​If You're Unsure About Therapy, I Get It

As a psychotherapist and clinical supervisor, you might expect me to speak about therapy as something universally positive and always helpful, but in reality, people’s experiences with mental health care and counselling can be complicated. 

My own first experience with counselling, at sixteen, didn’t go well at all. I was sent to therapy for some pretty typical teenage “bad behaviour,” and I hated it. The therapist, the process, the whole thing — it just didn’t click. I didn’t go back until I was twenty-three.

I grew up in a small town in Ontario as the oldest girl in a sensitive, high-feeling family. Education became my escape, and I eventually earned both a Bachelor’s and Master’s in Anthropology. In university, I bounced between majors until I stumbled into anthropology. It was a delight to get to study people, culture, and humanity in all its messiness. Anthropology felt like traveling without leaving the classroom and I thought I’d end up working in academia as a professor. Instead, I spent three years trying to finish a two-year master’s degree, rapidly growing more anxious and uncertain of how to get even seemingly simple things done.

When I finally returned to therapy as an adult, the experience supported me in ways I hadn’t anticipated. Navigating the mental health care system during this time was far from simple or straightforward, but I eventually worked with a therapist who helped me recognize that many of my compounding struggles and experiences overlapped with ADHD traits. This therapist helped me get an ADHD diagnosis and learn about what my brain and body needed to succeed. With better supports in place and more clarity about my needs, I was able to power through my thesis in six weeks and graduate with distinction. That experience was the first time I personally saw how therapy could help change the trajectory of someone’s life.  It also made me recognize that being able to help others in this capacity was powerful; the anthropologist in me loved learning about people, and the budding psychotherapist in me realized “I’d like to be the person who helps.”