You Don’t Get to Tell Me About Sad

Mental health has always been something that I’m very passionate so it shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that hours after I found out Coleman was gone, I told my mom I needed to be in therapy as soon as possible and I meant it. Friday, December 20th, 2024, marked one full year of therapy, and it is a milestone that I am so incredibly proud of myself for hitting. Early on, I knew I was never going to get through this on my own, and at the time, and still, to this day, I am struggling with my faith and my relationship with God, so I knew I needed somewhere to turn to, and therapy became it. Now, I know we can get into the idea that God uses the words of my therapist to reach me but to be brutally honest, I am still really angry with God, and he knows it. He and I talk about this daily, so please keep the comments about my faith to yourself because I am working through it. This post is about therapy.

I feel very fortunate to have had people in my life who were mental health professionals before all of this happened because when I say the next part, I think a lot of people think I am joking, but I am not. The day I sat down with everyone to plan Coleman’s funeral, there were four mental health professionals present. So when you think about the kitchen table having 10 people at it, and 4 of those people are counselors or therapists, I like to joke and say that I was well covered in the mental health field, but in all honesty, I was. And I will never take that for granted. Tuesday is what I consider the first “real” day because Monday was such a blur, and first thing in the morning, my friend Jen, who had been my friend for many years and is an LPC, came over and stayed by my side the entire day. She sat with me during the tough conversations, planning the funeral, and the phone call from the fertility specialist letting me know that my and Coleman’s efforts to have a child together were unsuccessful, as well as the dozens of decisions that had to be made that day. I know that day, and those conversations are not easy for anyone, but I feel genuinely grateful that she sat there through it all. Two other people who stood by my side that day and in the days to come and who are very near and dear to my heart are Kristi and Tami. Both are incredible in their chosen fields – Kristi is a school counselor and truly one of the best I have ever seen do it. So much so that I am doing my internship with her, and I am so excited to learn from her and model my approach to school counseling after her. The second is Tami, an intervention counselor at my school and someone I hold the utmost respect for. There are not many people that I would go to war for, but for Tami, I would. She was already amazing in my eyes, but after walking with me for the last year, she is genuinely one of the best people I know. I leaned on Tami so much that she sat next to me during the funeral because I knew I needed her next to me. At the time, I was worried people would think I was selfish for picking and choosing who could sit next to me, but I also realized that I didn’t care what anyone thought because I needed someone to help stabilize me, and Tami did just that.

Another reason I needed Tami next to me at the funeral was because I wasn’t sure I was going to make it through the funeral. At this point, she had taught me grounding, which was a technique that I was using during my panic attacks, but another issue I was having that I haven’t talked much about, but I think it is an important conversation to have is meds. I was very adamant that I would not be on any sedatives or meds other than what I was already taking previously for my anxiety. So much so that I got into an argument with my mom Monday night, which was about 16 hours after Coleman’s passing because she wanted me to take a sedative to help me sleep since I was running on about an hour of sleep and she knew my body needed to rest. I remember telling her I didn’t want to take sedatives because I wanted to feel everything. I remember using that phrase a lot. I wanted to feel everything because I was scared I was going to wake up 6 months down the road and feel like it was a foggy dream and that I was numb to everything. Now, don’t get me wrong, I was numb, But I was numb because of the weight of the pain, not because of medication. It was a little over two months before my anxiety dosage was adjusted and before I was diagnosed with depression, so those first 9 weeks were just me battling through it. Another decision I made was I also had all of the alcohol taken out of the house the day after he died because I didn’t trust myself. I have a very addictive personality at the best of times, and I was worried that I would develop an issue with alcohol abuse. I have seen the damage that alcohol and drug addictions can have, and I have seen how those things have ruined lives, so I was terrified that I was going to develop vices that would end up causing me even more heartache in the end. I know this approach isn’t for everyone, and I am not judging anyone who takes a different approach, but I know myself, and I would not have trusted myself during some of those dark times not to resort to medication or drinking to get through it.

So, instead of taking that route, I went with the less traveled road. I screamed. I cried. I begged. I bartered. I fell asleep on the bathroom floor. I threw up from crying so much. I broke things. I sat in steaming hot showers and ice-cold baths, trying to numb the pain. I forced myself to walk through the fire day after day after day. I broke my own heart over and over. It was horrible. I am not saying this is the approach everyone should take, but it is the one I took because I know that my goal at the end of this was to be mentally and emotionally healthy, so in my mind, I needed to feel everything to get there. Again, I don’t know that this is the best or healthiest route, but it is the one I took nonetheless.

