Mentally
Learning How to Breathe Again
Purging the Toxins Out of My Mind & Finding Joy Again
May 20, 2019
When you are finding it hard to take your next breath, you have to find a way to move forward and breathe again. Finding the RIGHT therapist was the next move for me.
Finding the Right Therapist
Finding the right therapist is a process and it is not an easy process. You should meet and talk with them to get a feel for their methods and to see if they are the right fit for you. If you can find the right therapist the first time around then you are blessed! I talked with a few therapist before I found the right person. They were all very nice people, but I prayed for God to show me the right one. I was very meticulous, so I also had a few criteria’s that I was looking for in a therapist.
I needed someone objective who could listen.
I needed someone who would teach practical solutions and help me clear my head.
I needed someone to help me find my courage to fight and not to fear going forward with my life.
I needed someone to help me find my way back to my source of power.
I needed someone who would respect my belief system.
I needed someone to help me pick up the shattered and fracture pieces of what was left of my life.
A faithful God believing, Bible believing Christian.
“Listen to advice and accept discipline, at the end you will be counted among the wise. Many are the plans in a person’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails.” (Proverbs 19:20-21)
My faith is very important to me, so I know I needed a therapist I could learn to trust, who was like-minded and has a similar belief system as I do. I knew that God was the source and power of my strength, but the grief and pain in my mind was not allowing me to connect. It is as if you know your cell phone is dying and you need to find a charger for your brand of phone. However, you cannot use any charger, you have to find the right charger for your phone, or it is not going to work. This is why I was having such a hard time dealing with my struggles in my life. I was plugging in to grief, pain, misery, and to an enemy that not only did not care about me but also hated me with every ounce of his being! Who is the source nothing but calamity, chaos, and confusion!
I needed to reconnect to the source of my strength.
I needed to reconnect to the Lord.
What I was not going to do was:
I was NOT going to entertain anyone that went against the word of God.
I was NOT going to entertain anyone that went against my belief in Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior.
I was NOT going to entertain anyone that challenged my faith as a believer.
I was not going to compromise or settle because I knew that my soul would not be satisfied until I had gotten my connection to God back.
Specializes in grief therapy and the processes of grief
“The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.” (Psalm 34:18)
How can a therapist give me the proper tool to deal with my grief without having the proper training in grief therapy? My girls and I were deeply grieving and dealing with anxiety regarding our future. I was dealing with depression and suicidal thoughts. We were broken hearted and our spirits were crushed. We needed someone who was going to be able to deal with every spectrum of our grieving process. In my own research, as I looked for a therapist I noticed many standards that classified grief. According to Psych Central, there are five stages of grief:
Denial and isolation
Anger
Bargaining
Depression
Acceptance
“People who are grieving do not necessarily go through the stages in the same order or experience all of them.” (Psych Central)
However, I think that I more related to the article from Proactive Change, which stated, “This is not a mechanistic model — the stages do not occur the same way for all people; they can last very little time, or a lot of time; and they can be inter-related.” (Proactive Change) These are the seven stages of grief that they list:
Shock or Disbelief
Denial
Anger
Bargaining
Guilt
Depression
Acceptance and Hope
I know that some people do not hit all the stages of grief but I know that I went/going through them all and not in this order.
I will go into my experience with this later but this site gives you the breakdown of each stage if you want to read more.
https://proactivechange.com/stress/grief-stages.htm
https://www.betterhelp.com/advice/grief/understanding-the-stages-of-grief/
My therapist Dr. Jacqueline Pfeiffer has been helping my daughters and myself on all these aspects of this grief journey/process and it has changed my life.
My daughters HAD to be comfortable with the therapist as well
It was important for the continuity of our care that my girls saw the same therapist. She does not discuss our issues with the other, but she use our sessions to help us as a family unit. That is why I needed for each of them to see the therapist as well and get their input and their thoughts. God placed an awesome therapist in our lives. We all liked her and seemed to open up to her easily. It is very important for me to pray for God to send me the right therapist. If you cannot open up to your therapist about what is going on in your head or be able to tell them your deepest darkest secrets, then you are wasting theirs and your time. Therapy only works if you put your all into the sessions.
My daughters were dealing with their own set of issues and they needed someone other than mom to talk about what they were going through. I lost my husband but my daughters lost their Daddy. They will have to deal with the fact that he will not be available for all of their firsts that will continue happened in their lives. This is something that they could not nor could I navigate on our own. We needed help and sound advice on how we could take the next steps to the new chapter of our life.
All those stages of grief we experienced and we still experience are the steps we need to take toward our healing process. We took a giant leap of faith in trusting someone, a stranger at first, with the sanity of our minds, and the fragile contents of what was left our hearts.
Once all the key elements were in order and in place, we were able to go forward with our healing and rejuvenation process.
Blessing in the Storm 