old wounds so that you bleed for years all over your so-impractical white sofa.
No, it’s not that.
It is, however, about understanding what happened so that you can put the puzzle pieces together and answer the questions that have plagued you for years. Questions about your fears and doubts and despair.
Questions like: If I’m so smart, why am I scared all the time? If I’m so smart, why are my relationships so difficult? If I’m so smart, why do I feel like a worthless crazy catastrophizing ne’er-do-well?
Questions like that.
You may say: But I do understand what happened, and that hasn’t changed anything. I know. That’s because it’s not just about intellectual understanding, although that’s the place to start.
It’s also about a safe, supported grieving process. An opportunity to process the sadness, anger, shame and regrets that live in your broken heart. An opportunity to find and love those child parts of you that have been abandoned and trampled.
By the way, this is a big deal.
How big? Well, you’re stopping the legacy of dysfunction in your family line that has been handed down through generations. The dysfunction stops with you.
That big.
Not only that, in a deep therapeutic process, you’re healing your portion of the psycho-spiritual web where we’re all connected. So it’s not even just your family line, it’s all of us.
I mean it.
And just when you thought that was quite enough, there’s more.
I am not making this up.
Along with the sweet child parts that you rescue from the abyss, you will be astonished by spurts of creativity and sparks of intuition — the voice of your true Self! Expansion of your softened heart. An even greater compassion for others. Energy and inspirations.
And there’s your path.
Better world? Indeed.
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Paula Prober is a psychotherapist, blogger, author, consultant and tango dancer living in Eugene, Oregon. She blogs at Your Rainforest Mind, a blog that provides support for the excessively curious, creative, smart and sensitive. Her book, Your Rainforest Mind: A Guide to the Well-Being of Gifted Adults and Youth, is about how highly sensitive, obsessed, rebellious, smart people can live meaningful, satisfying and purposeful lives. Paula has been a client in therapy herself for a number of years, healing from her very own dysfunctional family and rescuing her very own sweet abandoned inner child from the abyss.
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