Therapy Was My Last Option ; Now It's My Superpower

By [Muhammad Saqib]

I used to think therapy was for people who couldn’t handle life. That’s how I was raised — to push through, keep it together, and never, ever talk about feelings. My father used to say, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” I took that literally, even when it nearly did kill me.

For years, I wore my pain like armour. I showed up to work with a smile, laughed at parties, gave advice like I had it all figured out. Inside, though, I was unraveling. Panic attacks hit me like freight trains in the middle of the night. I cried in the shower so no one could hear me. My relationships were collapsing, one by one. I felt isolated, angry, and exhausted — but I couldn’t explain why.

Then came the day I broke down in a grocery store.

It wasn’t even a dramatic breakdown — no sobbing, no collapsing to the floor. I was standing in the cereal aisle when I felt the air go thin, like I couldn’t breathe. My heart raced, my hands shook, and my vision tunnelled. I left my cart there and drove home in silence. I didn’t answer texts for days. That’s when a friend, gently but firmly, said, “I think you should talk to someone.”

I laughed. “Like a therapist?” I said, like it was a dirty word.

“Yes,” she said. “You’ve tried everything else.”

She wasn’t wrong. I’d read self-help books, meditated, journal ed, exercised obsessively, even tried herbal supplements. But nothing touched the depth of what I was feeling.

So I googled a therapist. Just once. Just to say I tried.

Our first session was awkward. I didn’t know where to start. I sat there thinking, This is dumb. I’m wasting money. But the therapist — calm, patient, nonjudgmental — just asked me to tell her what had been going on. I told her about the panic attacks. The insomnia. The constant feeling that I was failing at life.

She didn’t tell me I was broken. She didn’t tell me I was crazy. She said, “That sounds really heavy to carry alone.”

I blinked. Something in me cracked open.

Over the next few months, I showed up every week. At first, I kept waiting for the magic answer — some trick or mantra that would fix me. But what I got instead was space. Space to unravel. To ask hard questions. To cry without shame. To name emotions I’d buried for decades. Therapy wasn’t about being told what to do. It was about learning who I actually was beneath the coping mechanisms and survival instincts.

I discovered that the panic attacks were rooted in years of suppressed grief. That my inability to set boundaries came from childhood patterns of people-pleasing. That my anger wasn’t random — it was a signal I needed to start listening to myself.

I began to speak differently. Think differently. Slowly, my inner dialogue shifted from “What’s wrong with me?” to “What happened to me?” I started treating myself with the same compassion I gave others. And my life began to change.

I left a job that was draining the life out of me. I reconnected with people I’d pushed away. I began to sleep through the night. I didn’t feel like I was surviving anymore — I felt like I was growing. For the first time in years, I could breathe.

Therapy didn’t erase my pain, but it gave me the tools to navigate it. It gave me language for things I couldn’t articulate before. And most importantly, it gave me the power to choose how I respond to the world around me.

Now, when people ask me how I’m doing, I don’t say “fine” by default. I say what I mean. I let people in. I’ve stopped pretending to be invincible.

Therapy was my last resort. Now, it’s my superpower.

Because knowing yourself — really knowing yourself — is the most powerful thing in the world. And I wish I’d started sooner.