What I Learned From My First Therapeutic Relationship

A reflection on what it means to be changed by connection.

There are some people who enter your life and teach you what a soul actually is — what it feels like to be in the presence of a good one. That’s what that first therapeutic relationship did for me.

What Went Well

I felt deeply seen and understood in a way words can’t even describe. I was seen in ways I couldn’t yet see myself — like her eyes were a map to my own soul. It’s one thing to feel understood through words, but it’s another to be known through presence — through someone’s gentle steadiness when you can’t find your own.

The laughter was therapeutic. Even when the heaviness of the session lingered, we always found space to laugh. That shared lightness softened the edges of the pain.

She was nurturing in a way my body didn’t know how to handle. I had spent most of my life learning to brace for disconnection, to prepare for love to turn sharp or distant. When genuine care met me, my body didn’t know what to do with it — it didn’t know how to stay still in that kind of safety. I think about that sometimes: how if I had met her after my body learned to receive nurturing without fear, maybe things would have been different.

But it’s okay that it wasn’t. Because even though my nervous system couldn’t hold that safety for long, the experience of being cared for in that way changed me. It showed me what my body was working so hard to protect me from — and what it’s capable of healing toward.

Through her, I learned how to be compassionate toward myself for the things I’ve done in my life that I would never do now. She helped me understand that regret can be a doorway to growth instead of a cage.

She was also the first person I let myself deeply love without expectation — a love not defined by possession or reciprocity. I longed for her care to match the depth of what I felt, but I didn’t need it to. That distinction mattered. It was about being allowed to feel love freely, without shame, and learning that love can exist simply as a force that changes you.

Lessons Learned

I learned how I subconsciously test people to see if they actually care about me — if they actually love me. And I learned that no matter what that person says or does, I will never believe them fully until I heal the parts of me that believe I am unlovable. The truth is, my own core wounds made it nearly impossible to believe anyone could enjoy my company or care for me.

Looking back, it’s so clear how much care she had for me. I just couldn’t hold it at the time.

I learned how I show up in dynamics and, more importantly, how to stop showing up in ways that hurt me. I saw how fear of abandonment can make me grasp, how shame can make me push away, and how both can coexist in the same breath.

I also learned that sometimes I bring myself — and others — pain unintentionally. That awareness is heavy, but it’s also freeing, because it means I can choose to do better.

And perhaps the hardest lesson — I learned that even when I wanted more than therapy could offer, the boundaries were what kept it safe. Without them, therapy would stop being therapy. It would lose the sacredness that made it healing in the first place.

Still, what I learned within that relationship — about love, safety, and what it means to be known — will stay with me for the rest of my life.

Sometimes my tether to her is listening to the Hozier album. I’ll put it on and just let myself cry — wishing things had been different, but holding onto what was. Another tether is being with my octopus, because somehow they coexist together — symbols of softness, depth, and the kind of connection that still finds its way to me.

And I know I can’t possibly put three years of work into one blog post. But as feelings and grief come up, I’m sure you’ll hear more of the transcendence of the work I had with her.