Chris Jarling

Engineering Manager
28th Sep, 2023

On Therapy

I recently started seeing a therapist. I do not have many insights about the session to share yet, but I wanted to write about it here, for two reasons.

First, this is my personal blog. I like the idea of being able to read through some of these pages later on and remember what was going on in my life. I have not shared many personal things on here lately and I want to change that.

Let me preface this with the assurance that I am fine and I am safe.
However, I had the feeling that something was wrong enought in my life to jusify professional aid (depressive episodes & anxiety, mostly), for quite a while now. For the past three years, I made it my number one goal to get in touch with therapists. And I really meant to do it. But I never mustered up the curage to pick up the phone and ask for help. Until now, that is. And thats a big win for me.
I'm not in therapy yet, I've had three sessions with two different therapists. It might take a while before a slot is avialable for me. But I'm taking steps in the right direction, and that's the important part. Honestly, I'm pretty proud of that.

Second, I think mental health and getting professional help still has a stigma to it. It's something we don't talk about as much as we should. It's gotten a lot better in the past years, sure. But we're still not where we could be. The only way to remove this stigma is for more people to speak up about it. And that's something I can help with, hence, this posts. I'm not a lunatic, I'm not wearing a straitjacket, I'm just someone whose head is a little broken and who needs help with that. And that's perfectly fine.

© 2024 Chris Jarling