Therapy

My parents came into town last night and are here for a couple of days.  After my therapy session today I flippantly said to my parents, that "I'm not sure why I'm going."  Granted it was only my second session, and I know it's good to go, but how in the world can this help me I argued?  I feel like self-awareness is one of my strengths.  I feel like I understand conceptually what happened here.  Yeah, it hurts.  Miserably.  But I get that I'm going to get through it and it takes time and it's grief and yada yada yada.   So what insight can she possibly provide me with?  Especially since it doesn't seem like she intends to provide me with any insight but rather let me find it for myself and I feel like I've already found it for the most part.  I realize that sounds ridiculously self-assured and like someone who isn't open to learning at all, but it's not that at all.  I'm very open to learning.  In fact I'm desperate to learn from this situation, about myself and others and relationships and everything.  But I don't really see how 50 minutes a week with a therapist is going to accomplish that.  If she hardly knows me, how can she get to know me at the level that she needs to in order to understand more about me than I understand about myself, if quite frankly, I'm pretty strong in the self-awareness category.
My father, who's in no way "anti-therapy," answered my quip by saying, "I was was wondering that too."
"Because," I answered him. "Everyone tells me I need to go to therapy to deal with this."
I'm not saying it won't be helpful to have someone to talk to as I go through this process, especially as we get into mediation, but it also seems like I'm not going to get what I want, someone to guide me through this process and help me become wiser and stronger.  Not that I won't become wiser and stronger, but what can the therapist really do to aid that if she hardly knows me?  Dad agreed, and again, not because he takes issue with the notion or therapy, but because I think he believes I'm doing what I need to do already.  Emoting, processing, learning to appropriately compartmentalize, honoring my grief while also carrying on, and choosing to find joy in life despite pain.  What the hell else am I supposed to do?
The one nugget that came from today's therapy session (so perhaps there's evidence of its usefulness) was that it's clear I'm looking for answers or even more specifically, I'm looking for lessons.  What can I learn from this to grow as a human being, to make sure that I don't have this same experience again?  And the therapist challenged me on that a little bit, something to the extent of "why do you want to learn from this?  So you can avoid this pain in the future?"  And I realized what she was saying is that nothing I can do will guarantee that something else horribly painful won't happen.  I get that.  Life's uncertain.  I'll get through this and recover and who knows what could happen.  God forbid, but I  or someone I love could get a terrible illness, I could lose a loved one, I could... who knows what else, but I can't control that (and how I like to have control over thing)s.  But I'm not entirely on board with her point.  I certainly can't control all of my life, but I do have a lot that I can control, my own actions and behaviors, and in so much as those effect what happens to me, I'd like to control that much.  But perhaps that's also the point.  Maybe I was doing everything I should have with my actions and behavior and this shit storm still happened.
Ok, falling asleep at my laptop, so I need to give in to it at nearly 2 am.  With the boys away from me for the weekend, I think I'll have to give into a Saturday nap.  Maybe as soon as the 5 teen girls having a sleepover in my house get picked up (after I make them pancakes in the morning).  What a trip to have a house full of adolescent girls!  I think they've had a good night.  They helped make Shabbat dinner, we did Shabbat and girl stuff and then made vision boards and finally watched a movie.  It feels good to give them what I hope was a meaningful evening together.