This year has been a whirlwind. I currently have a child in KINDERGARTEN and a very opinionated toddler who thinks he’s five (meaning that he tells people he’s five). Things have been good at home with my boys (they’re happy, Canute has a good job, we have a nice home) but at some point, mid-spring, something broke in me. I don’t know what precipitated it, but I went from being somewhat dissatisfied with my life as a stay-at-home mom to just crazy unhappy. I knew with a sense of urgency that I needed to take care of myself, but I wasn’t sure where to start.
Canute had been stressed about finances and at one point during one of our chats around the topic I was like, “Okay, but I need to take a fun fitness class. Not just the cheapest gym membership I can find.” So I signed up for a pricey six-month kickboxing membership. The budget was a little tight with the boys’ swim lessons, and just as I was about to dye my hair some outrageous color for my birthday, I decided I would use the money to sign up for another fun class—a reformer’s pilates class. They sucked me in with their short-term commitment of three months. We had to drop the boys’ swim lessons, but summer was already over.
At some point during the summer, I also realized I desperately needed to find a good therapist. I had read the book No Bad Parts by Richard Schwartz, a book about a new therapy called IFS (or Internal Family Systems), resonated with me more than any modality I had ever studied. He came up with this idea that our minds are made up of parts that often have incongruous needs (e.g., “I have this part of me that wants this, even though it goes against my better judgment.”) Instead of approaching the problem as a disciplinarian, he tried to talk to these parts, assuming they were serving some bigger function or need. His clients found healing as they engaged with these dysfunctional parts, discussed their origins, discovered their intended purpose, informed the parts they no longer had this need, and then assigned the parts more adaptive roles in their lives. Rough, incomplete summary, but there’s the gist.
How often do we have inner turmoil in our own minds, or parts of ourselves that seem to serve no good purpose? Do you have an inner critic that seems to come up at the worst of times? Or a selfless part that takes over and doesn’t remember that you have needs too?
Anyway, I sleuthed through both the IFS database and my own insurance company’s database looking for a therapist. It took at least EIGHT hours to find a match over the course of a month. In the midst of that search, I also realized I needed to get back on medication. I quickly found a random psychiatrist on my insurance company’s list and told him what medications I wanted, and that I had only stopped taking them due to side-effects, but at this point I didn't care about the side-effects. He asked about other medications I had taken and it was this back-and-forth—“Yes, I’ve tried this but then this side-effect happened, so I stopped taking it.” I remember feeling a little bit frustrated that he wasn’t just prescribing what I had asked for, but then I didn’t realize he worked for a company that specialized in Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation. So, it came as a big surprise when he recommended TMS for me.
TMS is an evidence-based treatment for depression, anxiety, OCD, and migraines. (And they’re currently studying it for other uses such as chronic pain and dementia!) They use targeted magnetic fields to stimulate parts of the brain impacted by problematic symptoms when other treatments have not worked.
My insurance approved it, and luckily our deductible was already met. So, I met every weekday with a TMS specialist for a little over a month. She would put the device on my head, and then I would feel tapping on head (like a tiny mallet) with every zap of the machine. The strength of the tapping would increase day by day, and I started feeling the effects a couple weeks into it. (It was a little uncomfortable, but so much better than meds.) Also, about a week into treatment, I met with my IFS therapist for the first time. And Oh, My Goodness, was it everything I had hoped for.
I just felt so heard! Parts of me that I had banished or shamed were allowed to have a voice during our sessions. She helped me realize that I have several inner critics from different times in my life. Instead of focusing on thinking errors and trying to redirect my mind to more adaptive thought patterns, I was able to engage with these parts and find the hurt part underneath. I’m still working on all this stuff, but I can address these parts with more ease when they pop up and there’s a sort of cooperation that wasn’t there before.
I remember at one point during all of this mental health treatment, I woke up in the middle of the night and I suddenly felt this wave of sadness crash over me. I cried my eyes out as I realized I had been avoiding this deep sadness for months. As the wave subsided, I felt this overwhelming desire to just hold my kids. It was a night of low lows and just intense feeling, but totally cathartic. In my somewhat successful attempt to banish the sadness, I had also dampened other feelings like love. It’s like the TMS (and probably the IFS as well) had reset the extremes of my emotions to their normal range. The lows are lower now, but the highs are higher.
So I'm crying a lot again. Like, a commercial with puppies? Waterworks. I feel like I'm pregnant again, but without all the bloating.
And THEN(!) I was recently cast in a play, which has been meeting other needs so long discarded—like the need to socialize with other adults, to have fun, to use my creative mind. The run of the play is nearly over, but I feel more like myself than I have in a long time.
I know that I'm very privileged with all this stuff. The fact that I have the luxury to do these things when others cannot is evident, and I'm so grateful. I've attached some links to some of the things I've mentioned as well as other resources that might be helpful.
For those who do have access to more resources like I do, I think the barrier is often our own selves. It's hard to go against the responsible part of yourself that only wants to use money for a narrow set of needs and the occasional extraneous expenses (e.g., your children's hobbies). It's also hard to inconvenience others (e.g. "My spouse has been working all day, so it would be unfair to make him do bed-time alone.") But if you don't, you lose yourself.
Helpful links:
This was the book I read. It has exercises where you can follow along and see if this type of therapy works for you.
--> I didn't really talk about good inside, but it's a great resource for parents! It has every topic about parenting under the sun, including meeting your own needs. LOVE it. This episode in particular talks about IFS therapy. She also has a paid subscription where you can listen to workshops that give you very specific tips and strategies. (I paid for that subscription over the summer as well, and it helped me work through some things before I was able to find a therapist.)
--> The database where I found my therapist
--> This is where I went for TMS
