A month or so ago, I tried therapy for the first time in my life.

Around April or May, I reached a low point emotionally that I haven’t reached since high school or college. I was tired all the time. I was depressed. I was anxious. My hands shook a lot, and I constantly felt like I was one deep breath away from sobbing my lungs out. I came home for lunch on more than one occasion, laid in the floor, and cried for most of my break.

It felt like I was drowning in shadows. There’s an old Superman issue I read when I was in middle school where Superman was trying to combat these green invisible creatures called heartbreakers. They clung to people and sapped their will. They fed on sorrow, but also caused more sorrow. At the end of the issue, while Superman’s friend tries to feed a homeless person, Superman wants to leave. She turns around to see that Superman himself had succumbed to one of these sorrowful creatures. That’s how it felt — like my soul was being poisoned by this invisible creature on my chest.

I went to the doctor and explained my concerns: 1) the depression and anxiety, and 2) my suspicion that I had ADHD. He said he would put in a referral for me to get ADHD evaluation and in the meantime prescribed me with an antidepressant.

I found that the meds helped quite a lot, and I started to feel better, but it didn’t go away, just pushed further to the back of my mind. I saw the strides my wife as making emotionally going to therapy, and I thought it might be beneficial to schedule an appointment.

It took months for an opening to come available, and it ended up that my ADHD appointment and my first therapy appointment were the same day.

The psychologist that evaluated me for ADHD was amazing. It genuinely felt like she was listening to me, like she understood me. I felt extremely comfortable talking with her, and she felt personable.

Immediately after that, I went to my therapist, and something felt off. I’d expected the same feeling of being listened to. The same feeling of being understood. But the vibe I got off of this woman was much different. I described it to my wife this way: she seemed like the type that would earnestly decorate her house with ‘Live Laugh Love’ plaques. She seemed like her favorite type of music was contemporary Christian rock. She seemed like she probably had one of those adapters on her TV that filtered out the swearing because she just didn’t like to hear that kind of thing.

All that to say, she seemed very, very different from me. But it’s therapy, not “pay a shit ton of money to make a new friend,” so I figured it was probably just me feeling vulnerable and uncomfortable. I’m not used to opening up emotionally to anyone but my wife, and I wasn’t really ready to lay all my troubles out there just yet. I felt a little closed off and defensive. I figured that’d clear up in time. We just needed to get to know each other.

I mentioned to her that although I was feeling much better now, when I scheduled to meet with her months ago, I’d really needed therapy. Even though I was feeling better now, I wanted to get tips and tricks for coping if and when those feelings arose again, and I wanted the support network of a therapist that I could fall back on if I needed it. She told me that she specialized in anxiety and that she could definitely help me. I thanked her, and we parted, although I still felt a bit odd. We hadn’t really clicked like I thought we would. I wasn’t sure if that was normal with therapists, but again, assumed it’d get better as we got to know each other.

I scheduled my next session for two weeks later. I came in 15 minutes early as the doctor’s office always insists, and waited. First, thing: she arrived fifteen minutes late, but I figured that was fine. What wasn’t fine was that she still sent me out at our scheduled ending time. I paid a lot of money for an hour, I should get a full hour. But that wasn’t really the issue.

This session occurred right before our move. We were in the throws of packing, and I was definitely feeling stressed that we weren’t going to be able to get it all done in time. Once again, I can’t really describe the vibe I got from her other than just awkward. She did not seem like she understood me at all, and sometimes it felt like she wasn’t listening because she thought she’d already figured out what my problem was.

She wanted to focus in on my move because she thought that it was giving me anxiety. I didn’t really think so. I was definitely stressed, but it didn’t feel like the yellow-light wariness that I typically feel with my anxiety. I did have that, but not about the move. Just stress, exhaustion, and an understandable fear that we wouldn’t get it done — a fear that I was correct in having as we didn’t.

I told her that I was stressed because I’d only just started packing the books, and I had six boxes packed, and I still had a couple shelves worth of books to go. Since those boxes had taken me an entire evening, I almost felt like I’d wasted an evening even though I knew they had to be packed too, just like everything else.

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TH: Do you feel like you’re spending too much time focusing on how you pack?

Me: No…not really. I mean, like, packing my books was just time consuming. I had to try to fit them all in the box — and they’re not all uniform size, so it was figuring out a way to fit as many books into the box as I could without just stuffing them into gaps, and then using bubble wrap to fill in the extra spaces so they didn’t slide around and get damaged–

TH: You were bubble wrapping your books?

