There was one question my new therapist asked me that I couldn’t even begin to answer:

“What do you want or hope to get out of therapy?”

I sat there, completely blank. I couldn’t find the words. I couldn’t even begin to sort through my thoughts to come up with an answer. And the more I think about it, the more I realize that this isn’t just something that happens in therapy. It happens in everyday life, too.

When someone asks me a seemingly simple question like “What do you want to eat?” “What would you like to do today?” or even “What do you want?” I find myself going completely blank.

It isn’t necessarily that I don’t have preferences. It isn’t that I don’t have thoughts, opinions, or things I would like to do. Somewhere inside me, those things might exist. The problem is that I struggle to recognize them, trust them, and feel comfortable enough to express them out loud.

Instead, I automatically respond with, “I don’t know,” or “Whatever you want.” Sometimes I say it because I genuinely cannot come up with an answer in the moment. Other times, I think it’s because choosing something for myself feels strangely uncomfortable. It feels easier to let someone else decide than to risk making the wrong choice, disappointing someone, or having to defend what I want.

The frustrating part is that I know I have thoughts. I know I have opinions. But when someone puts me on the spot and asks me to express them, my mind seems to shut down. I can’t access what I’m thinking or feeling quickly enough to put it into words. It’s as if the question creates a wall between what might be happening inside me and my ability to communicate it.

Hey, maybe this is the first real trauma-related issue I can begin to explore with my new therapist. To talk to her about my inability to give my opinion, my difficulty in expressing myself, and my struggle to say no without feeling uncomfortable, guilty, or afraid of how someone might react.

Maybe, somewhere along the way, I learned that what I wanted wasn’t as important as what everyone else wanted. Maybe I learned to pay attention to other people’s moods, expectations, and needs before I ever stopped to consider my own. Maybe I became so accustomed to adjusting myself to make other people comfortable that I lost touch with what actually makes me comfortable.

I should get paid for self-therapizing myself.

I’ve taken enough psychology classes in college to understand that patterns like these can develop in response to trauma and difficult experiences. Understanding the psychology behind something, however, doesn’t necessarily mean I know how to change it. I can recognize a pattern intellectually and still find myself repeating it before I even realize what I’m doing.

Whatever the reasons, I may have learned to become so focused on understanding everyone else that I stopped asking myself the same questions.

What do I feel?

What do I actually want?

And perhaps the hardest question of all:

What if what I want is different from what someone else wants?

I don’t know if I ever consciously decided that my needs should come second. Maybe it happened gradually, through experiences that taught me which responses felt safer and which ones felt risky. Maybe it became a habit before I even understood what I was doing. Eventually, putting other people first may have become so automatic that I stopped recognizing it as a choice.

Now, when someone asks me what I want, I don’t always know how to answer. Not because I’m an empty person without preferences, but because I may have spent so much time looking outward that I haven’t learned how to look inward with the same attention.

Hmm, I’m starting to panic. Should I start with this as the first thing to talk about? What if she wants to know any of my bigger traumas first? Those are a doozy. Should I just let her take the wheel and go from there? I know I should bring my thoughts up as well. But to go in and start with the big traumas may be a bit much. A bit much for me, maybe. For her? I’m sure she is used to it. Most people would probably start with their biggest, most pressing trauma. Because that would be the first thing that is bogging down their mind. Maybe I should see how things go during our first session. I should tell her how I feel, of course. But I’d like to start slowly too. And it isn’t as if she doesn’t know my traumas. I mean, I do have to tell her, but I know she has notes on me. Not that I think she would read them all. Probably just skim through them. Pick out important parts. That’s what I’d do. But that’s just me.

I won’t be able to go to the job fair on Tuesday because Alex has fingerprinting to be done at his new job. At least he thinks he has a new job. I don’t know why he isn’t confident about that. But I don’t have anyone to take me to the job fair. That’s alright. I will still be looking for jobs. But it is kind of a bummer.

We are having orange chicken for dinner tonight. Usually, when we have orange chicken, Karissa will make dinner. But she has a lot of homework to do. So I’m going to be making dinner tonight. I don’t mind. Orange chicken is easy. I’m not sure if we have any veggies. I will have to take a look.

I finally found an audiobook from the library that I can listen to right now that isn’t on hold. It’s a historical fiction, The Four Winds. The problem is the library only gives me the option to play it on the Libby app or listen to it in a browser. I can’t put it on my Kindle to listen to. I want to listen to it on my Kindle and try out their audio feature. Do I have to buy a book?! Maybe I will try that. Not now. But later.

Um, something happened. I was searching the Kindle store, and I was looking at the book, The First Witch of Boston. It’s a historical fiction about the first woman charged with witchcraft. Well, it’s .49 cents, and I thought, ok. So I clicked on the link, thinking that it would take me to a window where I could put in my card information. Well, it didn’t do that. And I have the book. So, how was it paid? I must research this now.

Well, my bank account wasn’t used. I texted Tommy since I’m part of the family plan on Kindle to see if he has any idea how the book was paid for. Hmm, he said maybe I have some digital credit. I don’t have a receipt for the book. It just popped up on my Kindle. It’s an ebook, though. The audio was too much. But the ebook was more affordable at .49 cents.

But that was just so weird. Ok. The rice for dinner has been started. I’m going to read The First Witch of Boston and make some orange chicken.