Call an Exterminator

A few weeks ago, my world got flipped upside down.

I’m not going to go into details, but just know that it was ugly. The depression that overcame me was so heavy I couldn’t get out of bed. I didn’t want to eat. I didn’t want to watch TV. I didn’t even want to sleep, but seeing as I couldn’t get myself to move from my bed, that’s how I spent most of my days.

Eventually I got tired of feeling this way, and told my parents that I needed to go to therapy.

You see, this was a big deal for me. I’ve always been a big advocate for therapy, and even went when I struggled with anxiety when I was younger. I encourage the people around me to get help when they need it, but for some reason I felt weak going this time. I felt like I was giving in. I felt like going to therapy meant that I was damaged or broken, which made no sense considering I have always felt so positively about it.

I also felt like I wouldn’t learn anything from therapy. I thought that I would sit there and listen to some 50-something year old would ask me what events lead to this depressive episode and how this has made me feel, and to be completely honest…I didn’t want to talk to anyone about how I felt. I had all my walls up, and all I wanted was to be able to lay in bed and pray it all away, then wake up in the morning depression-free.

On top of all of that, I thought that getting help meant that I was a bad Christian. I thought that it meant I wasn’t relying on God enough. I thought that it would make me a hypocrite. I felt like since I have this blog and I’m constantly comforting people and giving advice, that I should be able to do it on my own. I felt like you guys would look at me and think I’m not worthy to talk about the things that I talk about or pray for you guys or give you advice or…you get my point.

I thought that asking for help made me weak.

On my first day of therapy, I was so nervous that I was shaking as I filled out the insurance paperwork. I wasn’t even talking about what had happened yet, and I already felt like I was going to throw up the blueberry bagel that I had for breakfast.

I felt a wave of calm come over me however, when I actually met my therapist. She was young and fashionable, and I felt my stomach knot loosen. It was nice to have someone close to my age & my same gender helping me out.

How did my first session go, you ask?

I started crying within the first 5 minutes of talking and didn’t stop until our hour was up.

I kept apologizing - “I’m sorry I’m such a mess. Ugh, I’m so sorry for crying. Wow I can’t stop crying, I’m sorry!'“

She got fed up with that pretty quickly.

“Why are you apologizing for expressing your emotions? You never have to apologize for feeling, especially not to me.”

That made me cry even harder.

I didn’t realize it until that day, but I’ve always kind of hid what I’m feeling from other people. I felt like if I told other people what was going on in my head, they would think that I was being dramatic or that I was weak. I told her that, and she said something that blew my mind.

“Other people don’t think that about you Bailey, you think that about you.”

She went on to tell me about these annoying things that our brains sometimes have called ANTs. “ANT” stands for “automatic negative thought,” and they represent your core beliefs about yourself. She pulled a list of them out of her desk drawer and asked me to check the ones that I thought I struggled with.

There were 17 ANTs on the list.

I checked 13 of them.

I was blown away. How did I not notice how sick I was? How did I not notice how unhealthy and toxic my thoughts had become? When did it get this bad? I was literally bullying myself mentally and wasn’t thinking twice about it.

“So, what do I do?” I asked, still totally bewildered by the length of my list.

“Well, what would you do if you had a large infestation of ants in your house?”

I laughed. It felt like a silly question.

“Call an exterminator?”

“Call an exterminator! But in this case, you are the exterminator,” she said. “The first step is noticing that they’re there. Now that you know that these thoughts exist in your head, you can start to change them. It’s your job to interrupt the negative with something positive.”

You guys, just this one conversation has completely turned my life around. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a daily challenge, as negative thoughts don’t just go away overnight - but I can feel myself changing. I can feel the growth. I can feel my mind de-clouding, and day by day I’m learning to interrupt my negative thoughts with positive ones. I’m learning what it truly means to love and take care of myself.

I’ve spent a lot of time taking care of other people, often times completely neglecting my own needs (enneagram type 2’s, where ya at?). I thought that I was being selfless by always putting myself last, but in reality that was actually the most selfish thing I could have done - I couldn’t get out of bed, and therefore could be of no help to anyone. I became depressed because it was the only way my body could get my attention. My brain had been screaming “hey you! I need help!” for months, only to be pushed aside. I’ve always tried to live by the verse “love your neighbor as yourself,” but I never took into consideration the fact that that verse implies that there is in fact love for myself in the first place.

If you take anything from this, please hear me say that asking for help does not make you weak. It doesn’t make you a bad Christian. It doesn’t make you a hypocrite.

It makes you human.

God put people with a passion for medicine and therapy on this earth for a reason - to be used!

You can’t give out of an empty bucket. You can’t serve others when your mind is sick. You can’t go where God wants to send you when you’re stuck in bed and eating saltine crackers with peanut butter for your third meal of the day.

Don’t belittle yourself for needing help. Take daily steps to care for yourself. Give yourself some love.

You deserve it.

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If you want to read more about ANTs, click here - I couldn’t find a link with all 17, but the ones listed are the most common.

If you have any questions or want to share your therapy experience with me (or you just want to say hi!), please don’t hesitate to reach out to me! All of my contact info is in the “contact” tab listed under “more.”

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