Therapy sucks. A lot of times, it’s less than no fun. But… it has been really good for me.

Starting grad school and having to do group work is bringing up some things from that time I spent more than a decade in a work environment that was abusive.

That was a long time ago, and I’m still trying to process some of it. I still need some help to manage the anxiety triggered by memories of that time.

It didn’t come out of nowhere. I grew up with the explicitly stated expectation that I would defer to the authority of adults general, men in particular. Even if/when they were wrong or had unhealthy/unrealistic expectations. The expectation was absolute.

And then I landed in a work situation with a supervisor who had some unresolved anger issues of their own, that they took out on young women around them. I was not the only (or even the preferred) target, but I ended up in the line of fire with some regularity.

Newsflash: human systems involve chaos. There’s no way around it. You might be the most organized person who ever walked the planet — you cannot plan for every eventuality. At some point, somewhere, someone is going to find a way to introduce the unexpected. It often happens when the stakes are high, it’s painful to resolve, and there might be explanations required after.

Living, for years, with the threat of being screamed at, having your work ethic or competence be questioned behind your back to your colleagues or supervisors, or fired, because you can’t exert absolute control over the chaos… leaves a mark.

Look. I went to art school; I can do critique, even if it’s hard to hear. I appreciate good editing. I understand that my way of doing things is, often, not the best or most efficient way (though I can be slow to accept that in some situations). I also expect that when I make a mistake there will be some accountability.

What I’m talking about is not any of these scenarios.

I’m talking about being yelled at about how incompetent you are, in front of your colleagues, by someone who is not in control of their emotional state, and having no recourse to respond because a) they’re your boss, and b) you don’t have any coping or mitigation skills for that kind of situation.

Back to now: this group project is operationally well defined; there are parts to the project we’re working on as we go, and deadlines we have to meet. My group has been amazing — we all seem to want to make sure that no one has to carry more than their fair share of the burden, so we’ve been working together, adding individual contributions that can be used or not, according to progress of the assignment, and meeting to discuss progress.

One of the challenges is that it involves both technology and concepts that are new to everyone in the group. Add to that the objectives/expectations/rubrics are kind of subjective… because of new technology/concepts and lack of experience, the expectations for the quality of the product should probably be pretty rudimentary… but nobody mentions expectations for use of the technology anywhere, so…?

Combine that set of circumstances with a history of unrealistic expectations and emotional abuse, and the what-ifs in your head crescendo until you (I) find yourself (myself) sitting in 30-degree weather on the back stoop trying to talk yourself (myself) down.

Healthy people seem to be able to right-size what we can accomplish under the circumstances and time constraints. I’ve been an unrelenting hot mess for the last few weeks. I haven’t felt that way in a really long time, and it was kind of frightening.

And that’s why therapy is important for me. I need help contextualizing my past experiences, because I wasn’t able to do it for myself at the time. And I didn’t know how to ask for help at the time — I just assumed that I was really bad at adulting. (Frankly, sometimes I’m surprised I survived that period of my life.)

Have a cute puppy taking a nap; it’s good for the soul.