Three Years in Therapy: What I’ve Learned

As I think about my 3 years in therapy, I think it’s important I set the scene for how I got involved in the first place.

Jan 29, 2025

Starting Out

As I think about my time in therapy, which by the way is still ongoing, I am genuinely blown away by the fact that I have been in therapy fairly consistently for over 3 years now.

I guess my thought process when I started was:

“I’m just going to figure out my weak points, work on them for about a year at most and I should be good to go.”

I understood enough about therapy that I knew the long-term goal of therapy is to one day have enough tools to no longer need it. So I figured the process was likely maybe a year as if mental health is black and white.

Before I go any further, I think it’s important I set the scene for how I got involved in therapy.

The Relationship That Led Me Here

In 2021 I was in a pretty serious relationship with my then-girlfriend, and we had recently moved in together after about 6 months of dating.

Truth be told, I felt it was pretty fast, but for me, I did not really have another option because of my bad relationship with my stepdad. The last time I had come home temporarily out of necessity to save up enough money to move out again, my stepdad made it perfectly clear that he did not want me there.

So after I saved enough money to move out with my then-girlfriend, I promised myself I would not ever come back to live at that house as it was never truly my home.

Fast forward to my then-girlfriend and me living together. It was pretty clear early on that we had a very different view of the world and polar opposite personalities, but when you live with someone long enough, if there are childhood traumas, they will show up eventually.

As our traumas started rearing their heads in our relationship, my then-girlfriend suggested we try couples counseling. Without hesitation, I agreed, I genuinely wanted to do everything in my power to make this relationship work.

Unfortunately for us, this was still well into the COVID pandemic, and so many relationships were really struggling across the world, and we were no exception. This meant that experienced couples counselors were booked out at least 6 months. So we took what we could get.

Eventually, we were paired up with a much less experienced couples counselor that was still working on getting his hours. It became very clear to both of us that our problems were a bit more than he could handle. Eventually, we both decided that we should look into getting another counselor.

Very soon after that, one weekend, my then-girlfriend sat me down and told me she did not think we were going to work out. Speechless, I sat on the bed while she packed up and left all in less than 30 minutes. I knew in my heart that before I could let her go, I had to have no doubt that it couldn’t have worked.

I attempted to reconcile the relationship one last time and promised to work on the things she told me she had a problem with. After a short break, we started dating again, and I had started therapy on my own.

Things seemed okay for a short while until suddenly she started acting differently again. Distant, passive-aggressive, all of the warning signs from before.

I finally confronted her and made it clear that while I wanted to be with her, I couldn’t pretend to be okay with a partner that had to think about being with me. After a walk, she came back and for the last time she left. She took all her belongings, and after a brief conversation where I wished her the best, I never saw or heard from her again.

The Right Therapist at the Right Time

It’s interesting how the universe works sometimes because had I not already been in therapy during the breakup, I don’t know that I would still be around.

I had lost a lot up to that point, and losing the relationship was the last thing I had that gave me some sort of purpose.

Fortunately, I was paired with an extremely experienced trauma therapist that knew exactly how to guide me through that rough period after the breakup. I can understand why people become resentful towards therapy, because when people go to therapy they are already doing something very difficult: asking for help.

So when you get paired with a therapist that either is not experienced enough or just not a good match, it can leave you in a worse position than when you came in.

I consider myself extremely lucky that I was paired with my therapist because had I been paired with another bad match, I don’t know that I would’ve continued trying.

EMDR and the Cost of Healing

With all this new time to myself, I was seeing my therapist every week to get me through the first few months after the breakup. After I started recovering from the breakup, my therapist suggested we start a treatment called EMDR or Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing therapy.

This involved me focusing my eyes onto a single point in the room while I held two vibrating motors. The idea was to lower the intensity of pain felt when remembering certain traumatic memories.

We actually are still working on this to this day because I could not afford to do the recommended amount of visits until recently. So we paused for about a year and just did check-ins while I recuperated financially.

This is where I think insurances just aren’t up to par to deal with mental health. My deductible is too high for my therapy sessions to match the minimum before it is fully covered by my insurance. There really should be a separate deductible for mental health, but that’s another conversation for another day.

Therapy Isn’t One-Size-Fits-All

I found that trauma therapy is very different from regular talk therapy and that not every therapist has the same qualifications. It truly can be a rabbit hole and daunting to find what kind of help you may need.

One thing I didn’t know was that just about every therapist organization has a list of all their therapists and qualifications. Be sure to read their experience levels and what they specialize in before making a selection.

I just called a therapist’s office and asked to be matched with an available therapist and just got truly lucky in being matched with exactly what I needed.

Another thing I found out is that sometimes therapy alone is not enough. It may be necessary to get on medication while attending therapy. This is all something your therapist would talk to you about if they felt it would be helpful.

Healing Isn’t Linear

I think the most important part is that you just take one step at a time and allow yourself to go where you feel comfortable enough to feel.

Mental health is definitely not black and white.

There are good days, and there are bad days. Sometimes you regress before you progress. That’s okay. Healing is not linear.

Just remember to be kind to yourself and move at your pace. The rest will unfold on its own.