Graduating from College Led Me to Therapy

After graduating from college, I lost a sizable portion of my sense of purpose and direction. I'd worked for 22 years towards a diploma and considered very little else along the way. The toll of this life change on my mental health eventually led me to therapy as my confusion, anxiety, and negative sense of self came to a boil.

The year I graduated, I had been struggling in ways Irrrve never had and wasn't ready for. My negative self-talk was growing increasingly worse and that i was facing an unrelenting depression. I was exhausted. I was tired of feeling awful all of the time and I was painfully confused about why I was feeling the way that Used to do.

My Story

For most of my life, I believed that to manage the way I expressed my emotions, I needed to go to the source and manage (or more like suppress) the emotion itself. This led me down a road of confusion and shame because after graduating, I finally became aware that this was impossible. And I felt like a failure for this. I thought something should be wrong beside me for not having the ability to control my emotions.

I was taught that emotions like embarrassment, anger, frustration, and jealousy were counterproductive and never worth acknowledging. The content to me was that expressing these emotions did not have a positive impact on others. Therefore, it was better to have them to myself and do my best to let them go and move ahead.

As I grew older, anytime I faced any negative emotions, my mind would kick in and tell me I had no to feel by doing this. I’d tell myself that the individual who hurt me didn't mean it or there was no method to “fix” it. I judged myself too harshly and my mental health was rapidly deteriorating.

I Needed Help Coping with the Emotions of Graduating

My methods for ignoring or pushing down my feelings strongly impacted my capability to deal with an essential life change. As being a student was a large number of my identity and that wasn't any longer that case. And with the excitement and pride that accompany graduating, there is also a strong sense of anxiety and confusion. I wasn't prepared for the way i would feel.

Shortly after graduating, I was pleased to land a situation within an industry that I worry about and desired to grow in. I also moved into a new apartment and got to stay in the town that I had called home within the last 4 years. I still had friends nearby and family within driving distance. On the outside, I had very little to bother with.

But I was feeling even worse. When my struggles began to negatively impact some of my relationships, I made a decision therapy was probably advisable. I was desperate for some relief and skeptical whether therapy would work, but I instinctively knew if I could feel safe enough to convey the darker areas of myself which were hurting me, that could be relief enough.

Therapy Solved the problem Grow Confident in My Emotions

Almost annually and half later, I'm still going to therapy consistently and feel even more content for this. Treatments are as much practice and experimentation as it is referring to how you feel. Trained therapists provide you with tools. They listen to you while bringing in methods of managing and coping that need consistent practice.

One of the very most freeing things I've learned in treatments are which i don’t owe anyone an explanation for how I feel. I won't make apologies for how I’m impacted by the planet around me. I can and do feel however want whether or not there was a celebration that directly caused the emotion. My feelings don’t need to necessitate or directly correlate with the way i express them. I've control over the way i express myself however i also have a responsibility to myself to honor how I feel. This really is rarely easy, but worth the peace and healing.