My First Psychologist Appointment 🌱

Life hasn't always been an easy one for me. Not to mention thanks to the quarantine situation, I had been working at home for almost three months before I got back to the office again last week. I have never been the happy kid at home, and I never seen it as a home either. I live in a dysfunctional family since I could remember, and that causes the biggest trauma of my life. Adding work stress to it and voila!

Week by week passed, I became distant to my friends; not wanting to connect to everyone, not wanting to work, not wanting to do the exercise I love the most. I have (still, until now) emotional eating problems, because I thought feeling full until I want to throw up is much more better than feeling empty and sad. I got jealous very easily, even when my boyfriend didn't do anything. I yelled at mom a lot, and cursed at my dad a lot.

I knew I couldn't stay like this forever.

My friend told me about a psychologist she visited before, and I gathered up courage to take the phone, make a call for an appointment.

On 9 June 2020, I had my first appointment.

That day was sucks, I felt empty the whole day. I tried to do freelance work, but I got anxious instead and couldn't work at all.

So I just lied down on my bedroom, doing nothing until my appointment time.

Upon arriving there, I was told to draw a person figure. I do a lot of chibi drawing, so I drew one. Second, a tree. All I know about drawing tree is a huge, thick tree. And lastly, a tree, a home and a person in one single frame. I drew a tree house with a person sitting in the veranda. I thought, "Oh, it'd be cute to have a tree house like this." While drawing, she began to questioned me about how's my condition, how's work. Just a normal chit-chat, but she led me smoothly to sensitive issues about my family problem. I began to stutter due to nervousness, but I still maintained my laugh and jokes here and there.

Until she said, "You know, most of the time, the person who laughs is the person who hides a lot of scar within them."

I stopped talking, and I just felt a sudden burst of emotion from my heart.

I started to weep.

After telling her stories, she told me that I've been holding so much trauma in my life, that causes my "life development" stuck. Yes, I've been struggling with job, career and passion a lot, and it linked to it.

Basically there are stages of human's life: childhood, adolescence, young adult and adulthood.

I am currently in my young adult moment, but the situation back at home and all the negativity I've been fed with got in a way of my mental development. Also which is why I drew a timid, scared-like chibi drawing (she asked me the age of the girl I drew, it's approximate 10-13 years old): a representation of myself who, maybe, still trapped in my adolescence. To think of it, Junior High School is the best moments of my life. I had a lot of friends, I was very much a social person. I laughed a lot, I hung out a lot.

And the way I stroke my drawings, the branches on my tree drawing indicates a lot of anxiety within me. I couldn't stay still. I worry a lot. I causes a lot of stress to myself.

Lastly, the supposed-to-be-cute tree house is actually portraying my family situation. I am stuck, I couldn't get out of it.

Then, she told me that there are three 'bodies' of human: physical body, mental body and spiritual body.

I've been fed with so much junks in my spiritual body which affect the other two; hence I crumbled. Not to mention, it's not only several years, but all of my life.

In short, what she offered me is to change my perspective, since I can't really escape the whole situation.

Sure my parents sucks, but maybe it was caused by the generation difference. They were thought like that, and the focus of their life are different. If I keep on showing that I am the victim, then I'll be the victim all of my life. I must grow while being trapped, just like this quarantine where I can do many things inside my house, actually. And I'll be a person rich with emotion and knowledge once I am freed from the chains.

Also, within those sessions, she told me to imagine she's my dad, and she apologised. All the words I am dying to hear from him.

She gave me lots of tips, sessions that touches right to my heart, and homework for a week (including journaling), and I was scheduled to visit her again Sunday, 21 June. She also reminded me that God won't make you born into the wrong family, or give you tasks that beyond your power.

I'm really glad I went there.

Maybe there are lots of thing I actually already know, but there's this soothing feeling you can't get from anybody else but your psychologist.

I really hope my mood improves, since I want to cut the chain. I don't want my kids to experience the same thing as I do today.

I want to be better, for myself, and for my loved ones.