I Sat in the Chair
Before I Ever Held the Clipboard

A therapist’s honest account of her own winding road through depression, faith, and finding healing.

By Abi Carpenter MS LPC-A Supervised by Dr. Seth Sampson LPC-S

“He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.”Psalm 147:3

I want to tell you something I don’t always lead with: I have been a client. I have sat in the chair on the other side of the room, staring at the tissue box, wondering if any of this would ever actually work. I have ghosted a therapist. I have had one move away. I have had one make decisions that left me worse than when I found her. And through all of it, I was in church on Sunday, smiling, serving, leading, a devoted Christian woman who looked, from the outside, like she had it all together.

This is my story. And I’m telling it because I believe yours deserves to be told too.

The Girl Who Had Everything but Peace

I started therapy for the first time in college. On paper, my life looked full, a private Christian university in Texas, a community of believers, Bible studies, discipleship groups, the whole thing. I was doing all the things. But when I was alone, the silence was heavy with a depression I couldn’t explain. I thought if I changed my social circles, rearranged the outside of my life, I’d finally feel okay. I didn’t. So I tried therapy. My first therapist and I didn’t connect, and like many people do when something feels uncomfortable, I just… stopped going. I ghosted her. No explanation. I simply disappeared.

A year passed. The depression didn’t. I tried again. This time it helped a little, until my therapist moved away, and I didn’t find a new one. Then COVID happened, and everything I’d quietly been holding together came undone all at once.

Newlywed, New City, Still Drowning

Here’s what the world saw during those years: a new college graduate, newly engaged, starting her first big-girl job, then a young wife, married to a pastor, serving her church community. Here’s what was happening inside: daily depression, constant conflict with my husband, and a desperate hunger to feel satisfied with my life that no amount of church attendance could seem to touch.

I saw another therapist, young, still finding her footing, and she helped me begin to glimpse the little girl inside me who was hurting. That was something. But then she took a leave of absence. Her replacement made some choices I later recognized as unethical, and following her guidance made things worse. I stopped going again. My husband and I were fighting constantly. I started seeing a psychiatrist and began medication. I was trying everything I knew to try.

On the outside I was an extrovert, as bubbly as I could be. When I was alone, I was barely keeping my head above water.

The Session That Changed Everything

My husband and I finally decided to try marriage counseling. In our very first session, the therapist said something that stopped me cold: before we could work on the marriage, I had some unresolved trauma of my own that needed attention. She referred me to an EMDR therapist.

I didn’t know what EMDR was. I just knew I was tired and desperate enough to try one more time.

From our first session, something was different. I liked her. More than that, I trusted her. She shared my values. She was an expert. And week after week, we did the slow, sacred work of EMDR processing, going back into the story my nervous system had been carrying for years and helping it rewrite the ending.

A Year and a Half of Weekly Work

My work environment was toxic. My husband and I were still in conflict. The panic attacks were coming almost every day. But I kept going. Because for the first time, I actually believed that healing was possible, not just intellectually, not just as a theological concept, but in my body, my relationships, my daily life.

Over eighteen months of weekly sessions, I watched things shift. The panic attacks became less frequent, then rare. My husband and I found our way back to each other. I changed careers. I finished a master’s degree. I learned to slow down before I reacted. I began to understand myself, the why behind so many of the patterns I’d been trapped in, in a way that had always been missing before.

I continued my medication. I moved to monthly maintenance sessions. And for the first time in as long as I could remember, I felt genuinely happy.

What I Want You to Know

Therapy ebbs and flows. It is not linear. You might try it and it won’t work. You might try again and still not find the right fit. You might find someone good and lose them before you’re ready. That is not the end of your story, it was not the end of mine.

For me, healing required finding a therapist who shared my values, who was a true expert in her approach, and who used EMDR to help me rework the narrative my mind and body had been living inside for years. Faith was always part of my story. But God used the science of EMDR and the relationship of good therapy to do what years of Bible study alone couldn’t reach.

I still serve my church. I still love my husband. I still take my medication. And I still see my therapist once a month, because healing isn’t a destination, it’s an ongoing, holy practice.

I became a therapist because I sat in that chair. Because I know what it is to feel hopeless about whether this could ever work. And because I believe, with everything in me, that it can.

If your story sound similar, or if it hasn’t started yet, lets talk. Hit the contact button and reach out to me. I want to know you. I want to listen to you. I want to help you heal. This is your sign to start today!

Healing is holy, and it is for you too.

If you’ve been carrying something heavy alone, you don’t have to keep doing that. There is help. There is hope. And there is no shame in needing both.