The Highly Romanticised Idea of the Therapist Friend

I remember writing this email to a band that I adore. They had this venture where they got their fans to discuss their mental health. When I was composing this, all I wanted was a non-judgmental place to just vent. I never got around to sending them the email, which remained in my drafts for a long time; it just had to come out.

"This feels weird. To register and talk about it feels weird. Which as a whole is again strange because I'm a psychology student who is constantly learning about "talking things out". It is something I end up telling all my friends. But being the hypocrite that I am, I don't. When you're in the habit of aiding others to connect with their emotional self, you start to sideline yours. But what happens when you sideline yours for too long is that it makes itself known. Major attention-seeker things, I tell you. This call for help from inside was long overdue. Because it's ignored for too long, it makes itself known, so much so that it comes and goes in waves of self-realisation and breakdowns in places you do not want to break down. I'm talking metros and bus stations and malls and college cafes. It has gotten to a point where I'm always at risk for a breakdown.

The point of this rant was to let the reader understand that it is not okay to ignore yourself. While tending to another person is fantastic, it's exhausting to care for another person without watching for yourself. Trust me, I've learned that the hard way. The sheer exhaustion and the energy that goes into taking care of another person seems like too much work when you have your own mountain to climb.

As I work on framing this email in a quaint cafe near my college, I think about how emotionally drained I am and how it has also taken a toll on my physical health. Becoming sick and having a weak immune system has become a part of the parcel. It feels like a loud cry of help whenever I'm at home, ill, and popping a pill or two for a fast recovery. With the pandemic, it has become hard to justify why you're becoming ill to the world. While the idea of the "therapist friend" has become heavily romanticised, it is also pretty harmful as venting to the same set of people that poured their hearts out to you brings in a feeling of dread and guilt, which further decapacitates them. This endless vicious circle of feeling dreadful has repercussions the human mind cannot wrap its head around.

This is not a cry for help. It really isn't. This is a temporary fix to calm the raging fire in my mind. I cannot stop being a shoulder for my friends. The saviour complex that dominates my personality is far too high that if the idea of boundaries didn't exist, I'd fix their lives for them. There was a point in time I actually did that, and the result of that ended up almost losing a friend I hold very close to my heart.

Good luck if you are trying to find a point within this rant because there isn't one.

Happy Reading,

Sarah

*end of email*