Birth and Decay Birth and Decay

Hi hello, welcome to Birth and Decay. I'm Melissa and this is your reminder that I'm in no way qualified to give you advice. This week, we're going to talk about one of my favorite things: therapy.

This question comes from my friend Alicia, who I've known since elementary school!

Alicia asks, How do you feel like you can get the most out of therapy sessions? I will sometimes have a goal in mind or an issue I want to talk out but I end up just talking about my day or week and end the session feeling like I wasted our time because I got distracted. How likely is it that my first therapist is actually the right therapist? I really like her but I can't always tell if it's helping and I've been seeing her off and on for a year.

If you have a question and you'd like advice that I'm in no way qualified to give, ask using the link below: https://forms.gle/eL8EmdfxqbPVjFRN6

To watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/HQNxF9aSpH4

Hi, hello. Welcome to Birth and Decay. I’m Melissa. I live in Baltimore with my husband and my dog. I work full time and I have a lot of hobbies.

So, full disclosure: I’m in no way qualified to give advice. I’m going to try to do these videos without editing, and if they’re crap, they’re crap, and they’re going to stay crap. But, we’re just going to roll with the punches and we’re just going to see what happens because I feel like a big phony when I read my notes and when I’m trying to be, whatever, professional or whatever. But I’m not a professional. I’m not a therapist, I’m not a doctor, and there’s a good chance I will tell you to go to a therapist or a doctor because If you know me, you will know that I love therapy and I love suggesting that people go to therapy.

You may hear my dog in the background. She likes to suck on her toys, which is really noisy, and she also sneezes a lot. She’s very cute.

So, this was actually my therapist’s idea. He suggested I start an advice column and I thought it might be better if I do a channel, and I figured I’d do both: I’ll just do a video with a transcript, and depending on how you like to consume your media, then you can choose whether you want to watch me or read me. It’s up to you. It’s going to be weird either way, I can pretty much guarantee that.

But, there are the reasons I’m doing this.


I’ve gotten a lot of great advice throughout my life from my mom, my husband, my friends, my therapist,  Google searches…I’ve gotten a lot of good advice. Coworkers, you name it. Strangers on the street. It goes great. I love it.
I also love helping people. So, if my experiences help somebody else, then that’s great. Then I feel less terrible about experiences that maybe didn’t go as well as they should have.
I also think I offer a unique perspective. Sometimes we just need someone else’s perspective to see if we’re way off base, or if maybe we’re not so off base.
I also like to speak and act from a place of kindness as often as possible. Kindness and authenticity are both important to me and so whatever advice I give you is most likely coming from a place of kindness and I have your happiness and best interest at heart. So keep that in mind.
That being said, the reason that I do that is mainly for selfish reasons. I like to sleep at night. So if I spend a whole day being awful, I don’t sleep very well because I’m replaying being awful. And I’ve had plenty of long days of being awful so I try to avoid that by trying to be kind and showing up as my best self. I try to answer to my higher self or whatever. Sometimes it just can’t be avoided, but I always try.

So, here we go. Here I am. I’m going to do my best and I’m really excited to see what kind of questions get thrown my way and we’ll see if it works out.

As for the name, Birth and Decay, my friend Shari, who is wonderful and has given me great advice, reminded me something I said about plants one time on my Instagram: I have to be okay with the cycle of birth and decay because everything is born and everything dies. She further put it into context and said “we just have to handle all the good and bad shit in between.” So let’s do this together.

The theme song was written by Cheryl Caudle, my bandmate, inspiration, and one of my favorite people on earth.

Thank you for listening.