I'm so sick of therapy

👋 Hey, it's Susan. Welcome to better work - a personal development newsletter for high-performers who put themselves first so that they can show up for the people they love.

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I'm not a religious person, but I am a spiritual one.

Not super-woo-woo. More like a little-woo. 🤏🏼

💫 I believe that the Universe listens. I believe that the energy we put out there comes back to us. I believe in karma (and that she's a bitch).

So when three words flashed across my mind and I felt a ball of fire in my sternum, my eyes flew open in the middle of a meditation. I thought I was having a heart attack.

As quickly as the warmth spread across my chest, it disappeared. But the three words lingered in the air:

🟠 Heal with content.

I didn't understand what it meant at the time. Was I supposed to heal myself with content or heal others with my content? Or did it mean the feeling of being content, not the creative kind of 'content'?

Over time, I found that when I write 'from my chest,' people tell me my words deeply resonated with them. It's hard to explain what writing from my chest means. But when I start from my chest, then connect to my brain, personal and professional growth content weaves together without the performative vulnerability.

Today's issue was written from my chest.

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Read the full newsletter below.

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My arms are crossed, fingers gripping the sides of my body. The session hasn't even started yet, and I'm already in defense mode.

When my new therapist comes on screen, she's twenty minutes late. Tardiness is a pet peeve of mine.

❌ Strike one.

She fumbles around to pull up my file. Unprepared. How unprofessional.

❌❌ Strike two.

When I try to answer her questions, she's coughing and sniffling. The sounds rattle my eardrums through the headphones. Doesn't she know how to use the 'mute' button?

❌❌❌ Strike three.

I'm out.

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I wanted to be done

Ten years of therapy. Ten years.

What do I have to show for it, just to end up right back here?

I didn't want to dig up the past.

I didn't want to cry in front of another stranger.

I didn't want to lose the rest of the day, emotionally drained.

But not wanting those things didn't make the anxiety and depression go away. The lethal combination zapped my energy, but not enough to stop the intrusive thoughts from looping in my head.

Anxiety is relentless while depression is insidious. You don't need help, you're fine. Let's go back to bed...you lazy piece of shit.

When I could sleep, I didn't rest. I woke up feeling sore from hours of tensing every muscle in my body.

It took me months to admit that I needed to go back to therapy. But asking for help isn't a simple decision. It's not as easy as the self-care stickers make it seem.

Admitting I needed therapy again meant:

1. I was wrong. I thought I was "done" with therapy. I even announced it publicly.
2. I was terrified. Being scared feels like weakness. When I get scared, I get mean.
3. I was a hypocrite. I'm an advocate for therapy, but now I think I'm above it.

Since I brought all that energy into my first session with my new therapist, my confirmation bias was through the roof.

Give me any reason not to be here.

I needed better reasons to stay. Better reasons than not wanting to be tired all the time. Better reasons than wanting to be less anxious.

To find better reasons, I had to be painfully honest first.

What I really wanted was...

...to not flinch when my husband reaches out for a hug after an argument.

...to respond to my toddler's tantrum with "She needs me" rather than "She hates me."

...to wake up without a tension headache and finally toss the damn night guard away.

I went back to therapy.

We keep making the same mistake until we learn our lesson

Like a typical high-performer, I approached my personal growth like a work project - a list of boxes to check off.

• Practice self-compassion? ✅
• Talk about my trauma? ✅
• Forgive my abusers? ✅

I confused "not needing" with "being done."

Not needing is circumstantial. I didn't need therapy at one point, but then I needed it after going through eight of life's most stressful experiences in two years.

Being done is permanent. This is rare. When it comes to growth, healing, and learning, you're never done.

This also applies to work. After you achieve the certification, license, or degree, you still have to maintain those credentials to keep them because the world keeps changing. Especially in industries our lives depend on, like medicine.

It's called a medical practice, not medical permanence, after all.

🔧 High-performers are natural problem solvers which means they're excellent fixers. While this is a great asset at work, this can be a liability in their personal development.

The fixer mindset and the fixed mindset are awfully similar. The smarter you are, the faster you notice patterns...and the more likely you are to make assumptions.

When you assume, you don't learn. When you don't learn, you don't grow.

If I switch jobs, then I'll fix my career.

If I go to therapy, then I'll fix myself.

Let's be clear: There is nothing to fix because you are not broken. You are a human being, not an object.

Screw the self-care bullshit that capitalizes on our pain and makes us think we need fixing in a system that wasn't designed for our well-being in the first place.

👆 Put THAT on a fucking sticker.

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Identity crisis is the new midlife crisis

Your career feels personal because it is. Your title feels personal because it is.

Your professional growth is directly linked to your personal growth. Neglect the latter and the former will stagnate.

Owning your experience is healthy. Letting your achievements own you is risky. Strip away the title and the role, and you're susceptible to an identity-crisis.

👀 Identity is one of the four blind spots that keep high-performers feeling stuck despite their success. They don't know who they are outside of what they do. This includes their job and their relationships.

Identity blind spots hover in the background, but they're more in your face during major life milestones: marriages, divorces, new baby, empty-nest syndrome, and retirement. Happy or sad, change and grief are a package deal because change brings loss.

The solution isn't to become an emotionless robot or to avoid major life milestones. Instead, figure out who you are in addition to the roles you play.

➕ Add, don't subtract.

Over time, you learn how to handle loss without losing yourself.

Similar principle applies to your job.

You struggle with knowing what you really want because it's hard to imagine something better than what you have right now. You're too close to it.

But I'm not. 😈

Listen Reader: you can find another job that pays well, that's flexible with benefits, and whatever other thing your golden handcuffs offer. Your current job is not the only job in the entire world that fits that criteria.

Disclaimer: I'm not saying quit your job. I'm saying you are in control.

🔑 You have the key to your golden handcuffs. You have a lot more power than you think. Once you choose to own that power and trust yourself that you're going to figure it out (like you always have), you'll know what to do next.

For example: I've witnessed my clients shift from "I'm afraid I'll lose my job if I rock the boat" to "What are they going to do? Fire me? HA!"

That confidence shift started with being more aware of their identity blind spot. When they couldn't see it, I pointed it out and redirected them. When they tried to rush the process and find the finish line, I reminded them: there is no finish line.

Slowly, over time, they built an identity that is theirs. Not a title that can be taken away, not a relationship that can be severed. They embodied an identity that evolved with them, no matter where they went next.

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You get to create the experience that you want during this transition. You can choose to transition with ease or with frustration. It's easy to default to the latter if you were raised on punishment as an incentive for performing better. While that approach got you to where you are now, it's now keeping you stuck.

Rather than focusing on performance, sink into the practice. 👇

Learn how to respond (not react) to situations that trigger your anxiety. Stay curious, play more, and resist judgment. Give yourself lots of time and space to figure things out.

👆 This is the work.

The work of knowing who you are is never done.

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Thank you for reading. If this issue made your day better, then share better work with a friend: https://heymslee.kit.com/profile

🙏 I rely on word of mouth to grow my business, so thank you in advance for your support!

Take care of yourself,

Susan

Susan Lee

Career coach for high-performers

Founder of Hey Ms. Lee, LLC​

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P.S. 👀 Take the quiz to find out if you have the Identity blind spot or one of the other three (Trust, Beliefs, or Tolerance). One person said, "After seeing the result, I reflected on my actions and it IS TRUE. 🥺
I'm gonna work on that, no, I am working on it."

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P.P.S. Wonder what it's like to be coached by me? Here's a 30-second clip from a coaching session about goals vs targets:

​She took this program and continued to work with me for another year.

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