"It's my therapy"
“It’s my therapy” she noted, as heading off on her increasingly frequent Target run.
“It’s cheaper than therapy” he commented, teeing off for another nine holes.
“It’s the only thing I do for myself” she mumbled as her venti-frappe-mocha-soy-a-chino (with light whip) came through the car window.
I got to wondering what each meant by “therapy.” It seems to be one of those words that has gained some social acceptance, but not in ways that are helpful. So I asked: “It calms me down” and “It helps me unwind” were the themes. "Taking off the edge” in any form is what psychologists call ‘narcotizing’ — the non-pill version of narcotics. Just like the pills, these events sate the pain without addressing the problem.
I’ve been to therapy. All kinds of therapy. Physical therapy is awful. It hurts a lot. Clinicians prescriptively bring healing by breaking down tissues in order to rebuild them. I did some physical therapy on my back one time. They hooked me up to a machine that looked like the winch on my buddy’s truck and handed me a button intended to stop the machine ‘in case it was too much.’ Any process that has an ‘oh shit!’ button is rife with potential for pain.
Psychotherapy isn’t fun either. I thought myself a smart man until my counselor starting asking questions. She artfully (and brusquely when needed) illustrates my lack of understanding of my own thoughts and feelings. I didn’t know I would question my own history as much as I do when I leave her. I was, after all, there when my history happened. Despite what my ego tells me, she, like the physical therapist, does her work to help me heal, exposing the pain in order to address it.
Is pain necessary in order for it to be therapy? I desperately hope not. Is it the exercising of experienced skills enacted on another? That sounds expensive. Does something have to be broken (a back or a heart) in order for it to be therapy? Maybe? I don’t know.
So I consulted the source of pre-Google knowledge: a dictionary. More specifically, a source that notes the etymology of a word (its history and source and evolution).
Therapy: 1846, "medical treatment of disease," from Modern Latin therapia, from Greek therapeia "curing, healing, service done to the sick; a waiting on, service," from therapeuein "to cure, treat medically," literally "attend, do service, take care of”
Or perhaps the more descriptive: therapeutic "pertaining to the healing of disease, 1640s, from Modern Latin therapeuticus "curing, healing," from Greek therapeutikos, from therapeutein "to cure, treat medically," primarily "do service, take care of, provide for," of unknown origin, related to therapon "attendant." Therapeutic was used from 1540s as a noun meaning "the branch of medicine concerned with treatment of disease." Related: Therapeutical (c. 1600).
So here’s what I take from these definitions:
1. Therapy is intended to heal, as in address head on. A frappucino doesn’t heal, it comforts.
2. Therapy addresses a hurt. The hurt may be known and as concrete as in rehabilitating a broken ankle or it may be something that won’t show in an x-ray. Either way, therapy is designed to address a pain. Those cute new shoes don’t address a hurt, they narcotize.
3. There’s something clinical about therapy: something prescriptive by an expert that knows the hurt and the healing. Nine more holes won’t address the relationship issues, it delays them.
Therapy is awful. And fantastic. Finding those skilled in helping provide language to the pain, articulate its source and work with me to heal — truly heal — the hurt is a gift. Find them.