A good therapist untangles your issues by breaking down your thoughts and feelings. I come to Bryan like a loose wire- electrocuted with anxiety. I spill words. Words I try to best describe the issue I'm experiencing. He listens, he looks at me, and tells me "you're miserable now, but that doesn't make Mike the right guy for you." I have devastating thoughts about how I lost the best person I've ever met. Bryan pulls out facts, "proof in the pudding", and untangle each of those thoughts. These thoughts that are not me, these thoughts that pop up and create feelings that do not serve me, the lies behind those thoughts.
My first therapist and I would see each other and just blink. And she would ask, "what would you like to talk about?" I knew then it was gonna be an hour wasted. She was not a good therapist. In contrast, I have racing thoughts and discoveries, and after two years of seeing Bryan, I race to go in and sit in the safe space Bryan provides to selfishly talk about my stories of the week. He embraces all of it: the pluses, minuses, contradictions. He relates my present actions to my past. My past is complex, painful and hard to figure out. And the here and now - where change happens - is not simple either, as changing life-long patterns can feel difficult and baffling. Bryan helps navigate this.
Growth is uncomfortable. For me, it can be devastating and painful because I have debilitating fears that I choose to let control me. But I have tools now that Bryan taught me. I am learning to decipher between clean pain (pain from loss) and dirty pain (pain that I choose to have because of my fearful thoughts). I am learning to identify the lies behind some thoughts. I am learning to choose my thoughts so the feelings doesn't intensify. I am learning to deal with pain.
With Bryan's help, I imagine Future Me. Future me will deal with negative emotions because they are inevitable. Future me will embrace pain that will help me grow. Future me won't fear losses that are meant to be lost.
Grateful. He reminds me to be grateful. Because I'm loving. And to share love, there needs to be goodness in me to begin with. He reminds me how awesome I am. Sometimes I forget my strengths because so much of me is doubt. I leave each session reminded how far I've come from the child running around with knives with my emotions.
Bryan offers concrete feedback that helped me get where I want to be. I don't deal well with vague suggestions or woo woo actions (like I once had a therapist tell me to print a picture of Little Astrid and speak kindly to her. I don't have time for that.) Whereas, Bryan would say, "you feel miserable because you don't feel seen. This person/situation doesn't serve you - away with it!" I'm paraphrasing because he would always suggest to communicate from a place of compassion.
I am eternally grateful for Bryan's expertise in collaborating where we discover together where I am, what may be helpful, and the barriers that are keeping me stuck. I find my own answers, but Bryan facilitates this process by being an effective therapist. read more