I once went to a Christian counselor. I was seventeen at the time.

My issue was I didn’t feel safe being a bisexual woman with highly religous parents whose goals often were to make me more Christian and then consequently less comfortable in my own skin. I remember very clearly her words on my persistent agony: “Just tell them.” And when I cried because my parents were my sole support, she mused at me, “Just apply for scholarships. You’ll be fine.”

Admittedly, I think it took a few more sessions before I had the courage to get a new therapist. It was not without painful agony though, as I was actively told by a slew of practioners that my depression was normal and that “All teenage girls feel uncomfortable in their own skin. You’ll go to college and then it will be better.”

I did go to college.

It did get better, but not for normal reasons.

When I was in my second semester of undergraduate, I finally came into my own as a woman who wanted to find a romantic partner. With very little guidance on this other than well-meaning friends, I used Tinder to try and meet people. (Please feel free to groan. I didn’t acutally realize how the app was less about dating and more about… sex.)

There’s something in here that becomes intrinsically hysterical for all the wrong reasons: my first “date” in college ended up turning me not only away from relationships, but also from the very things I used to lean into for comfort and support.

I don’t remember his name, and I never really cared to.

He took me to get some coffee/hot chocolate and we had a decent enough conversation (decent enough to make me cautious but not bolt away) and then he followed me around the entirety of the area until making it forcefully clear that he felt my job as a woman was to make him a man by way of taking his virginity when I had been crystal clear that was not his to take, and certainly not on a first date. I was a 19-year-old virgin and was kind of (read: incredibly and extremely) proud of keeping a promise to God about that. And then the promise was no longer something I could keep, and not from my own choosing. But because that somehow wouldn’t have been enough, the guy still followed me and later that night called me crying (hysterically bawling, really), apologizing profusely about how bad he felt. I admittedly forgave him. He left me alone afterward.

The first people I wanted comfort from were friends.

They blamed me for having met up with the guy in the first place. Also said some choice comments about how it was my fault for being too kind and willing to look pretty. Something was said about how I basically asked for it with my behavior…

The second people I asked were my Bible study members.

They said many things about how it was my fault for thinking that any guy would treat me well when I was messed up enough to think queer rights mattered. They quoted verses at me that I was in the wrong for even wanting to go on a blind date. There were quips and insults made about how that was probably just God telling me to follow Him better.

The third people I begged to not blame me were the queer friends I met the previous semester when I went around the dining hall, simply on a quest to find actors for a project.

Their words were gentle and soft toward the depression I gave words to. They asked how I was doing, if it was making me scared that I deserved people to mistreat me for simply being a woman. They assured me that I was not to blame for the actions of anyone else against me, that there was no logical thinking that could ever make it have been okay.

The semester after this was a rough one of depression and chaos. In late October of 2017, I ended up spending a few days in an inpatient psychiatric hospital. This wasn’t really uncalled for, but it wasn’t fun. In response to me not being able to process how much pain I was in, my psychiatrist had recommended going inpatient for safety and maybe so the doctors there could stabilize my medications faster. In fairness to him, this is exactly the reason a lot of people go inpatient. In fairness to everyone, I do not do well when people trap me from being able to run around. In essence it, gave me no autonomy of where to exist.

I could give the clinical answer to your question.

But I want you to have the human answer, first.

Humanly, being confined in any area makes me feel trapped. Humanly, being in a space where the decisions aren’t mine to make is cause for concern. Humanly, I coped with my stress and trauma by taking walks or swimming. Humanly, I may have been at a place where that level of care could have benefitted me. Humanly, I wasn’t wanting to fight to be loved by a team of doctors who didn’t see past a diagnostic label they slapped on me.

Clinically, I had experienced a tramautic situation where I was forced to be still. Clinically, my brain needed things to be consistent while I processed my experience. Clinically, there was no amount of medication that would have changed my intense anxiety at the time, because the issue was needing someone to acknowledge I was more torn up over reactions to my trauma than the trauma in its own right. Clinically, strong women do not put up with anyone telling them their experience is anything other than their own. Clinically, I was able to explain some of this to my doctor under the words “that was not helpful at all,” and clinically, it became clear as day that sometimes trauma needs to be processed gently over time at the patient’s speed. Otherwise the trauma can’t resolve.

My experience is not unique.

I wanted to be a clinician because I knew my experiences weren’t unique to me, and also that most clinicians don’t have the personal experience to approach trauma and depression with the same lens of compassion and understanding over solving. Luckily I found clinicians who did know how to do this. But it took months of building trust with them before I would dare open up about anything that was troubling me.

Again, this is not a unique experience.

When I went to attend a masters in clinical mental health program at a conservative Christian college in Lakewood, I was still at the tail end of a two year long, very abusive domestic violence situation where I often feared being strangled to death while asleep. He would tell me that be believed I was catfishing him and that I wasn’t actually bisexual; he claimed, rather, I had hidden from him over two years that I was trans*.

Aside from the blatant confusion, I stood my ground that it not only shouldn’t matter who I am, but also that if he thought I was lying about it to that extent, that telling me two years in is a completely horrendous move.

When I did attend the school, there was some doubt in my mind that they were truly teaching clinical counseling, but since the dean stood his ground that they were, I decided to meet the school where they were at. (I have counseling ethics, go figure.) The university claimed that a professional could be ethically a biblical counselor (which is definitely not the clinical route) but that the school also wasn’t a biblical counseling program (which ended up being a really bad lie).

See, the school frequently said that counseling is a “sacred” profession. I do not agree with this, but don’t think the school realized that the average clinical counselor wouldn’t, either.

A scared profession often means the person is a high up religious leader, as those are the pathways that get to be dictated by other individuals who believe in calling discrimination ethical. I have seen firsthand how the program claimed to be clinical while also forcing/mandating all students to take a conservative theological stance at least once a semester in relation to the course.

I’m not here to say MDiv degrees aren’t good.

I’m here to say that I’m the average client in many senses. I have a spirituality, but it’s not what I want my counselor or therapist to highlight.

Pastors I’ve talked to often don’t like my theological stances. I take a multidisciplinary approach, weaving in social, cultural, and linguistic concepts and markers in each translation. The average (male, mainly) pastor thinks I’m sharing blasphemous ideas and then immediately dismiss any credibility that I previously had to them as a truly Christian woman. It’s disgusting.

Takeaway:

So, before you choose your degree, make sure that you’re ready to listen to what the school says and be ready and able to fight for what you want and need. I have left several programs whose goals and stipulations did not align with my ethics. And I’m here to give you further permission to warrant yourself the right to select where your time goes.

XOXO,

Dorothy B.