Aaron Gleaves is more than a pretty face and a Barbie magnet. It’s not because he’s a trained professional, because mileage with them can vary. It’s because for a long time, Aaron’s compassion and patience with me was unwavering. Even when I must’ve been quite the pathetic and annoying client, he was very kind.
Aaron Gleaves wasn’t getting paid enough to be my therapist. I know that’s true, even without knowing how much he was actually taking home after insurance discounts and whatever else. I saw the insurance bills, but they’re only part of it. From what I’ve read online, most therapists have a lot of built in expenses and fees that come with their jobs. Turns out not all of them fit the rich stereotype that Hollywood likes to show us, although there are certainly some who do. Plus, Aaron was still a resident in counseling while I was seeing him. He didn’t get his license until shortly after he broke up with me. Belated congratulations to him, BTW.
I wasn’t the kind of client who can’t be helped. I was helped a lot, actually. But there were things I did that made me realize after my therapy was over, that Aaron Gleaves, at least while he was in therapist mode with me, was a long-suffering guy.
- I talked with him about my romantic interests and pursuits. The patience that man displayed while I talked to him about various men I was dating, as if he was one of my best girlfriends, is to be applauded. Men and sex, men and my boundaries, men who treated me badly, and the men I ended things with. Just men, men, men on repeat for some sessions. And he heard repeatedly about the one guy who I was extremely attracted to. He probably still remembers that guy’s name.
I only recall him being impatient with me about men twice, and it was coming from him thinking those guys weren’t worth my time, not because he didn’t think it was worth his time to listen to me. Anyway, either Aaron enjoys romantic drama on some level or he hates it and has the patience of a saint. But I never felt him judging me about any of that. - Aaron wasn’t the only therapist to ever encourage me to meditate, but he was the only one to successfully convince me to try it and keep doing it. Somehow he pressured me into it without really pressuring me. The first time I had therapy after I’d successfully meditated that week, I told him about it. I told him how I’d kept crying during meditation because it was so nice and unusual to hear someone talk kindly to me in a calming voice like the meditation guides would do. I realized it was a pitiful reaction to have, but Aaron didn’t laugh at me. He seemed to understand that it was a huge change for me from all the men in my life who were mean and consistently said hateful things.
- Aaron made me feel like we were a team while I was working on moving out of an abusive situation I was in. He encouraged me to not give up because my situation was “untenable” and he really seemed to grasp how maxed out I was trying to survive being harassed and tormented while saving money and searching for a safe place to move. I’ll always be grateful to him for telling me we were “a team”, even though I was the only one of the two of us who was actually in the situation. Not feeling alone helped me immensely.
- I thanked Aaron and complemented him too much. He wasn’t good at accepting thanks and compliments from me, and I didn’t ease up because I meant all of them, and also because it seemed like something he needed to improve on and I was happy to help him with it, lol. Once I emailed him to thank him for a session and wrote this for him to the tune of H-O-T-T-O-G-O: “T-H-E-R-A-P-Y, Aaron is an awesome guy!” I’m sure he hated that and probably disliked all the other times I was hyper and excited about therapy and was over the top.
- I emailed and texted him. I didn’t ever expect him to reply. Sometimes it was journaling that I sent him to read at our next session, or feedback about my last session. I never knew if he hated me sending him things or not, but I think he didn’t like it. In my defense, his comfort and boundaries were his responsibility, not mine, and I was often curious what his were regarding that. I’m the kind who has some boundaries that are different for different people in my life. I remember telling him once that I didn’t know how I’d handle communication with anxious attachment style clients if I were a therapist. I wasn’t in an anxious attachment stage back then, but I’d had bouts of it a couple of times in my past. Anyway, I think my out of session communications probably annoyed him, but he didn’t directly tell me, so I didn’t take the responsibility to stop. After we ended, I felt kind of bad for the times he’d read stuff I sent because I realized that he hadn’t been getting paid to. For the record, I never intended to be a rude or high maintenance client. I hate thinking that he didn’t make as much money from helping me as he did from his easier clients.
- I questioned our therapeutic relationship a lot. He mostly didn’t seem to be comfortable talking about it. After we ended, I researched it and found that it’s common for many therapists to not like to get into that, particularly CBT trained therapists. But Aaron tried to handle it for a while. Ultimately, I was gearing up to work on my relationship patterns and needed to feel ultra safe to do that. Of course I didn’t grasp that’s what my mind was trying to set me up to do until it was too late and we were ruptured. I wish I’d handled it better, but I didn’t know what I didn’t know.
- Oh the little, silly things I would get so excited about! Like when I was struggling with journaling and so I bought two different journals to write in, specifically, two Wicked themed journals so I could write the more serious stuff in the Elphaba journal and the stuff that I thought of as more superficial (Diary, I’m so excited to wear my new dress!) in the Glinda journal. Again Aaron didn’t judge me or laugh at me for that.
- Aaron let me express anger and rage in my sessions without telling me I was overreacting and needed to calm down. How many men in my personal life have been ok with me being angry? None. I felt safe to have all my feelings and I felt understood and respected.
- When Aaron introduced me to The Container Method, I took to it like a kitten to a bowl of milk. I instantly went all in and even used my pretty Taylor Swift “Are There Still Beautiful Things?” box, which had been sitting empty until then. It was shortly after that session that Aaron and I ended, but I thought he was always great about suggesting useful ideas and concepts to me when I was his client.
- He helped me learn to feel comfortable sitting with conflicting and even uncomfortable feelings. And I have conflicting thoughts and feelings often. He normalized that to me and for once in my life I was safe to say that while I was grateful for something, I also didn’t like it. I aspired to be like him in the way that he appeared to be in control of himself, whereas I had struggled with anxiety and later on, frustration about what I felt was slow progress in some areas of my life.
To someone like me who enjoys affection and closeness in their relationships, it’s horrible to go through extreme neglect and periods of abuse in a relationship, not only because it’s unhealthy and unacceptable while it’s happening, but also because even after those bad times are over, the frustration that comes from unmet needs can feel intolerable.
An example was how being mistreated in my relationships made me determined to never feel sexually frustrated again. Because it was as though not having someone to be affectionate with meant that I was reliving the horrible past. With Aaron I learned I can still be ok while being uncomfortable and it doesn’t always mean the past is happening to me again. I can even be uncomfortable and still be safe to be optimistic about my future, which is how I naturally tend to be. It’s been very liberating.
Those are some of the ways Aaron helped me and some of the ways I think I was probably a high-maintenance and less financially profitable client for him. While I’ve been very expressive of my disappointment over how he treated me at the end of our relationship, it wouldn’t be fair or accurate of me to talk about that part without also mentioning the ways he helped me and acknowledging some of the ways I must’ve made his job harder. It also wouldn’t be very resilient of me to stay stuck in a negative loop about the sad parts of the story. There were a lot of genuinely good parts. He was the best of the best a lot of the time. Like I said, he’s not just Ken. So thank you, Aaron Gleaves, thank you.