I have sat on a couch in many tiny stuffy rooms with a person paid to listen to my problems. I still do this, except now I sit at home and talk to this person through a computer screen. It’s a dream come true for depressed people like myself who can finally wear their pajamas to therapy without cause for alarm. I am fairly certain that our therapists are getting away with wearing their pajamas, too. But, I am pretty sure no one else but me would admit that they are also secretly caressing their 37-year old baby blanket instead of the fidget toys that used to be laid out in the actual office.
I feel that everyone should have a therapist. I know thatâs not possible for many reasons, but I still believe it. My favorite psychologist I ever had in a long line of Phds, Psy.ds, LMHCs, MSWs, etc. since my teenage years wouldnât like me saying thatâŠthatâŠword. SHOULD. Oops.
She noticed a pattern of mine. I said should a LOT. She started telling me âthere are no shoulds or shouldnâts, there just IS.â When I was âshoulding,â I was judging myself and that was not helping with anything. Iâd either do something or not, but using the âSâ word leads to guilt and shame, especially when I wasnât able (or the world wasnât ready) to turn my shoulds into reality.
For example, I used to sit on her couch and say âI should exercise more.â Me saying this didnât get me to go to a gym or get outside.
When this therapist had to stop working with clients in her private practice due to an accident, her wise words were often repeated in my mind: âthere are no shoulds!â It was kind of like me asking âWhat Would Jesus Do? âą.â Or, the less popular choice, âWhat Would Buddha Do? (WWBD?)â
So, there I was, without a therapist for the first time since I was 15. And what did I do? I impulsive decided to start running. Running! A thing I thought I couldnât, wouldnât, shouldnât doâŠever. I replaced her couch with an app called, yup, Couch to 5K.
Iâve noticed a lot of therapists like to encourage looking to the past to examine why things are the way they are now. It doesnât really make that much sense to me but letâs look at the past anyhow. Cue the dreamy wavy sitcom music and fade the screen into a flashback scene. Kids are gathering at the track during the presidential fitness testing month. The running test… *Shudder*
It was always the coldest day of the year. When theyâd set us free on the track, Iâd just take off, running as fast as possible until I could taste blood in my lungs. Probably at a pace of like, a six minute mile for the first lap. But after that one, there were three more laps to go! Forty or so minutes later, I was done. Done, and full of hate for myself, everyone else who passed me, and our gym teachers whom I apparently inconvenienced by taking so long.
Shout out to all the P.E. teachers out there who actually cared to teach their students to enjoy exercise safely from a young age. I fully believe I could have learned if they didnât give up on me so easily. Everyone is athletic in some way, even if we are a diamond in the rough, like Aladdin.
The âcoaches'” unkind words and disdainful looks made me write myself off and abandon exercise altogether. Unlike the wise words of my therapist, every time I thought of running, the voices of my gym teachers would taunt me. Iâd tell myself all the reasons I would NEVER be able to. If running meant the difference between arriving five minutes late or on time to something very important, Iâd just have to be late. If I was being chased by a person with a knife, or a zombie, I was sure Iâd choose death. Â

So, you can imagine my surprise when I started actually running. It felt gratifying and amazing. I often cried tears of joy while on a run, because I thought it wouldnât ever happen. The wouldnâts are the evil step sisters of the shouldnâts. Their mother, the Couldnâts is the evil stepmother in this twisted fairy tale.
Just when I thought I had outrun the zombies and evil step-people chasing me after I was finally fitted with the perfect glass sneaker and won over the prince (whoever that was?), they got louder and angrier that I achieved something I thought was once impossible. They got more demanding and mean. I was running so fast and far that I could no longer hear my therapist’s voice cheering me on (the fairy godmother in this story). My positive thinking eventually got replaced in my consciousness with more shoulds. And also coulds. And woulds.

Could interval training help me learn to run?
Could I even run a 5k?Â
Would running another 5k help me realize that running 7 minutes a mile in the first mile of a race was a bad idea?
Would I be able to run a half marathon even though I am more built for a 50-yard dash, or some other kind of short sprint?
Should I run 13.1 miles when I woke up the morning of the race with pain and swelling in my legs?
Should I stop running and just walk the rest of the half marathon that just so happened to be on the hottest day of the year?

I said yes to each of these questions and yes was mostly the wrong answer here. I hurt myself pretty badly after my half marathon, and eventually had to abandon running. It wasnât that I shouldnât, couldnât or wouldnât run. If I wanted to heal, I HAD to stop.
This caused me a lot of grief. I had learned to love running. I would do so to feel free, solve problems, find creative ideas, write college essays and papers in my head. I would run in all weather, snow and rain or intense heat did not stop me! (Those were actually my favorite times to run). But, my back and leg pain and immobility did stop me.

I wanted everything to be different. I should have swallowed a magic bean to regenerate my legs when I noticed pain. I could have drank a potion that allowed me to run and jump so fast that I could stay at the front of the pack instead of learning how to pace myself. I should have just moved into fairy tale land where there is no pain at the end of the story.
My therapist hated modern fairy tales, as she believes they give children unrealistic expectations. Honestly, maybe the people popularizing and selling these fairy tales should be responsible for my co-pays. These stories never tell the story after the happily ever after. The parts where the heroes still have to deal with obstacles, failure, or unhappiness. They don’t show Cinderella trying to figure out a humane way to move the mice out of her castle when they began to cause problems. We don’t see Aladdin struggling with his self-image when he grows older and is stressing out over his gray hairs and receding hairline. We don’t see Snow White learning how to eat apples again without anxiety, or Elsa sitting in front of a Sun lamp to help her seasonal depression. Those of us who don’t live in fairy tale land can’t just find someone to wave a magic wand, say âBippitty Boppity Booâ, and POOF! make our obstacles and struggles disappear. Although, I *wish* we could…

In my next blog entry, I will talk more about wishing, so stay tuned!