> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.theplacebeyondthefog.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Why I Started the Place Beyond the Fog - URL: https://www.theplacebeyondthefog.com/why-i-started-the-place-beyond-the-fog/ - Published: 2026-08-01T22:13:06.000Z - Updated: 2026-08-03T16:03:50.000Z - Author: Aminah Barnes Cannon As a child, I was forcefully introduced to therapy by my mom, who took the approach that "there was something wrong with me." I believed her. That said, I think that's a series for another day. As an adult though, what prompted me to seek out therapy was a dish towel. Or at least that’s what I thought it was. No joke. A dish towel set askew on an oven door handle. The worst part was that it wasn't even my towel, and worse yet, I wasn’t even in my own home. I remember standing in the kitchen glaring at that towel like its mere existence was offensive. While that was the thing that prompted me to think, "Maybe I should go back to counseling," what's more important is what was underlying it: a heightened awareness of my own discomfort. In other words, I became aware of just how uncomfortable I was with feeling agitated, angry even, over a dish towel. I knew my reaction, while it was happening, was completely irrational. Somehow that awareness only made it worse. There was this almost dissociative quality to that moment. I was there, yet at the same time, it felt like I’d stepped outside of myself and was observing myself saying “Girl, it’s a towel.” That weird meta-awareness, noticing the disproportionate reaction as it was happening, that made me realize I couldn’t simply decide not to have it. My point here is this: often, what drives people to seek therapy isn't something big, catastrophic, or life-altering (although that's certainly true too), but rather people often seek out therapy when things stop working, when internal discomfort exceeds what was once comfortable or "normal." It's at that point that many of us begin looking for change. We all have a different baseline for what we consider normal. Whether it’s anxiety, perfectionism, perhaps people-pleasing. We adapt because we learn to live with it long enough. We learn to organize our lives around it without realizing that’s what we’re doing. We avoid certain situations (for me it was avoiding making uncontrolled left turns, or determining my attendance around how easy parking would be. Don’t ask), try to prepare for every possible outcome. Apologize even when we’ve done nothing wrong, or preemptively. And over time, the thing(s) we adopted to simply cope start to feel like who we are. Therapy often begins when that baseline stops being sustainable. When we realize we want something different, but have no idea where to start or what to actually do differently. --- I've been going to therapy consistently for over a decade. Recently, I thought to share my own experience. There’s plenty available from the clinician's POV, but little to none from the client perspective. A clinician I am not, but what I do have is over a decade of experience going to therapy, and applying what I've learned to my life. What I've realized is that the client voice matters. Clinicians can offer the, well, clinical perspective, definitions, and diagnosis, but what's often missing is the lived experience. What happens internally? Mentally? And while some have given voice to clients, it is still filtered through a clinical lens, distilled, and analyzed in a way that often forgets there's an actual human involved. This isn’t to say the clinical perspective isn’t valuable, it is. But what it often lacks is the internal experience—what happens in the mind and the body—leading to more flattened articulations of the client experience. Clients, on the other hand, know what it feels like to leave a session feeling more confused, overwhelmed, pained, than when they walked in. We understand something intellectually long before we begin living differently, and we often question whether therapy is doing anything beyond giving us a place to vent. In other words, clients experience what it feels like when something finally moves from the head to the heart. Going to therapy means showing up for yourself each week, each month, and sitting with whatever comes up along the way. At the outset, attending therapy sessions was one of the few ways I truly showed up for myself. But here’s the thing, early onI would often spend much of the time analyzing (read: judging) others in an attempt to "understand" them. Looking back, I think focusing on other people, or other external factors, felt safer than examining myself and the feelings that came up for me. You know, if I just focused on figuring out why others operated the way they did, maybe I wouldn’t have to look too closely at myself (because let’s be real, no one *really* wants to look at their incredibly flawed and imperfect selves that closely. That’s going from the normal mirror to the magnifying mirror.). Admittedly, that’s a little weird to say. I was dependable and reliable. I showed up for friends, family, and for work. But showing up for myself? Nah. That was largely limited to fifty-minute sessions with my therapist every week, and excessively long gym sessions. At the time though, I wouldn’t have described it that way—that’s what I was supposed to do, right? Now I realize that’s exactly what it was. To their credit though, none of the therapists I’ve worked with in the past decade were having any of it. Instead, they would deftly ask "And what about you?" or "How did that make you feel?" (TF?) Initially, while I understood what they were doing, I would often think *why do we need to talk about me? They’re the ones who are wrong.* Eventually (*very eventually*), I got the hint, but it took time. --- This blog exists to explore what therapy feels like. Not the clinical process, but the lived one that’s slow and sometimes frustrating. The process where change is nearly imperceptible and often only reveals itself months, if not years, later. My hope is that it offers some insight and helps destigmatize therapy. I also hope that for those who may be on the fence or are scared to pursue therapy, that what I share in this space provides you with the encouragement and reassurance to help you take that first step. Therapy, I've learned, is neither a linear process ("go in, chat a bit, things change, you're "healed"), nor is it something that can be bound to a timeline ("If I start now, I can be 'healed' in three months"). Rather, therapy is a practice in patience, vulnerability (ew), acceptance, and tolerance (all things we can delve into in future posts). I spent a long time thinking that I would somehow “arrive” at healing. That after exploring the right topics in the right sequence of sessions that I’d suddenly be happy (whatever that means) and feel lighter—freer. Instead, what I’ve come to realize years later, is that results of therapy often show up in simpler and more subtle ways. For me, progress didn’t look like leaving a given session transformed. No, more often progress and change happened out in the wild, and on many occasions, I didn’t notice for months that I responded differently to something that, in the past, may have ruined my day. More often than not, I didn’t notice the progress until much later. Your dish towel may not be an actual dish towel. It may be the argument you can’t quite let go of. Maybe it’s the coffee shop being out of your favorite pastry that ruins the rest of your morning. Perhaps it’s the impossible standards you hold yourself to, or the constant feeling that the other shoe is just a moment away from dropping. Whatever it is, most of us have that “this isn’t really about this” thing. The moment or moments when we realize the problem isn’t actually the traffic, the rude sales clerk, or the towel. It’s whatever those moments uncover. That’s the place this blog hopes to explore. So, if any of this resonated, welcome. I’m glad you’re here. One last thing: looking back, and this may seem odd, I’m grateful for that towel. Not because I found it annoying though. Because it’s what made me curious about why it did.