I struggled on what to title this blog post because “how to love yourself” or “self-love is possible” feels thin. Anyone would argue that simply “believing” you’re going to like yourself more tomorrow doesn’t actually move the needle on how much (or how little) you like yourself. Particularly if your starting point is in the negatives, which if we’re honest is most of us.

Our society cultivates humans who thrive on self-mutilation as a means to building power or a “backbone” or thick skin. We grow up believing the only way we’re going to be better humans is if we punish ourselves for the times we’re not. It’s addition by subtraction. As someone who’s lived with disordered eating most of her life, I can attest to the connection between “doing something bad or being bad” and “deprivation as a punishment” can be slippery and traumatizing.

I forgot how to date myself. My long days in coffee shops, wanderings into little shops, or traveling (oh man, traveling!) were all replaced by couch time and more couch time. It didn’t happen all at once - it happened across an entire year.

I was looking through the pictures in my phone and at the top of 2020 it’s image after image of a daily life I miss so much and that is still whiles away. I won’t be back to London any time soon. Working out of a different coffee shop every other day won’t be a part of my regular routine for as long as COVID is a part of my regular routine.

I didn’t know where we were going for my birthday. Tyler had planned it all. It was amazing. Not only because it’s really nice to have someone else take on logistics, but because I am huge on birthdays (big days in general) and adding thoughtfulness to make a moment out of them.

A month ahead of my birthday, all I knew were the dates I had to block off on my calendar, that we were going somewhere where I probably wouldn’t have phone service, and that it was COVID-safe.

Every year I approach the holiday season with trepidation. I have this feeling that settles in like I have been here before and have never been here at all. Mostly because each holiday season is different. Yearly my mental health toolkit acquires more tools on how I can cope with the month of December, but it’s any one’s guess if the old tools will work.

The one hack that has never failed me during the winter holidays, death anniversaries, or other hard grief day is this — make plans you can break.

The anxiety was sitting in my throat, in my stomach and in the back of my eyes. I was choking on the words that would speak into existence what I was thinking - I was anxious because I felt guilty for being happy. I had unshed tears that spoke to the stress of being pulled in opposite directions — I was overwhelmed by the anxiety and sad that I felt this way in the first place. The pit in my stomach, this spoke to the reality that old habits die hard and the strong ties between my anxiety and my body were still there for however faint they’d been recently.

I was a conglomeration of feelings. In my mind was a woman with a shield in front of her face trying her best to ward the worst of this off. I journaled. I spoke positive affirmations at every threat to my happiness. I sought out manageability in all that felt unmanageable. I did what I know helps and then I ran out of things to do.

So, I sat.

In normal times I would start this piece with a rundown on what to expect when you’re walking into your therapist’s office for the first time, but given it’s COVID-times, this is both a rundown of my experience going to therapy in-person for the first time and what I’ve learned about doing virtual therapy for the first time.

The biggest caveat I want to introduce early on is that I started therapy over six years ago. It’s been a while since I had a first session with a therapist, but I can still remember the nerves I felt while sitting in the waiting room. I was the first person I knew who was going to therapy as an adult and the only other point of reference I had was a horrible experience I’d sat through when I was 11 years old and coping with my mom’s death.

From conversations with friends and strangers, I’ve learned that the two biggest hurdles to actually starting therapy at the beginning are finding a therapist and actually getting to the first appointment.