Breaking Radio Silence – Writing As Therapy

The topic of writing as therapy has always been a difficult one for me to address and I’ve had six years to think about it. Why? Because there is still a ton of opposition to people seeking therapy any way they can. Despite all the conversations we seem to be having about therapy and mental health along with self-care and self-help, it still takes a lot for people to pursue therapy.

I think the opposition to people pursuing therapy is two-fold: that it will reveal secrets that people don’t want spoken out loud even if they’re spoken in confidence to a therapist, and two, that people in therapy will learn how to stand up for themselves. In my experience, people who hurt others whether through insensitivity or worse, cruelty and refuse to take responsibility for their actions will do everything to keep someone silent and submissive. I know I used to believe that if I was just silent and hidden that people wouldn’t treat me like shit, or that maybe they would accept me if I was quiet and submissive to their bullshit. Neither one of those is true and no, I’m not being mean right now.

So why pursue therapy? Why work through your pain and shit when you can just bury it and become just like the people who hurt you? Because most people aren’t built like that. The vast majority of people in this world care about their fellow human beings and don’t seek to hurt them and if they do hurt someone they take responsibility for their actions and apologize and try to make amends. The people who refuse to do that are the loud-mouthed shit-heads who will cry like whiny little wimps when someone calls them out on their heartless cruelty. But like I said in a previous blog post here, no one’s purpose in life is to pull someone’s head out of their ass for them. And the thing is, that’s not what therapy is about. Therapy is trying to figure out why you think and feel the way you do and learning how to do better and try to find some healing for your wounds.

Healing isn’t just about easing pain. I think it’s also about breaking free of living in pain and fear and that’s not a popular thing with the heartless assholes in this world. The constant outrage some people seem to live on creates more pain and suffering and no matter how often you call them out on that, unless they let go of that constant outrage they’re not going to change. But one thing I’ve learned in my therapy journey is that I don’t have to live in a constant state of fear and anxiety in return. I used to think if I lived like that people would leave me alone but the heartless assholes of this world don’t give a shit how you think and feel or why.

Another thing is that therapy is seen as ‘weak’. No, it takes real strength and courage to doctor your wounds and build up armor-plated scar tissue to keep from getting hurt again. And yes, this is deeply personal for me because all my life I’ve been told I’m weak and can’t handle anything ‘normal’ or ‘painful’ when in reality I was left all alone to deal with enormous responsibility and pain. So one part of my therapy was learning that I’m not weak and I’m sure that pissed someone off. But if I piss someone off for proving them wrong then that’s on them.

I always said the most courageous thing I’ve seen in my life was when my mother sought help for the depression that tried to kill her. My mother had so much bottled up she could have filled up an Amazon-sized warehouse with her stuff. Instead, she worked through as much as she could before she died. I like to think I’m taking my therapy further than she did because I have the opportunity that she didn’t get.

If a secret is kept simply to keep someone from facing the consequences of their actions and the pain they caused, then it doesn’t deserve to be kept a secret to help them. Breaking my silence over things I’ve kept to myself is very difficult because I’m not breaking my silence as an act of revenge or any bullshit like that. I’m breaking my silence in order to bleed the poison of that secret out of me and heal the wound caused by that poison, and to show other people how that’s done.

I believe you can choose how you pursue therapy, whether or not you speak about it out loud, and how you deal with any opposition. My way of pursuing therapy is writing about it, speaking out about it here, and as for any opposition that’s dealt with a simple, ‘go to hell because this isn’t about anyone else’.

I’ve called ‘Breaking Radio Silence’ my ‘therapy’ book and that’s because as I went back through my life I learned how things shaped me in how I dealt with them. And most of all, I learned that just because I dealt with someone one way didn’t mean it was the only way, or the best way. And yes, someone might not like that but like I just said, this isn’t about someone else. Therapy is about yourself and no one else.