the psychiatrist

The day I had a breakdown in the meeting room at church I had really only meant to ask Claudia about theology classes. And I was only considering taking a theology class because it was a class in German - but, critically, not a German class - that sounded interesting and was offered at a convenient time. As it turned out, she'd never heard of the class and couldn't tell me anything about it. Probably just to make conversation she asked me if I was interested in theology and whether I'd like to work in the church someday, and suddenly I couldn't stop crying. Because yes I'd love to work in the church, but no that's completely impossible. See: German, and also let's be honest, I've never been able to make conversation with anyone in English either. And being able to make conversation seems like a pretty basic requirement for any sort of job in ministry, no? Claudia tried to make me feel better - no no, making conversation isn't so hard, it just requires practice, you have to be brave, etc. - but that only made me feel worse, because on top of being mortified that I was crying in the first place, if it isn't hard then what's wrong with me??

After that I figured it was probably time to make an appointment with a therapist. I picked one based on the solid criteria that I'd met her once when she'd had an open house at her practice the same day the kids were taking English classes next door. She asked me what my problem was and I told her about the embarrassing crying episode and said that I felt like I'd hit a wall in German and in life, and this wall was related to the fact that as soon as I am any sort of nervous, the connection between my brain and my mouth breaks and I lose the ability to speak coherently and I want to run away and hide. The therapist said don't worry, making conversation isn't so hard, it just requires practice, you have to be brave... She offered to help me act out scenarios in which I would practice being confident and assertive in social situations. ("GRÜEZI, FRAU HÄFELI!") Mostly that just made me cry again, and she thought that maybe some anti-anxiety drugs wouldn't be a bad idea. 

So that's how I met the psychiatrist. 

The first thought I had about the psychiatrist was, wow, this guy might actually be more shy than I am. I told him the whole story and he said he wasn't sure I needed drugs, that we should try some psychotherapy first - and since I wasn't that excited about continuing to fail at acting practice, I said okay. And I started seeing him every week, and the therapy goes like this: he sits there, and I talk. Sometimes he asks a question; occasionally I hit a nerve and I get to hear what he thinks about some topic, usually parenting-related; mostly he just listens to me babble on about whatever is on my mind. Somehow he manages to do this for a full hour every week, and never once has he fallen asleep or even looked bored. The man is a saint. And...it's helped. I don't think I needed a safe place to practice being a better person, so much as a safe place to practice being the person I am.

Which, and clearly I'm projecting here, but shouldn't that be a thing that church does?