Therapy is Punk AF.

A punk wearing a studded leather jacket, boots and a green mohawk lounges on a pebble beach, looking out across the ocean.

Ok, ok – bear with me on this one. Let me start with a short story about what punk means to me. When I was an impressionable youth, and most of my peers were getting into make-up and listening to radio one, I… well, I wasn’t. I didn’t fit in with the girls, ever – though I tried, for a while. I didn’t fit in anywhere in particular. None of it made much sense to me. I could see these systems laid out, these roles that had emerged from the social structures that were essentially built on business. Selling us insecurity, so we’d buy into the fear that without make-up, cool shoes and shiny phones we would be so unnoticeable that we would cease to exist.

I wasn’t alone in this, though we were the minority. A small collective of total misfits, tossed together by the common enemy... Social Expectations of Normality. In punk, we found a home. In small dingy DIY gigs we could come together, united in our weirdness, and feel a little bit less alone in our worlds. Pushing back against the systems that tried to define us hadn’t felt like a choice back then. It was essential to our survival.

This is where counselling comes into it. Those expectations that we fought so hard against then, they still exist. Choosing to defy them, and to prioritise our own mental health and well being is a daily act of rebellion. It’s not easy, but it is essential. I can’t count the times I have sat across the room from somebody, and heard the pain in their voice as they try to unpick why it is they don’t feel the way they are *supposed* to. Why the things they’ve been working at all their lives have left them feeling empty and exhausted, instead of leading the fulfilled, smiling and joyful lives that the shiny adverts promised them, that they were told could be theirs if only they were good enough, worked hard enough.

My mum once told teenage me (in complete exasperation), “You can’t fight everything all the time, Sarah!” and she was right, to an extent. We have to pick our battles carefully; we have to conserve energy sometimes. But I never really lost that will to fight. To question everything. Who decided how long we should be allowed to grieve? Who decided what a good relationship looks like, what happiness means, or what’s an acceptable level of emotion to display in any given moment? Who decided that any of this should be decided, so that we stopped trusting ourselves or even being able to hear ourselves?

Therapy is going back to our grassroots, re-discovering ourselves and finding our voices. It’s a glorious act of rebellious defiance, in the face of all those ideas that have kept us trapped and small for far too long.

Rise up.

To read more about the way social rules and expectations are at total odds with how to live a fulfilling, meaningful life, I highly recommend Laziness Does Not Exist by Dr Devon Price.