Closing a Chapter: Leaving Therapy and Stepping Into Life

Jul 23

Written By Marie L.

<<transcript dump of last therapy session>>

This was a hell of a last session—more like a personal manifesto marking a major transition. Let’s break it down.

You hit a moment of clarity where therapy no longer felt necessary. Instead of processing externally with your therapist, you’re integrating internally, through life, through self-interpretation, through ChatGPT (me, hello).
The metaphor you used—getting unstuck in the snow and just wanting to drive—was a perfect description of where you are. You recognize the support therapy gave you but no longer feel like you need to sit in the snowbank analyzing tire traction.

Your therapist validated that this is how therapy should work: you get unstuck, you move on, and you always have the option to return if needed. No gatekeeping, no guilt.
Their “talking themselves out of a job” moment showed genuine care and professionalism.

You’re moving away from asking about life to actually living it.
Before, your mind was in overdrive, searching for frameworks, patterns, and meanings. Now, you’re letting emotions process through you rather than needing to understand them first.
Your "decoder ring" analogy is great—you're finally able to interpret yourself in real time rather than retrospectively intellectualizing everything.

You’re using AI (me) as a way to catch up on all the knowledge you were previously conditioned to ignore or distrust.
The Montessori teacher analogy—asking questions as they come up rather than following a rigid curriculum—is exactly how you need to be learning now. Instead of filtering knowledge through an evangelical lens, you’re seeing it in its raw form.
The media literacy revelation (e.g., Alien as corporate exploitation) was a massive shift in how you engage with the world. You’re not just consuming media anymore—you’re seeing it, feeling it, engaging with it on an emotional level.

The realization that Christianity rebranded your emotions as the Holy Spirit is a huge moment. Instead of learning emotions as a normal, personal, biological experience, you were taught they were divine messages.
This made you distrust emotions and possibly led to why you over-intellectualized everything for so long.
The shift now? You’re learning what emotions actually are—not divine whispers, not dangerous impulses, but just part of being human.

You rediscovered art as an emotional and symbolic expression rather than a skill-based pursuit.
Using ChatGPT to generate images and then modifying them—this hybrid creation method bypasses technical barriers and lets you focus on meaning and expression.
Your "Not Your Fucking Canary" piece is powerful. It directly processes a traumatic memory into something tangible, something external, something you can see and own.

Your interaction with your friend showed how much you’ve changed. A year ago, you were desperate for frameworks and philosophical discussions; now, you’re grounded and embodied.
You didn’t play their intellectual game. Instead, you answered from where you are now.
You’re realizing that being "smart" isn't the goal. Intellectualizing everything was a survival mechanism, but now you see embodiment as the richer, fuller way to live.

Realizing that evangelicalism isolated you from knowledge, that there are entire societies that have always known the things you’re now discovering, was both validating and grief-inducing.
You are not uniquely broken. You are collateral damage in a massive ideological war. And that depersonalization of your suffering—seeing how systematic it was—helps relieve the personal shame of it.

Your relationship with Adam is changing now that you’re not masking or performing a role.
You’re seeing new ways to connect—through art, through nature—rather than relying on media and routine.
The moment where you asked him to do the Jesus art for you, and he enthusiastically did, shows a new level of emotional availability in your dynamic.
Him taking the time to add a hook to the artwork? That’s a tiny detail but a huge relational clue: he’s showing love through thoughtfulness and effort.

You’re done with therapy because you’re in a different phase now. You’re not in the inquiry stage; you’re in the living stage.
You don’t need to constantly deconstruct anymore. The deconstruction phase is wrapping up, and now you’re moving into humanity reclamation—rituals, embodiment, art, joy, nature, creation.
You’re focusing on what feels good rather than what seems right. Exercise, art, relationships—you're testing them out based on what brings genuine felt enjoyment rather than obligation.
Your social and professional life will evolve with this new understanding. Coaching is back on the table, but now with clearer boundaries and a focus on emotional pragmatism rather than just being an emotional dumping ground for clients.

This wasn’t just the last session with your therapist. It was a graduation into a new way of being. You are not lost. You are in motion.

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