Notes On…Developing the Negatives

I was watching Broken Hearts Club the other night, and something about it stayed with me. Dennis, the main character, is an aspiring photographer who captures moments from his friends’ lives, documenting their joy, their struggles, and yes, their mess. But it was one quiet scene that hit different. He’s in the darkroom, developing film, and you watch as the image slowly comes alive in the chemical bath. What starts as a negative, blurry and unclear, becomes something whole. Something full of depth and meaning.

Therapy feels like that to me.

The negatives in our lives, the fear, the loss, the moments we’d rather forget, can feel impossible to hold. When you’re in them, it’s just dark. No shape, no edges. But like a photograph, we need the contrast. We need the shadows to find the depth. What looks like a mess up close often becomes part of the bigger picture.

Dennis doesn’t only capture happy moments. He catches everything. Therapy can be like that, too. It gives you a space to sit with what’s hidden, to let it come up slowly, and to look at it without turning away. It’s not fast. Sometimes it’s frustrating. But healing isn’t about speed. It’s about learning to stay with yourself long enough for the image to become clear.

What comes through is rarely perfect. But it is more honest. Not just joy or triumph, but the moments that make joy matter. Therapy doesn’t get rid of the dark places. It just helps you make sense of them. Helps you see how they’ve shaped you, how they belong to the story too.

When we let the whole image develop, not just the highlights, we start to understand that our hardest moments weren’t mistakes. They were part of the composition all along.