This is so hard! I feel you, I would find it challenging to explain therapy stuff to people who haven’t been there, done that (hence why I like this group so much )

I’m super selective about the people I’ll tell that I’m in therapy, and even then, I don’t usually go into a lot of detail. The list of people who know are my husband, a few friends, and one of my co workers (who only knows because she kept asking why I couldn’t join her one night to do a thing after work.) We see my husband’s family frequently, but I go to great lengths to keep the fact in in therapy from them —mainly because a lot of my therapy is about how triggering they are for me + I don’t really like to talk about personal stuff with them. With my husband’s family not telling them I’m in therapy sometimes leads to some creative omitting of info, like the few times we had scheduling/ childcare issues, I had to lie and say I was working late when we needed help with picking up my son from school and I didn’t want to reschedule therapy.

With friends that I’ve told I’m in therapy, I often find myself wanting to go on and on about my therapist, but I restrain myself. My husband probably hears the most about me in therapy, but even then it’s super limited. (This week’s session, for example was partially about a struggle I’m having and how it relates to my marriage, so it would have been akward repeating this to my husband.) Most of the time, I get protective of my therapist relationship and like to keep it to myself—MY therapist, my special time to make sense of myself.