I Am Green, But Not This Kind of Green

I remember the first Earth Day. I was ten years old. I was relieved. Finally, I thought, we're going to save the planet. Pollution? On its way out. Adults had it handled.

Fast forward a few decades. We're still trying. That's a good thing. We should care about the air, the water, the ground our kids walk on.

But in my office?

I'm firmly against recycling.

I am the Anti-Green Therapist.

Before you cancel me, let me explain.

I'm against emotional recycling.

I'm against walking into my office with the same problem you had ten years ago. I'm against the story that never evolves. I'm against the sentence that begins with, "This is just how I am."

I'm against growing up in a yelling, hostile home and then yelling at your own kids while swearing you'd never be like that.

I'm against hating your father… and then discovering he hated his father… and calling that an explanation instead of a turning point.

Come on. Have some new issues.

Anxiety in parents becomes anxiety in children. Those children grow up and hand off fear like it's a family heirloom. Loneliness gets passed down. Anger gets passed down. Silence gets passed down. I have never seen an anxious child in the last forty years who didn't have at least one anxious parent.

We call it history. I call it recycling.

Emotionally, we keep re-using what hasn't worked for a long, long time.

And here's the part that may surprise you: I don't blame you.

You learned what you lived. You absorbed what surrounded you. You adapted to survive. That makes sense.

But survival strategies that worked at eight don't always work at forty-eight.

Therapy, at its best, is interruption.

It's where we take the old script, lay it out on the table, and ask, "Are you sure you want to keep running this?"

It's where we decide that "This is how my family does it" is no longer a good enough reason.

It's where yelling can stop. Where chronic worry can loosen its grip. Where resentment doesn't get a lifetime contract.

You don't have to recycle your parents' fear. You don't have to recycle their anger. You don't have to recycle their emotional distance.

You can create something new.

That's the kind of environmental work I'm interested in.

If you're tired of dealing with the same problem you've had for five, ten, or twenty years… If you're ready to stop handing it to the next generation…

Let's stop recycling.