Allyson Dinneen - Notes from Your Therapist

Copyright 2021 by Allyson Dinneen

All rights reserved.

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

hmhbooks.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN 978-0-358-7747-4 (hbk)

ISBN 978-0-358-37619-4 (ebk)

Cover design by Tai Blanche

Cover photography by Allyson Dinneen

Author photo Daniel Karp

v1.1220

For Patricia and Rafe

Here is a book about feelings.

I grew up on a farm, and in those days I didnt know anyone who talked about sadness, regret, loss, or death. When I was a little girl, my mother died when her plane crashed. One day she was right there, and the next moment she was gone. No one ever mentioned her again. We were supposed to silently close the door like nothing had happened. Forget all about pain or loss or tragedy, including people you loved.

You definitely didnt talk about feelings.

It was hard to know what to do as a kid, surrounded by unhappy, destructive, troubled adults. I was constantly caught in their crossfire of unspoken anger and sorrow. So I did the only thing I could think of to do. Which was hide.

In my closet with my books to read about other peoples lives. Or disappearing into the woods for hours at a time, pretending to be a lost orphan.

One Christmas morning when I was eight, I got a diary with a gold lock and key. And thats when I began taking notes.

I wrote down all the things no one talked about. And tried to make sense of adults and what they did. I wanted to daydream and understand life and myself.

Mostly I just wanted to tell the truth as I saw it.

Many years later, after life and kids and some interesting adventures, I became a professional at conversations about feelings and lifeI became a therapist. My passion for writing and for talking about emotions and hard things had never stopped.

Happy in life and my new career, I unexpectedly fell in love. I wasnt planning for that. But I was even less ready when, three years later, right after we had a new baby, my beloved husband died in an accident.

I didnt think I could ever recover.

The only thing I knew for sure was that I wouldnt raise our daughter in the kind of silence Id grown up in. And thats about all I had to go on to survive.

I definitely didnt think I would ever be a therapist again. What did I have left to give?

But as the years passed, life started coming back to me. I began writing again to process my grief, and I began to see some clients. One day, on a whim, I posted something I wrote on Instagram. There was no plan. I didnt tell anyone. I wasnt even sure if it was an okay thing to do. I just wanted to be the person I had needed as a kid: someone who wasnt too afraid to talk about feelings or about hard things, someone who would let me tell the truth as I saw it. Quietly at first, people shared with their friends what I wrote about emotions, relationships, and life. And that was the beginning of Notes from Your Therapist.

Apparently its okay to talk about hard things.

This is also a book about flying. And by flying, I mean being true to yourself. Sometimes no one wants you to fly, not even the people you love most. But you gotta fly.

I wrote this book for the other people who think they have to hide their wish to fly.

If thats you, I dont want you to think youre the only one.

When I grew up you were supposed to do what you were told + not ask questions. But I had questions.

Emotions are the real magic that help us feel close to each other in relationships.

Human beings are a species evolved for secure connection with othersthats just human biology + neuroscience. But some of us wonder if we can feel secure without being abandoned + some of us wonder if we can feel secure without being overwhelmed . Some of us a little of both.

You dont have to get over your feelings. Why shouldnt they take as long as they take?

So often were not allowed to feel upseteven for a minutewithout the world rushing us to Do something about it. But why cant I feel upset?

Good emotion skills means understanding that these 2 things are not the same: feeling | acting out

LIFE GOALS : Practice staying in uncomfortable conversations with people I loveeven though I want to run away.

Feelings are signals sent from your bodys nervous system about your physical + emotional state: to tell you how youre doing + what you need. Youre meant to notice them.

Needing others is so BASIC to our human biology that teaching people not to need others is teaching trauma. And the major tool for that is shame.

When family, school + society put so much emphasis on being perfect, strong, happy + well-adjustedno surprise we conclude we have to be all those things to be loved. And grow up never knowing that to be vulnerable, messy, human is lovable.

You might not WANT to feel needy. But your nervous system is extremely evolved to drive you to seek safe emotional connection with othersand it has millions of years of a head start on your wish to be above that.

The Importance of Feelings in RelationshipsIf no one knows how I feel about myself/life/where Ive been/what I need... nobody actually knows me.

How else are you going to learn how to handle conflict + calmly disagree if you were never allowed to do that growing up? Of course youre scared. It takes practice.