What Does Resilience Look Like?
#4 in the Series: How Healing Provides Resilience in Crisis
For many years, the idea of ending therapy was terrifying. Yet, I still tried to do exactly that on the regular. I found this piece in my “unused parts of books” file and the real-life illustration of a woman walking in an orthopedic boot described the situation perfectly! It is all about mistaking ill-advised determination for resilience.
Unprocessed Pieces
I heard Dr. Sue say, “You might have little unprocessed pieces that we will need to work through” and I thought, “Yes, as much as I want to be done, it is important to not be done until I know I am done.”
It felt like I had been through a severe illness and was still in the bed but wanted to get up and get back to living. That point of illness is so frustrating because when you are there in the bed, you think you can get up and live. You are just so excited to know that you aren’t going to die. But then, when you get up to go to the bathroom, you know you are headed right back to the bed.
That was exactly where I was.
The next day, I was headed home from visiting my dad at the nursing home. We had a great conversation and I was feeling good about being able to be “there” for him again. As I sat at a stoplight, I saw a young woman with a huge orthopedic boot on her leg crossing the street in front of me—fast. “What?” I thought, “Why is she wearing that boot when she is walking fine?”
It felt uncomfortable to face this clear truth being revealed to me. She was in the boot because her leg still needed support. She wasn’t being foolish like so many are and removing the boot before she was ready—before her doctor told her to.
Yes, maintenance therapy was my boot. If I got feeling all frisky and stopped therapy too soon, I would relapse in ways that would be more difficult to overcome. I still needed support.
“I knew what seeing that boot meant,” I told Dr. Sue in the next session. “I need to make regular scheduled appointments until we both know I am ready to stop therapy. I know it is my decision, but I can’t completely trust myself. I need to know that you believe I am OK. I am really good at feeling an inch better and making it appear that I am fine.”
We smiled at each other remembering all the times I had done that in such convincing ways.
“I am more realistic this time,” I said. “I feel more settled. I am not trying to cover anything.”
Was that even true? I certainly wanted it to be true but this was written when my Dad was still alive and living in the nursing home. That meant that I was probably only in my second year of therapy. I was barely crawling out of one layer and had many more to go.
Fast forward eight years. After needing to return to more intensive therapy last year and feeling that the deepest memories had been processed, I wondered if I was just in the same place of denial. How would I even know the boot wasn’t necessary?
Was it realistic to imagine that I would get to the place of not needing the support of a mental health professional? What would that feel like if I took the boot off? Would I have healed enough—become resilient enough—to face a crisis without support (if necessary)?
Enter Scott’s five-month health crisis that culminated in a liver transplant. During those months, I both canceled and managed to keep appointments with my current therapist. At Dr. Sue's request, I informed her of Scott’s progress. During these conversations, it felt good to know that her support was no longer what kept me afloat. I leaned on the support of my friends and family and in a hundred ways, I took the boot off.
I firmly believe that one should make important decisions—that do not have to be made—while in a crisis. Therefore, I am not ending therapy but it feels different because I understand that—if necessary—I have the resilience to move forward without professional care. There are several reasons I know this to be true.
Despite the many events that felt triggering during the months-long crisis, no additional trauma-related memories surfaced. Since they have been consistently surfacing for ten years, this was an astounding indicator of healing!
My decisions to keep or cancel appointments were purely logistical. Support would be great, but the stress of figuring out how to make it happen was often greater. For ten years, that was never true.
Even when it wasn’t possible, I understood what practices would have helped me to better deal with the stress (Yoga, walks, music, and writing). In hindsight, I should have been more determined about this, but I did my best and that was enough.
I was not walking with an emotional limp when I didn’t have the support of the boot. Even when triggered (dysregulated) which I explained in Part #1 of this series, I advocated for myself, made good self-care choices, asked for help, and cried when I needed to do so.
I recognized old trauma patterns and walked myself back from them. This included making this crisis seem like an adventure—it wasn’t. Another one was my fear reaction which often exhibits as anger because that is how I kept myself fighting to live every day. I acknowledged when this happened and apologized to Scott who most often felt the brunt of it. There were also moments of catastrophic thinking even when things were going remarkably well. I set that response down immediately and am thankful for my adult children who saw it and helped me!
Without this crisis, I am not sure if I would have ever known that I could walk without the boot. In a very real sense, the depth of trauma I experienced that caused memories to continue to surface for ten years resulted in another trauma layer. The fear of facing more memories without support was well-founded, but no longer the reality.
There is a reason why therapists leave a crack in the door when clients end therapy. I walked out of the office without the boot many times when it was clear that I was not ready. I am thankful that I returned. Resilience is not built in a day. There is no magic resilience wand. It looks and feels very different from survival. For me, it was trusting those who were helping me long enough to not need the boot to walk with strength though one of the most challenging crisis imaginable.
That is what resilience looks like. It is so different from how I survived for most of my life.
Oh my gosh. This is where I am struggling right now. Trying to decide do I continue and if I do how often, or do I just give up! I am tired of trying to move forward and not being able to maintain that progress.