How My Mindset Shifted in the Chair (Growth and Transformation)
Reflections from a Year in Therapy
I was incredibly reluctant to go to therapy at first. My heart kept screaming a definitive “NO.” Usually, I am the kind of person who never accepts or rejects a thought without logic, but this time, my mind was strangely silent. It was my heart that held the conviction, repeating a single, quiet promise. “If you choose this, you won’t have to keep living the same way.”
A shiver went down my spine just thinking about it. Up until then, I had simply been ticking off the boxes of what makes a “perfect life” according to society and my upbringing. Now, I had to rethink everything I had learned over the past 27 years. In hindsight, it was obvious where that reluctance was coming from.
“It is our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”
~Albus Dumbledore
I remember walking into my first session, hesitating outside the door, but acutely aware that my life, as it was, wasn’t working.
“What do you want to achieve from these sessions, Hamna?” my therapist asked.
Hearing my name finally pulled me out of my head.
“I… I am just existing,” I said. “I want to live.”
That was all I said, and it changed my life.
Everything I Thought I Knew About Myself Was Wrong
Therapy taught me that my voice was buried under a pile of “lethal lies” — the ones I told others to keep the peace and the ones I told myself to stay safe.
My safe space was my limitation
For a long time, I lived in a castle inside my head. Whenever life got loud or a situation felt too heavy, I would retreat to it and hide. I would watch the shadows pass by the windows — those looming, terrifying shapes of reality — and wait… for the “right time,” the “right person,” or the perfect savior to walk through the gate and pull me out to how to face my life. I wasn’t waiting for a savior. I was waiting for my own permission to exist.
Performance of strength was not the presence of being
I always thought I was strong and totally unshakeable because, despite all the inconveniences and nuances in my life, I would always come out smiling. However, that was only on the outside. My anxiety levels and my dependence on the external world were increasing day by day. It was a clear indication that something didn’t fit, and that “something” was my belief system.
I used to think being strong meant being a stone — never feeling, never breaking. We often confuse the two. Now I know that strength does not equal endurance. Staying in a situation that destroys you isn’t “strong.” It’s just exhausting.
True strength is the ability to feel the hurt, sit with the sadness, and work through it anyway. It is the courage to be vulnerable and the wisdom to know that feeling is living.
And Other Things No One Tells You About Healing
After a year in the chair, I have realized that everything I thought I knew about myself was wrong. Healing didn’t come from a savior. It came from realizing that the castle was a cage, and I held the key. We spend a lifetime recreating the situations we lived through in the first seven years of our lives. We don’t do this because we like the pain. We do it because it is familiar. We cling to old patterns and generational curses not because they define us, but because letting go feels like stepping into a void.
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I spent so much energy trying to control the world around me, only to realize that control is an illusion. Here is the truth: the “chair” forces you to face ‘Change is the only permanent thing.’ We fear pain, and we fear change, but if we want it to be different this time, then they are the only tools powerful enough for transformation. There are some hard pills you have to swallow when you are committed to healing:
Support systems must be internal first
If you aren’t standing on your own foundation, you will always be leaning on someone else’s.
Empathy is not weakness
Being kind and empathetic doesn’t make you “stupid.” It makes you human.
What you see in others is exactly who you are
Our judgments of others are often just mirrors of our own unhealed parts. The same is true for the best that we see in others.
Lying to yourself is lethal
It’s the slowest way to die while you are still breathing.
You don’t harm yourself to take revenge on others
Self-sabotage is a weapon that only has one target: you.
Love means letting go
Sometimes, the most loving thing you can do for yourself and another is to release the grip.
There is no “Aha!” moment that solves everything forever
Patterns don’t go away. They just get easier to recognize. You aren’t going to walk out of that therapy room happy every day. In fact, most days, you will walk out tired, raw, and confused. But you will walk out as a person who understands that you are your choices, not your situations. You cannot change others, but you can choose differently for yourself.
Be kind to yourself first, and the rest will follow
If a situation, a person, or a version of yourself feels like “a great deal” to handle, then it is. Trust your intuition. You are allowed to outgrow things. You are allowed to not have the answers right now.
If I could summarize a year of growth and transformation into a manifesto, it would look like this:
→ Rule 1: Sometimes being “selfish” is the only way to survive.
→ Rule 2: Perfection is a myth. We are allowed to make mistakes.
→ Rule 3: Start from scratch. Starting over is not failure. It is a fresh canvas.
→ Rule 4: Emotions are indicators. They aren’t the enemy. They are the dashboard of your soul. So never push them away.
The Lasting Shift
I learned to stop waiting for a perfect moment to be happy and to understand that negative self-talk is the real enemy. It is your own job to heal yourself. You cannot change others. You can only choose differently for yourself. I learned that it’s okay to be angry, it’s okay to be sad, and it’s okay to not know all the answers right then and there.
I am finally allowed to outgrow the things that no longer serve me. I am not my situations. I am my choices. And today, I choose me.
P.S. Please bear with me because I am still growing.
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