Last week I went to therapy without a voice.

Literally, no voice! Just faint whispers and head nods to indicate the person I was communicating with understood what I was trying to say. So, how do you think it went? I’ll tell you… it was flawless and epiphanic!

I began the session half-whispering, half-mouthing the words “I know this is less than ideal. On the way here, I quickly realized how poorly thought out this was.” But I did in fact think it through. I had a plan. Today, the therapist was going to talk to me and I would listen and take notes.

While slightly reluctant, but completely in sync with my master plan, my therapist started out saying, “I have observed a common pattern resurfacing once again. You do extremely well for a period of time, then you flip a switch and decide to exorbitantly overwhelm yourself. This continues to a degree that can bear no more, and you fall apart and spin down the spiral to despair.”

He looked into my returning stare as if to siphon out a response from my mute vocal chords. “Ah! But there is also THAT! You have the innate ability, the extreme talent, of rationalization and justification right to the very edge before you plummet. I fear you are very close to that edge right now.”

Readers, my therapist gets me. I mean, he really GETS me! Without a single syllable vocalized, he knows what I would say. “But, I actually survived this time. I came out the other side. I compartmentalized my life to a measure that prevented the world from collapsing. Sure, I didn’t eat, sleep, laugh, or live for four and a half months while my work life dominated every waking minute of my day.”

“Absolutely, I drive myself to the point of physical illness that robbed me of the very thing I needed to be successful in my job at the most critical moment, two days before the hard deadline. I had no voice. I had no energy. But I also had no emotion. So I survived.”

This is what I said without the sound waves crossing the room. This is what he already knew I would say. He agreed, although not with approval. He told me how I had practiced a new level of coping skills that had served to make the outcome of a outrageous stress level a positive one. He said, “You know, you really don’t need to come every week. Once or twice a month, maybe. You have elevated to being able to be your own therapist.”

This isn’t something I hadn’t heard before. After all, 8 years ago when I began weekly therapy with him (sometimes twice weekly those first years), I had already navigated three decades of my life with depression. There wasn’t anything new he could tell me.

I regulated my breathing, and whispered, “I know that. But this is one thing that will never change. The same day I came to terms with the solid fact I would take one or more pills every day for the rest of my life to save my life, I also knew I would enter this office once a week for as long as the door was open and the lights were on. Besides, this is my one hour a week to lay it all out there, to process, to laugh or cry or yell or rest.”

He nodded, “Yes, I will say this was likely your only act of self care these last five months.”

Yes, and because of it, I survived.