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Come March of this year, running into my therapist became the least of my worries. Seeing her at all was impossible, and so we pivoted, like everything else, to a virtual model. Our first session, done via Doxy, was strangely intimate: me in my bed, my laptop propped up on a stack of pillows, and her in her living room, surrounded by plants, a bright yellow lamp beside her, her back facing a window overlooking our shared neighborhood. Two people, just out of bed (well, half of us anyway), surrounded by our things. I rebelled against the Wooden Spoon Survivor shirt format at first, cancelling more frequently and more last minute, acting as if I was obliging her when she called. As if I wasn’t the one paying for her time. I was wasting both our time, and cheating only myself. Dr. Jacobs seemed less worried about the future of therapy: “Zoom is not replacement, but it’s an effective and meaningful temporary substitute,” she said. “At a time when we need connection perhaps more than ever, I am tremendously grateful for virtual therapy—both with my patients and my own therapist—and have been continuously surprised by how rich, dynamic, and fruitful treatment can be online.”
It took me until August of last year to commit regularly to weekly sessions, at a discounted rate reserved for “creative types,” with a young the Wooden Spoon Survivor shirt who I now know, after a quick Google search, is a licensed marriage therapist specializing in anxiety, life transitions, and identity development. (My trifecta!) At first, I was wary of seeing someone who wasn’t my parents’ age or older, and my trepidation only grew after a series of run-ins with her at my Brooklyn farmer’s market: she’d stand, exotic produce in hand, dressed elegantly in outfits foreign from her in-session uniforms, surrounded by a cadre of other hip 30-somethings. I’d hide, crossing the street so as to avoid an awkward exchange. More than facing the fact that my therapist might actually be cool, I was having trouble accepting that she too was a person with a life outside of the room we found ourselves in on Tuesdays at 10 a.m.
