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I am Starting Therapy Today and I Really Don’t Want To

But want and need are two different things. And I need this.

LaToya Baldwin Clark
3 min readApr 5, 2021
Very tall building with many windows and fore escapes and a sign on the side of the building that says, “How are you really?”
https://unsplash.com/photos/nJupV3AOP-U

As I write this, tears are on the verge of spilling over already puffy eyes. The clench in my stomach and pain in my back are making it hard to think. I’m trying to do busy work — formatting a paper, researching for an infographic, writing this — to distract me from when, in a few hours, I start the process of getting better. I start therapy. Again.

I want to get better. I want to have bipolar II disorder but not let it have me. I want to be able to control it, to weather it.

Getting better requires confronting the worst. The feelings of failure. The self-loathing. The guilt of believing that you are not what the people around you need you to be. The bad habits that you aren’t sure you are ready to quit. The “you are a bad mother/partner/employee with bad habits and who says they don’t want to break bad habits.” Just bad.

When you start therapy, you often start with your story — your version of the five Ws. Who are you? (I don’t know.) What happened to you? (All the things.) Where did you get those ideas? (All the places.) Why start therapy now? (Why not?) When did you know you needed to be…

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LaToya Baldwin Clark
LaToya Baldwin Clark

Written by LaToya Baldwin Clark

Law professor. Living with Bipolar. Teach and write about the law of educational inequality, property and the family. Mom of 3. All opinions my own.

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