Analyze This

I’ve been thinking about the whole therapy thing

I remember when I started. It really felt like the right thing to do. Something I needed in my life and at the start, the whole talking thing was something I found really valuable. Especially as it isn’t something I do easily. People think I talk a lot and don’t get me wrong, I do. In fact, I can talk and talk and talk …..but it's never about anything of worth, nothing consequential. It's all just amusing anecdotes, or where I have been or what I've been doing. All in a bid to entertain others and make them want to be around me but nothing that gives anything real away.

In the end, during those sessions, I talked around problems and OK, maybe a better therapist would have guided me more carefully into the troubled areas, but actually just talking, filled a void for that time in my life.

Now I’ve come to the conclusion that even with the best counsellor in the world, therapy really isn’t for me.

We all suffer from feelings of inadequacy no matter how shiny and bright we appear on the outside. I know that lots of friends my age are anxious and stressed about a whole load of things ranging from balancing home and work life through fretting about how they look and what shape they are, all the way to pure despair at how fast life seems to be passing them by and the mistakes that leads them to make.

All those things have bothered me at some point, and I definitely keep making stupid mistakes, but those same problems haven’t been made better by talking them through with the therapist. That may have offered temporary relief but no solution. Effectively, it was like constantly picking at a scab and so not allowing it to heal. I found I was analysing and thinking about my life in a rather pointless manner. Who am I? What do I want? I don’t bloody know - what do any of us want? To be happy I guess, it’s not rocket science. If anything is truly depressing it’s that I have probably lived over half my life now and I still don’t have any real answers to anything of worth.

If I’ve realised anything over the last few weeks, it’s that actually, do you know what, it’s OK to be angry with myself and with others. It’s OK not to feel particularly worthy or to feel vulnerable or to mess up from time to tome. But it’s not OK to dwell on any of it. I need to feel the emotion, live through it and then put it away but not allow it to dictate or colour what I do from then on.

There are other things too that I know I need to do. Such as learning to minimise the negatives in my life, because focusing on things that annoy me definitely tends to make me miserable and dissatisfied

All this seems to be what normal people do. DON’T analyse who you are and what you do or why you do it. Just forgive yourself and have the courage to like who you are.

That’s what matters at the end of the day. It’s not whether others like me, but that I do.

It may not sound much but that is a huge revelation to me and one that I may have to keep discovering before it finally makes an impact

Waking Up To Spring

It’s a long time since I’ve written anything here.

I guess it’s because I haven’t had any real enthusiasm for anything and I’ve just been going through the motions. I haven’t been in a depressed state - I just haven’t been able to do more than I’ve needed to on any given day.

But I feel better now.

Maybe it’s because the sun is out and our garden is full of flowers but suddenly, I feel more like my old self and ready to be me again, if that makes sense. I want to put some serious work into getting over these negative feelings that constantly seem to bring me down.

That won’t be with the therapist though.

Last month, I told him that I wanted to end our sessions. He just nodded and asked me why. I said I didn’t think that actually I was getting anything out of it anymore and that I was going to focus more on anger management. He informed me that he could help with that, which was a bit awkward, but I insisted that I thought it would be best to start with someone new. I found it difficult to say, not helped by how he looked at me in that way he has, with his head on one side. He pointed out that we had rarely touched on my angry episodes and I said that was because I didn’t find them easy to talk about and that I was ashamed of my behaviour. He said that he thought after all this time I would have understood that the whole point of these sessions was to try and talk through the more unpleasant things. I agreed but said it wasn’t something I had been able to master.

He was silent for a while and then, out of the blue, he said “Do you think I like you?” I was a bit shocked and didn’t know what to say and so he repeated the question. When I said yes I thought he did, he asked why that was so important to me. I said that what people thought of me has always been important to me and the key to how I feel about myself and he mysteriously said “that’s the knub of it Selina - that’s what you need to work on”.

I should have got into the conversation but quite frankly I didn’t have the energy.

Anyway, he wouldn’t let me finish things at that session and said I should think it all over and give him my decision at our next meeting. However, I went home feeling very dissatisfied at that and a few days later I sent an email thanking him but saying that I wouldn’t be going back. He replied with just two lines “Thank you for letting me know. I wish you the very best for the future”

Now, I feel like I’m free again. I don’t know of what. To make a fresh start maybe, I’m not sure. But I do feel positive and that can only be a good thing.

Can’t it??