I'm a Licensed Professional Counselor and Nationally Certified Counselor, and the people who tend to find their way to my therapy room have almost always experienced some version of what you just read. Different details, same thread. Emotional neglect, through and through — the kind that doesn't always have a name until someone finally gives it one in a room where it's safe to say it out loud.

The way I show up in therapy is the same way MHM was fashioned after. I believe in self-disclosure. I believe that when a client knows you've sat in something similar, it changes everything about the room. So I tell them upfront — I use profanity, I use humor, and I'm going to show up as my actual self, not some polished, professionally acceptable version of myself that's easier to look at but less useful to actually be in front of. My clients' growth reflects that this works, and it is some of the most fulfilling work I've ever done.

I also have my own therapist. Because I am still human, still on my own healing journey, and still learning things about myself that surprise me. I didn't become a psychotherapist despite my story. I became one because of it — because of the little girl who just needed someone to say your feelings make sense, you are not too much, and you are allowed to be here. I'm not writing from the other side of healed. I'm writing from the middle of it, and I built MHM so none of us have to do that part alone.