A Few Thoughts on… Starting Therapy for Good
Last week, I wrote about the first time I went to see a therapist while I was in grad school. This week, I want to take the narrative a little bit further and talk about what led me to start therapy for good in 2018.
More specifically, I will talk about two thought patterns that have consistently plagued me for many years, as well as the crisis that finally tipped me over the age and pushed me into a deep depression, from which I could only escape by seeking help.
I am not good enough. I am not worthy.
I’ve written before about how I had illusions about trying to be the best historian I could be. In fact, and I feel truly ashamed to reveal this but, in an almost narcissistic way, I wanted to be the best historian ever, period. On a deeper and more unhealthy level, I simply wanted to be better than anyone around me, and academic pursuit was the way I thought I would achieve this. Looking back, I realize that I tied my whole self-worth and identity to living up to the illusions that I had formed in my head about my “success” as a historian. For me, it was a binary game. I was either going to be a brilliant historian and “prove” my worth to the whole world, or I was going to fail and expose myself as a “fraud,” who had no business doing what he was doing.
On the flip side, though, I knew I was not good enough and would never be good enough to achieve my “goals.” I realized that I would not be able to live up to the standards I set for myself, which propelled me toward an intense feeling of worthlessness and shame. “Why do you even bother? You are not going to amount to anything” was one typical phrase I kept repeating over and over again in my head, leading me to become disillusioned about my PhD and hopeless about my future.
One period where all these feelings came together and reached a fever pitch came right after I passed my candidacy exam and went to attend a “summer school” for Ottomanists where I was going to study to improve my reading skills in Ottoman Turkish.
For six weeks, I was surrounded by people in my field, all brilliant minds. We attended classes together, ate together, and hung out together. And I felt miserable. I was constantly comparing myself to others, thinking that everybody was better than me. They could read Ottoman better, had better or more interesting dissertation topics than I did, were attending more prestigious programs… And on and on. It was a type of mental torture that I was semi-consciously imposing on myself. I knew it was a severe case of “impostor syndrome” but I simply could not make my mind stop. By the program had ended and I returned to Istanbul, where I was going to start my dissertation research, I had absolutely no belief in myself or my worth as a prospective historian, or even as a human being.
I am trapped. I have no future.
These thoughts of worthlessness and not being good enough were coupled with a sense of hopelessness for the future. Even by the time I was just beginning my Ph.D. dissertation research in the Fall of 2015, I knew deep down that life in academia was not for me. Although I enjoyed the research part of it, I was never particularly interested in (or good at, to be honest) teaching. Maybe even more importantly, though, the abysmal conditions of the academic job market meant that my odds of landing a tenure-track position were about the same as me hitting it big in the lottery, maybe even worse. Besides, even if a miracle happened and I managed to find a tenure-track position, it most probably would have been in a remote corner of the U.S. where I had no interest in living. I already had a miserable time in Columbus, Ohio during the first 3 years of my Ph.D. so I knew for a fact that I did not want to live in a small place, which lowered my chances of having a fulfilling life while also staying in academia, very close to zero.
The problem was that I did not know what else I could do. By 2017, I was 32 and had always believed that the “life of the mind” was the only path I wanted to follow. I had already spent 6 years (including my master’s degree at King’s College London) on this journey and besides a stint as an academic counselor for students who wanted to study abroad, which I had done right after I graduated college, I had no practical “real” work experience. Even though I had always entertained thoughts of quitting my Ph.D., they were always followed by the burning question “But what are you going to do then?,” usually voiced in my imagination either by my parents or my friends, to which I could come up with no plausible answer.
So, quitting was out of the question, simply because I fully believed that it would mean the absolute ruin of my life. I felt trapped between a rock and a hard place. The only way forward was to continue to drag myself onward and finish the damn thing somehow, even though I was feeling more miserable with each passing day.
The crisis hits
Looking back, it is obvious that my mental and emotional health was far from ideal, to say the least. What tipped me over the edge and forced me to seek help, however, was a difficult breakup that I experienced at the end of 2017.
It was a very painful period and I fell into a deep depression that lasted almost 2 months. At this point, I was supposed to start writing my dissertation to be able to finish on time but was absolutely in no position to undertake any kind of work. I did not even pick up a book to read which, in normal times, is one of my favorite activities to do. I simply stayed at home, slept most of the day, and watched episodes of Friends on my computer. I felt rejected, questioned my worth, and ruminated for hours on what I did wrong.
As I wrote last week, I went through depressive periods before, but this felt different. I simply could not get out of the mood I was in. I was not even sure I wanted to get out. Life seemed to be over. I had no professional life. I had no love life. I had nothing.
Starting therapy
As the fog cleared a little bit, I could see that I wouldn’t be able to get out of this mess alone. Just like I did in 2015, I needed help. One of my friends in Istanbul is a clinical psychologist so I messaged her, explaining what happened, how I felt, and asked if she knew a good therapist who could help me. She gave me a name and advised me to contact him.
I did not do it right away, though. Similar to what happened 2 years ago, I felt extremely ashamed of being so “weak,” berated myself for the situation I put myself in, and just put off calling the number my friend gave me and making an appointment. It took me around 3 weeks to finally pull the trigger and book my first session.
19 February 2018. That was the date of my first session and the start of my “therapeutic journey,” to put a fancy phrase on it, which continues to this day. At that time, though, I had no idea it I would still be at it more than 5 years later. Even though it started with an urgent need to address a crisis, it evolved into something deeper, where I learned (and continue to learn) a lot about myself.
Definitely one of the best investments I have made in my life.