Six days out of seven, I am a therapist. On the seventh day, I am sleeping, for if I were awake, I would be a therapist.
I don't have a special couch or reading glasses that slide down my nose. I will give advice, I will listen, I will say "everything's going to be OK." I am a therapist in the library, at the gym, on a bench, at my dining room table. I talk to and listen to my friends and my sister, and occasionally my mom will put one of my ornery cats on the phone.
But this is not enough. What most of my friends don't realize is that I am not actually a therapist. I am not an objective listener, and my advice is softened by my concern for their feelings. I do not know how to tell them, "You are sad." You can't be fixed with my temporary solvent of words. I do not know how to explain to them why they are sad and how to fix it. Because I am not a therapist.\nI know I am not a therapist because I know how a real therapist talks, looks and acts. I've been to three therapists in my life. For some reason, probably one founded in fear and perpetuated by ignorance, a lot of people don't like to talk about this topic. A lot of my friends don't know that I've been through periods in my life when I simply couldn't talk out my problems with my mother and my sister. I would tell them, but I think they'd shy away from me.
There's something taboo about self-help. It might be because people think therapy and "how to be happy" books connote a kind of personal weakness. Hey, at 15 I thought that too. Then I grew up and helped myself. I sat on a couch across from a man in a chair, wearing reading glasses, and I talked about why I was sad.
When you're between the ages of 18 and 24, you're supposed to be incredibly happy. If you're in college - if you're in one of the best colleges in the nation, you probably should be ecstatic. But I hope at least some people read that and think, "Really?" I hope at least some people know that it's OK to be sad and confused and completely frustrated by their sadness and confusion. I hope some people will stop talking to their friends in the library, at the gym or at their dining room tables and seek out a more permanent solution to these everyday sadnesses.
Why am I touting the benefits of therapy? Why am I not writing another funny column about rap music? Because we can't always be funny. We can't always shrug away the bad stuff that happens to us. Sometimes it lingers and it simply will not go away. I know what that feels like, and it hurts me to see my friends feeling it too. I don't know how to tell them, "Go to a therapist," because I think they'll say, "Well then what are you?"
You're not weird or crazy if you enter a room and say, "There's something wrong with me." You do not have to have a history of tragedies to be "allowed" to go to a therapist. For years I thought that hating high school was normal, and for the most part it is. But there was something about those years of my life that bothered me more than the "popular girls" - believe it or not, I was not one of them - and the painfully boring school days. I sought help and now I can look back on those days, not necessarily fondly, but I can still look back without it hurting too much.
I've even been to a therapist in college. Does that scare you? Does that make you think I've been lying in all of my columns where I sound happy? Don't worry, I wasn't. You can be happy and sad at the same time. Right now I'm happy, and I think I've grown up enough to know how to fix the sad parts before they take control and force me back to the man with reading glasses sliding down his nose. I think some of my friends are more sad than anything else, and I want them to stop talking to me and let me talk to them; I am not a therapist.
My mother never understands when I call her crying. She tells me that my problems could be so much worse. And she's right. But that doesn't mean I stop crying. If you're between the ages of 18 and 24, then you're not supposed to be ecstatic. You're supposed to be a work in progress. If you find yourself crying in the corner at a party for no reason, don't think you're alone. My mother always shakes her head at the end of our conversations and says, "Youth is wasted on the young."
There are words that are often paired with "young." These include but are not limited to: alive, fun, invincible. You cannot simply be three adjectives. Young can mean lost and it can mean scared and it can mean angry. I want you to ask yourself which adjectives describe you, and then I want you to stop shying away from what I'm saying and walk into a room and sit on a couch. Don't let my mother be right about this one.
Connelly's column runs weekly Thursdays. She can be reached at c.hardaway@cavalierdaily.com.
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