There’s a moment — and if you’ve been here before, you know the one — where you look at your life, take a long inventory of everything piling up around you, and think: I cannot therapist my way through this alone. I need a professional.
Something happened last month that knocked me genuinely sideways. I won’t get into all of it today, but it hit harder than I expected. And because life has a flair for the dramatic, it didn’t arrive alone. It showed up with luggage. Several bags. Possibly a steamer trunk.
So here I am. Going back into professional counseling.
Again.
This will be my fourth rodeo, for those keeping score at home. I do not have a punch card, but I feel like I’ve earned one. Buy four therapy series, get the fifth free. A little laminated card. Maybe a mug.
I want to be clear about why I’m telling you this.
It’s not for sympathy. It’s not for the comments, though I do love you people. It’s because I have sat across from enough of you — in real life, in DMs, in the comment section — to know that a lot of us are white-knuckling it through things we don’t have to white-knuckle through alone.
Mental health care is not a last resort. It’s not what you do when you’ve completely fallen apart. It’s what you do when you’re a functioning adult human who has stuff going on and needs help sorting through it before it becomes a much bigger problem.
Is it the most glamorous part of adulting? Absolutely not. It ranks somewhere between scheduling a colonoscopy and reading your insurance explanation of benefits. But I am convinced — genuinely, deeply convinced — that counseling saved my life before.
And I have every reason to believe it’ll help me get through all this too.
So if you’ve been putting it off, consider this your nudge. Not a shove. Just a gentle, knowing elbow to the ribs from someone who gets it.
You don’t have to have everything figured out to ask for help. You just have to be willing to show up and do the work.
I’ll be over here doing the same.
:::sigh::: Let’s go.
What’s one thing you’re doing right now to take care of your mental health? Drop it in the comments — even if the answer is “absolutely nothing yet, Randy, that’s why I’m reading this.”
If this resonated with you, subscribe below so you don’t miss what comes next. It’s going to be a journey.
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