"The day I made my therapist cry."

She was my third therapist in two months.

I entered therapy last year in an attempt to do a bit of mental housekeeping ahead of my 40th birthday.

I was really excited to begin, it was one of those things I’d always planned to start but never got around to it.

Therapy was first recommended to me when I was 19, shortly after I had been robbed at my parent’s corner store. I was incredibly traumatised by the event. A clean-cut young man had come in and attempted to take our cash register off the counter. My mum started struggling with him and then an unkempt woman tried to stab my mum to make her let go.

They were arrested and jailed and as part of the victim’s compensation program my mum, brother, father and I were all interviewed. I was deemed the most upset and in need of help. I was awarded $10,000 to be used for therapy to help me recover.

My dad advised me to use the money to pay off my car.

“You don’t need therapy. I’ve been robbed fifteen times and I’m okay.”

Hey Dad? I’m not okay.

So I did what I was told and I never got therapy. I quickly developed Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and became convinced that anyone could die at any moment. Every time the phone rang I was convinced someone had died. I self-healed, sort of. Anyone who has met me would argue that I am still waiting for everyone to die.

That was just one of the reasons I wanted therapy.

There were lots of other reasons I felt I needed help and due to privacy concerns for family members I am unable to share those reasons. All families have their issues. I had mine.

I love my family so much, I just wanted to be a mentally healthier version of myself.

Added to the hold up and the family stuff was the bankruptcy eight years earlier that I hadn’t fully dealt with, the stress of my son’s food allergies and then six months before I turned 40, my son was diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

I thought I was just tired as I lay in bed for two week’s straight, getting up only to take the kids to school and feed them dinner. I soon realised that my plans to do some mental housekeeping, using therapy, needed to be urgently brought forward.

My new, excellent GP put me on medication and referred me to the first of four therapists. The first therapist was just a little too young, and a little too much like all of my friends.

We got along like a house on fire and after blurting out all my problems during our first session our relationship quickly became more like a coffee catch-up. I became incapable of telling her all of my deep and darkest thoughts.

I had to find somebody else.

Enter, The Cryer.

She came highly recommended and when I met her I thought, “Maybe you’ll be the one to help me heal. I can’t go through one more day feeling like this. Help me, fix me.”

I was mid-way through describing my childhood when she started sobbing.

I couldn’t believe my eyes. As she sad there, blubbing, wiping away tears I felt angry. I said, “Why the fuck are you crying?”

She said, “I’m loving you. I’m crying for you.”

I stood up, thanked her for her time, paid her!!!! and then left and never returned.

Why the hell was she crying? I had told her all of my problems, laid myself bare, begged for help, told her I don’t cope with feelings and emotions well and she decided to start crying? Was it a test?

Did she cry deliberately in order to encourage me to confront my discomfort at other people’s feelings? Was she trying to get me to cry as well, to mourn the loss of the childhood I should have had?

“I’ll never chase you,” she has said when I made my first appointment. “If it doesn’t work out and you no longer want to attend, that’s your choice. Therapy is voluntary. It’s up to you to continue to attend.”

But chase me she did. For the next two weeks I was bombarded with emails and phone calls and text messages suggesting I book in another session. No thanks.

Enter my third therapist.

By this stage I was a little scarred by the cost and confronting nature of therapy, not to mention crappy therapists, to put myself out there again. I felt disappointed, vulnerable, fragile. I was reading an article online talking about a therapy app that had just been launched called TalkSpace. I signed up.

For the next few months I corresponded with two different therapists via an instant-messenger-style-app that allowed me to talk whenever I wanted to talk for a fraction of the cost. It saved me. I can’t recommend it highly enough.

I’m still looking for a really good therapist, someone I can meet up with once a week to keep me on track, to keep my fears in balance and my anxiety in perspective.

I’ve come to accept I am someone who will always need help. I spent almost 40 years on my own, guarding my fears, managing my thoughts, and it all weighed me down, down, down until I just couldn’t do it anymore.

Therapy is like dating – you have to find someone you have chemistry with, someone who is right for you. My first therapist was a little too right. There was too much chemistry. The second was a crying. The third and fourth were excellent, but they were only words on a screen.

I’m ready to put myself out there again and search for someone knowledgeable and soothing who will coax out of me the very best version of myself.

No crying required.

If you know someone dealing with anxiety or other mental health issues please contact Lifeline on 13 11 14.