Tami also played a massive role in my mental health because she introduced me to my favorite human ever and the reason I am where I am today – and that is my therapist, Lisa! Now, Lisa would be quick to tell you that I am the one doing the work, which is true, but I wouldn’t be able to do it without Lisa! Lisa is beyond talented and knows exactly when to push in on something and when to let up. It wasn’t until recently that I cried in therapy. For some reason, I had built up a wall that even Lisa struggled to get through for a while because whenever I felt tears coming, I would pull back and use humor or sarcasm to deflect the feelings. I know I probably had Lisa going through all the books and resources she has to try and figure out how to get through that wall, but alas, the wall was knocked down back in November, and now I cry all the time. I love that for myself. JK, when I start crying (always in public lately), I lovingly tell Lisa it is her fault since she got me to break down the wall. But I say all of that to say that even with my goal of not being on sedatives or using alcohol to numb the pain and attending therapy weekly in which I talked through everything, I still built up protective walls, and it wasn’t until Lisa asked me in a therapy session why I had the wall and the guard up with her that I realized even with trying to feel everything, I still had guarded myself against feeling everything all at once.

Another part of therapy that has had a significant impact on me was EMDR. I will try to explain EMDR, but I might get some of it wrong, so don’t come for me. EMDR is Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, and it is a type of therapy that is helpful for people with PTSD because it allows your brain to process the traumatic memories. The way Lisa explained it, our brains are like filing cabinets. Like filing cabinets, your brain stores memories in different areas, but sometimes, your brain doesn’t know where to put something like a traumatic memory. So, it sticks it in the best place it can find, but because it isn’t something you have processed and put into its correct place, it is kinda hidden there and pops out whenever. In my experience, that is where my panic attacks would come into play. I’ve had dozen of panic attacks, but there were a few that genuinely knocked me on my ass.

In the bad ones, I was trying to use my grounding techniques, but the traumatic memories were so raw and so honest that I ended up in a ball on the floor and completely disassociating. Dissociation is a protective mechanism that our brains use, and it literally will shut down different parts of our brain when we experience extreme stress to protect us. What does it feel like? Well, for me, I felt separated from my body, and like I was watching everything take place below me—for example, the funeral. When I think about the funeral, I don’t see things through my eyes. I see things through a bird’s eye view above me, and I see myself sitting down or I see the top of my head. In my opinion, that is why I could give my eulogy: I had disassociated myself and was there, but I was not there. Crazy, huh?

So, what does EMDR do? Well, there are different ways to go about it, but the result is the same – it creates a safe environment for you to pull these traumatic memories out of storage and process them, but it is exhausting. Like mentally, emotionally, and physically exhausting. The next day at work, after those sessions, I felt like I had been hit by a truck. We eventually had to pause future EMDR sessions because I was struggling with other things, and Lisa did not want to continue shocking my system when I wasn’t ready for it. Eventually, I will go back to work out some other parts of my story that I am still healing from, but right now, I have too much on my plate to take that on, and I appreciate how carefully Lisa observes me and knows this even when I don’t see it myself. She really is the best!

And now, for the grand finale, over the last 6 weeks, I have been my rawest and most exposed self. There hasn’t been a day I haven’t cried. And I don’t mean like a few tears here and there. I’m talking guttural, heart-wrenching sobs. The kind that you hear and never forget. It is the floor shifting beneath you, trying to get a full breath of air, clutching your chest because it feels like your heart is breaking type of sobs. The kind that makes you wish you could be anywhere but here type of hurt. Within the span of six weeks, I hit our wedding anniversary, Thanksgiving, the death anniversary, Christmas, and New Year’s is next week. Also, in the middle of all that, I am finishing up a tough semester of grad school and also trying to finish up the semester with grades and all that for my classes. At one point, I just kept crying and saying it was too much at once. Too much pain, too much loneliness, too much stress, too much hurt… just too much of everything… because it was.

But the craziest part of all this is the number of times I have been stopped over the last six weeks by STRANGERS who comment on my “glow” or how joyful and kind I am. One woman said that I brought LIGHT into the room. Y’all… me… Bringing LIGHT into the room… when I had a total breakdown like an hour before. WHAT?! But then I also stopped to think about that because it happened more than once, and I came to this conclusion, which I hope leaves you with a feeling of peace or hope going into the New Year! I have been at my lowest for most of the last year, especially in the previous 6 weeks, but I am still able to go out into the world as a functioning adult and not only that but act in such a way that people go out of their way to comment on it? These people have no idea who I am or the hell I have been through; all they see is a girl full of light and love, and I can’t help but believe that therapy is to thank for that. The only reason I am not a shell of a human and that I am dreaming about my future is because I have done the work, broken my own heart more times than I can count, and have come out the other side stronger, healthier, and hopeful for my future.

Love, Brittany