Therapy Is Personal Development

 Knock, knock.
I gently tap on the bedroom door and peer in. I hear my husband David’s rhythmic breathing. “Are you awake?” I whisper. Nothing. I ask again, this time a little bit louder.
“What’s up, babe?” He asks, his voice dripping with sleep. My cheeks are stained with salty, almost-dry tears. My eyes begin to well up again. “Dr. Schneider died,” I say. “Oh babe, I’m so sorry,” he says. “Come here. What happened?”

I crawl into bed and tell my husband that a former member of my therapy group emailed me with news that my therapist of several years had passed. I hadn’t seen him in months because I moved to a new city. He was 83, but in great health, so the news shocked me.
If you told me three years earlier that I’d be crying over the death of my therapist, I wouldn’t have believed you. Me? Crying over the death of someone I paid to treat me? Someone I had a purely clinical relationship with?

But this is where I found myself just last year. *This isn’t the first time I’ve written in SUCCESS about being plagued by the physical, emotional and mental symptoms of anxiety. Rapid breathing, trouble sleeping, dizziness? Check. Catastrophic thinking, fear that everyone hates me, worry that I’m an impostor? Check, check, check. Read more