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My Therapist Says
My Therapist Says Feelings Aren’t Facts
‘I feel angry, I am not anger. I feel afraid. I am not my fear either.’
When a family emergency rocked my family last year, my husband and I found ourselves in the blessed but lonely position of being The Only Ones Who Could Help. After we had a conversation about how much money we needed, how much we had available, and how much was on the way, we wrote out a list of what we needed to do.
Our discussion had gone well, and we agreed it would be necessary to cut back on a few things if we wanted to help our family, and maintain some sense of financial stability in our own home. We made a list of bills, using thick-tipped pens to cross out the ones we would work to eliminate or reduce over the next month. I crossed my fingers, and hoped we would stick to our plan, but I had my doubts. Neither of us was particularly good at delayed gratification on our own, but we learned over the years, if we did it for each other, or together for someone else, we could get it done.
Whenever my husband and I need to make a major shift in the way we live, which will happen for various reasons from time to time, we struggle to do so individually. I might miss a necessary doctor’s appointment until my husband says, “I’m worried. Please, go for me.” When my husband had trouble expressing his anger, we lost days to dark moods. When he drug his feet around finding a therapist, I found one for him. I told him, “Go for me.” He made the appointment. It helped.
We make emergency what-if plans together because that’s what works best, but I often make my own plan too: a mental list of all the things I am willing to give up that my husband, perhaps reasonably, would likely balk at if I spoke them out loud. Sometimes in the past I really gave them up — canceling a class I’d wanted to take for months, or deciding my pain wasn’t bad enough to see someone who could help. I just didn’t tell him.
Talking about finances never failed to make me hungry, so while he made us a post-money-talk breakfast, I slipped into the bedroom and shut the door behind me. I sat on the corner of the bed furthest from the door and texted my therapist. It had taken until my thirties for me to realize that other…
