Hold The Onions

In a typical mid-century Italian American family, introspection was not a thing. Why would you think, let alone talk, about feelings? What are you, crazy? You do what you’re told. You act like you’re supposed to. You get with the program. Or else. And you never, ever, talk about anything with strangers (defined as anyone who isn’t in your immediate family). Imagine the taboo around any form of mental health care. The portrayal of Tony’s dilemma in The Sopranos is hilarious because it’s so real.

In my early twenties, on my own at last, I became dangerously sad. Still in denial about the challenges of my childhood, I had no idea why. One minute I was the competent young administrative assistant; the next I was in the restroom sobbing. When the pit grew deeper as weeks and months passed, I finally surrendered. The fact that I overcame my conditioning to seek therapy is testament to just what a mess I’d become. Of course, it was one more secret I had to keep from my family.

This was the first of a handful of times I would try therapy. In my inexperience, I wasn’t seeking insight. I was seeking relief. I wanted to be fixed, and quickly. Despite being spread over a period of thirty years, my initial attempts at therapy were all variations on the same theme. I would find myself so miserable (unlike the first time, in subsequent iterations there was an immediate problem that I imagined was the source of all my troubles) that I would reluctantly drag myself to a professional. Once there, I was what I’m certain was a delightful mixture of defensiveness, skepticism, and politeness. Spoiler alert: not a formula for success.

With my first therapist, I’d started to reveal a bit about my childhood. And who knows? Maybe if we’d had more than a year, most of which we spent overcoming my resistance, things would have progressed, and the course of my life may have changed. But I was off to join the Navy and see the world, and I believed that because I’d talked about it a bit, I should be over it. My parents had done the best they knew how. It was all in the past. Anchors aweigh.

What was missing, of course, was that crucial piece of learning how the past, and my adaptation to it, pervaded all my thoughts and behaviors and life choices. So, whether I was dealing with a profound depression after the sudden death of the man I was poised to marry a few years later, or problems in my marriage or with my children after that, I was mostly just whining while waiting for my circumstances to magically change. I had absolutely zero sense of responsibility or agency. I hadn’t an inkling of how amazingly fucked up I was.

This was still my condition as, rapidly approaching my sixtieth birthday, I once again entered therapy. Incredibly, despite having experienced more adverse events in the previous two years than I had in my entire lifetime, I thought I was fine. I was signing up in tandem with my daughter, who, within those same two years, among other big changes, had become disabled, been abandoned by her father, and been diagnosed as neurodivergent. I was going to talk about how best to help her. I was, at last, looking for insight. About someone else.  So that I could fix her.

Maybe the fifth time’s a charm. Or maybe it was the method: Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT). (I’m now an enthusiastic if unofficial spokesperson as I believe it saved both of our lives.) Maybe it was the almost five years I invested this time. It was likely some combination of the three. What I do know is that, finally, torturously slowly, I got what therapy is about. Which is when my life began, in tiny increments, to truly improve.

First, I woke up to the fact that I needed even more help than my daughter did. Then, we began to dig into how the events of my childhood (which I was eventually able to acknowledge and process as abusive) were still governing my thoughts, feelings, and actions. We looked at how my early environment made me the perfect target for a covert narcissist. Navigating a vicious divorce, a major relocation, and life with a suddenly disabled and distressed teen provided plenty of real-time material for discussion. Navigating all of that while also living in the same area as my parents for the first time in forty years brought everything to a head. The insanity of participating in the same old dramas while trying to resolve serious problems and rebuild a life eventually became so glaring that even this queen of denial couldn’t ignore it anymore.

Once I became aware of my patterns, I remained unconvinced of the idea that I could change them. It just didn’t seem possible. They were so ingrained, so unconscious, a reflex stronger than the knee-jerk at the doctor’s rubber mallet. I just couldn’t imagine how such a transformation would occur. It seemed like imagining a wild boar deciding to become a ladybug. But I was desperate, so I paid attention. I learned, grudgingly at first, about mindfulness, radical acceptance, and self-compassion. About boundaries and self-regulation. I regularly took two steps forward and one back, but it was starting to make sense.

And then I hit my next plateau, which was “when am I going to be done with all this?” I seriously believed that there would come a day when I was completely healed. When I would never again ruminate, or judge, or blame, or catastrophize, or any of the other emotionally immature favorites in my repertoire. I imagined never again making an impulsive decision or reacting before pausing. I became extremely impatient, and because I was still not very adept at the self-compassion part, chastised myself. I was channeling Keanu Reeves’ character in Destination Wedding when he sighs “I’m all fucked up and I’m always gonna be.” Like Tony, hilariously real.

I persevered. I told myself that given that I’d been fucked up for at least sixty years, I wasn’t going to become a paragon of mental health overnight (if ever). Many times over the years I’d heard therapy compared to peeling an onion, with deeper, more complex layers being revealed as you proceed. I’d just keep on peeling that onion, I thought, and one day I’d be at the end. It took years to realize I was using the wrong metaphor.

Yes, we go a little deeper with each layer, but sooner or later the onion is peeled. It’s a finite exercise. Whereas the outcome of effective therapy is self-awareness, which is a never-ending voyage rather than a destination. Therapy brought me to the starting line and gave me a map of sorts, but years later I’m still meandering along, making interesting detours and new discoveries. I recently decided that gardening is a more apt parallel for this trek.

I’ve always found working in a garden to be one of life’s seriously underrated joys. There’s so much more than the “twofer” of meditation and exercise in nature. There’s the digging through the dirt prior to planting, when you’re removing obstacles to growth and never quite sure what you’re going to unearth (here in the tropics, “leaping lizards” is more than a quaint saying). There’s the weeding and the pruning; the slight improvements of removing what no longer serves. There’s the watering and encouragement of what you want to flourish. You’ll get dirty, and maybe even hurt occasionally (remember to close those shears!), but the rewards are great. There’s the celebration of growth and of rebirth, and sometimes, the pleasure of starting anew. It’s an ongoing, engaging, beautiful process that I’ll take over peeling an onion any day.

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Thanks for reading. Care to share your experiences with or thoughts on therapy or self-awareness?