The Best Therapy I’ve Ever Had
I’ve spent many of my Earthly years in and out of therapy of some sort. It started when I was 10 years old after my parents separated. It was important to my parents, maybe more so my Mom that we get the right support to help us through this challenging life change. At that time, you don’t dare tell anyone you’re getting counselling but when one of your classmates parents is the counsellor and you go to their home fo your sessions, talk about stress of someone finding out!
But let’s admit it, there are times when you just need help outside of yourself, your family or friends. Now a days it’s almost considered abnormal to not be in therapy. This is a changing world and we all need to figure out our way through this journey mostly in one piece.
The common theme that I have had throughout my life in therapy is being let down, unchosen and not feeling like I was enough. So long as I was myself, these instances and feelings would continue to occur. Tears upon tears. Sadness upon sadness. Betrayal upon betrayal. “Why me?” I would ask with tears, upset, grief and heartbrokenness. And then I would feel something. Something…different. “Nope,“ I would tell myself. “You are not allowed to come to the surface. You…,” I would sternly say, “go away!”
Except it wouldn’t because it can’t.
RAGE!
I wasn’t allowed to be angry when I was little. I would be told, “Knock it off!” I cringe at those words to this day. I wasn’t allowed to express the upset and anger I felt when I was deprived something. I wasn’t allowed to be me essentially. So I was taught to suppress.
Music became a safe haven where I could sing with these amazing bands who so freely let their pent up frustrations out. Bands like Guns N’ Roses, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Pearl Jam, Nirvana then on to Tracy Bonham, Korn, Limp Bizkit, Tool, Slipknot and more. This anger inside needed out but I still suppressed it. I smoked which seemed to help but obviously wasn’t good for me. I chose people who never made me feel truly special or who put the real effort in to value and love me. I was taken advantage of, my love and kindness was taken for weakness because I was never able to stand up for myself, build that strength of knowing who I was and that I was worthy of respect, love and kindness.
It was after my marriage fell apart after tumultuous years of pain, heartache, grief and betrayal that I’d had enough. After leaving and moving out I knew I needed to head back to therapy but needed a new perspective with a therapist who didn’t know all the details of the past as I’d poured out to another for years and years.
This one was different. She asked me what I needed. For years I knew that I needed to get this built up anger out. I considered boxing but I knew I needed more than that. “I need to break shit!” I told her. My homework, look up a smash room in the area and consider going to it.
I didn’t hesitate. I found one over an hour away, I booked it and went within the week.
When I showed up at Go Smash, I put on the safety vest, hard hat, shield and gloves. I had booked the option to break bottles and computer/tv equipment. I had prepared ahead of time. I had a playlist ready with all my angry music and made posters of all the shitty and horrible things that have been said to me in the past that kept me small, quiet and unvalued.
I went in the room, taped up all the posters in front of the smash table, put on the music, took in all the hurtful words, the anger they brought up within me and as the music dropped on Counterfeit, I swung my crowbar so fucking hard and smashed that wine bottle to pieces as it hit the cinderblock wall. I swear I’d never felt so alive than in that moment!
I continued setting up the bottles, choosing different instruments of destruction until they were gone in less than 8 minutes. God it felt good! As I moved to the electronics breaking space, they had a soundbar, hard drive and a computer monitor to go to town on. That monitor was my gem. All the years I spent sitting at a desk doing jobs I didn’t love, feeling trapped by what we were all told to do for life, chase the steady job, steady income and watch as your spirit fades from existence. That’s what that monitor represented to me.
Between a sledgehammer, small crowbar, large crowbar and an axe I dismantled and busted those pieces of my past to smithereens! I was drenched from head to toe and I’d never felt so free, so alive, so unburdened.
I snapped a pic and sent to my bestie. “You look like you just had sex!” she said. I was glowing, in a state of pure euphoria. To be real, she was exactly right. I did look like I’d just had sex. Near the end of the break-fest, I’d smashed my finger against a crowbar and the table, bent a ring and hurt myself but it didn’t matter. I gave myself permission to let my rage go and nothing was stopping me!
In the end and after it I realized we all need that sense of aliveness, a safe place to unburden ourselves, be who we truly are and no longer hold that which is stuck within our bodies. That anger festers within and would have ended up causing real physical ailments within me had I not been able to release and know that I am safe to be me now. It only took me 40 years to feel like I was able to.
If you feel that nagging in your being, the one that is asking you to step out of your head, get into your body and let your emotions flow through you to release, I strongly encourage you to go BREAK SOME SHIT!!!!