Me: What? No. I was using bubble wrap to fill in the gaps. Because the books aren’t gonna form, like, a perfect cube in the box. They’re not all the same size.

TH: And you don’t feel like this is maybe being too particular?

Me: …I hadn’t really thought so? I was trying to be conscious of space. There were a few boxes I was particular about — more expensive Barnes and Noble editions of books. But mostly it was just making them all fit.

TH: I’ve just never heard of anyone being worried about their books being damaged. They’re books. They’re pretty hearty.

Me: You’ve never…? I mean, generally books are tough, but a lot of my books are old — I’ve had them for more than a decade, so they’re fragile.

TH: I just think maybe you should stop worrying about them so much. They’re just books.

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One thing that I hadn’t been concerned about was how I’d packed the books. To me, the books weren’t the issue. The issue was that I only had 4 more evenings and a lot of stuff left to pack, but she was just…fixated on the fact that I cared about the condition of my books?

That wasn’t the only place where things felt weird. At another point, I was trying to explain that one of the places I felt overwhelmed was going into the living room.

In the bedroom, I felt okay because things were relatively organized — we’d packed a lot of stuff in there and taken it into the living room where there was more room to stack things. But going into the living room, there were papers scattered everywhere, things piled all over the counter tops, piles of various items sorted and prepped for packing, and boxes stacked and stacked and stacked everywhere.

It was all so much to take in that every time I walked into the living room, my brain started racing like it was trying to take in everything and sort it all. It was like noise! The paper shredder had spilled at one point, and all the little scraps of paper was kind of like TV static in my head.

Personally, I’m pretty sure that’s a symptom of my ADHD — which my psychologist diagnosed me with after our session, and which my therapist knew about. But her advice to me was, “Just block all that out. Stop, take a deep breath, and relax.” And I wanted to say, “But it’ll still be there when I open my eyes, and my brain will still try to process it all.

Later, I mentioned that I’d tried making a list of what I had left to pack, but I kept getting distracted because as I thought of things, I would get up to try to do them, get overwhelmed with the task, and quit. Her advice was, “Just don’t let yourself get distracted. Finish the list.”

Don’t. Get. Distracted?? Do you know what ADHD is???

When I left, I felt way more anxious about the situation than I had going in. I was annoyed that it felt like she wasn’t listening to me, like she was either ignorant about or ignoring how my ADHD may have been affecting things, and she made me way more anxious about the way I was packing, especially when it came to books.

I was so bothered by what she said, and the almost incredulous way she’d reacted — “You were bubble wrapping your books??” — that I went home and asked my wife about it because…had I been acting really weird about my books? I didn’t think so. It’s not like I was individually wrapping each book, I was just using the bubble wrap to fill in spaces in lieu of packing paper because we had a shit ton of bubble wrap and were out of packing paper.

My wife said that, no, while I had been particular about packing them to make sure they were safe and undamaged, I hadn’t been overly particular or exceedingly careful. Just…treating them with care like I would any of our other things.

I had another appointment scheduled in two weeks. The move happened, we got settled in, things were stressful and then calmed, as they do in situations like this, and the day of my next appointment began to approach.

The whole week leading up to the session, I stressed about it. I really didn’t like her. I didn’t feel like she listened to me. But I also thought it was maybe because we were still getting to know each other. Maybe this is just how therapy was for people? Where was it written that your therapist had to feel like your best friend? Plus, it took me four or five months to finally get in. If I canceled or tried to get a new therapist in the same building, what if it took another four months? Or what if they knew my last one? Would that make it awkward that I didn’t like their colleague?

“You were bubble wrapping your books??”

Besides being inaccurate…it felt so belittling.

I talked to my wife and brother about my feelings, and they both agreed that if I was feeling that apprehensive, I definitely should cancel. A therapist shouldn’t make you feel that way. They should be understanding, not judgemental.

So I did. I canceled the appointment. I don’t know if I can pursue other therapy at this time. I looked around at some other local ones, but from what I’ve read, it seems like I’d be expected to pay the whole cost up front every time, and I just don’t think I can afford that.

I gotta tell you…it makes me really wary about pursuing another therapist. What if the same thing happens, and I waste another $200 or $300 for a few sessions before yet another therapist fizzles out?

So, that was my first experience with therapy. I wish it had a happier ending. I’m definitely not telling folks not to pursue therapy. It does wonders for my wife. She loves her therapist. Unfortunately, this time at least, it didn’t work out for me. Hopefully next time, if there is a next time, it does.