Grad school to become a therapist challenged me, but not so much in the ways that I’d hope. I assumed I’d learn new skills and tools for talking to people. Maybe find patterns of speech or hidden body movements that indicate certain emotions or maybe even learn about neural pathways creations and how to modify them. Of course, very little of that happened.
I already knew some of the “tricks of the trade” because I’d learned them as a client in Conversion Therapy. Seeing some of the outdated and abusive skills still used was beyond infuriating. Although, it was nice liberate some Freudian and Jungian skills which Conversion Therapy had misused.
I think the only tools of value that I gained came from a better understanding of feminism and the role of equity. I certainly gained little from our cultural sensitivity lessons except a common language regarding privilege and a deeper love for Muslim culture.
If there’s one thing I really really wish I’d known, about myself before going to grad school, it is that I need to let go of my hope that straight people will ever be able be good enough to teach me what I crave to know.
I don’t think straight people are qualified enough in the realm of trauma, torture, and general experience of rejection to be able to offer me anything of value. I don’t believe they’ve lived through enough hell, by default, to have ended up on the other side of that crucible knowing that they’ve had to forge for themselves a brand new person who is actually aware of which lies our society has fed them and which truths are independent of themselves.
This is why, when my grad school teachers or readings made a claim, unless it was qualified first by some kind of claim to prove relevance or recent experience, I rejected it by default.
I’m tired of people telling me what they “think” is right or to “trust the process”. I’m tired because I’m still cleaning the blood off from my own crosses that I’ve been nailed to by people who believed with “every fiber of their being” that what they were doing was the right thing.
I’m willing and excited to have my strongly held opinions proven wrong. I crave truth. I crave trust. But if that knowledge was not gained through equally powerful experiences that I’ve been through, they lack the stamina and heart and haven’t earned the right to enter into my coliseum.
