Back To Therapy

I signed on to an anger management course and yesterday I went along to the first of six group sessions.

I’m not going to document every last detail but I thought some of what was said was very interesting. It’s probably what most people know but for me it was a bit of a revelation.

Namely, that:
a) anger is a natural emotion – a simple release of energy
b) it’s OK to be angry because it is part of the human condition
c) anger is a way of saying “no thank you”, “I don’t agree with that” or “stop it”
d) anger can be healing
e) we shouldn’t tell our children that they shouldn’t express their anger or that anger is bad
f) it is what we do with our anger that may not bring benefit so we should use it as a tool
g) it’s not helpful to hold in anger as that repression often leads to rage which is not a good thing.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be learning how to use anger as a tool and how to cut off the path to rage in “healthy, non-threatening and non-damaging” ways.

Watch this space ….

Talking About Myself

A friend emailed this to a group of us and said that I was the only one likely to answer as I loved talking about myself. Bloody cheek….but there may be some truth in it ! Anyway, I’m ignoring him but I couldn’t resist filling it in and posting it here. And he’ll never know !

Feel free to pick it up and run with it if you so choose !!

Who were you named after?
No one, as far as I’m aware

Do you like your handwriting?
It depends on the pen which is why I always like to use good pens for that very reason. I can’t be doing with a scratchy biro !

If you were another person would you be friends with you?
Of course! I’m great fun and a good confidante and genuinely interested in other people. It’s a shame that I’m not another person as then I might begin to like myself !!

Do you still have your tonsils?
No! They were whipped out when I was just five! Imagine that! I don’t think they do that to children so young, these days

What is your favourite cereal?
I don’t really do breakfast unless it’s a weekend when Ewan does his famous big fry-up. If I had to choose, I would say Crunchy Nut Cornflakes

Do you untie your shoes when you take them off?
Hell, no !

What colour knickers and shoes are you wearing?
Well funny you should say that ….. I always wear matching bra and knickers and today they are red because we went out to lunch with friends and I wore a red top and so my shoes are red too but obviously I don’t consciously set out to match my shoes to my undies!!

What was the last thing you ate?
I had pie and mash for lunch, when I should have had a simple salad but the whole e.coli thing put me off the healthy option and I went for big chunks of steak in ale instead !!

Favourite sport to watch
Tennis, although I admit it’s more fun watching any big England match with a group of people who shout as loudly as I do !! However, I have left Ewan in the pub to do that without me today (although I've got one eye on the match as I write this !)

Do you wear contacts?
No. I was told I needed glasses a couple of years ago but I have been too vain to wear them that often and I’m too squeamish to try contacts

Last movie you watched
Face/Off – which I recorded last weekend. I don’t know how I’ve missed it until now as I rather like Nicholas Cage and I have been in love with John Travolta since I was just a girl! I didn’t expect much but I thought it was brilliant and I was hooked right from the start. I love a good action film !!

What did you watch on TV last night?
I had to watch Dr Who again ready for this evening, as I didn’t really understand what was going on last weekend !!

Not The First Time

After much pressure from family and friends and the clear message from your comments and emails (for which I am very thankful), I did report the incident and the police were surprisingly sympathetic and confident that they could find the culprit

I’ve been a bit wary since the incident last Monday but not scared. When I told my colleagues the next day at work, four of the women said it had happened to them. For one it had happened twice. Nice.

Anyway, soon after writing that last post I suddenly remembered something that happened when I was very young. Not a mugging but a similar incident – one that I had pretty much forgotten

I was about 13 and I was coming home from a piano lesson just a couple of streets away. I had turned the corner on to my road and a car passed me and beeped. The driver was looking round at me but I didn’t recognise him. He stopped the car, got out and held open the back door, As I got nearer, he said “Hello love, you look nice. Get in and we’ll go for a drive.”

I said no thanks and tried to walk on but he blocked my way and said with a smile
“Come on love, just get in the car.”

I didn’t know what to do then and he moved forward but fortunately a neighbour came out of his house and shouted something. The guy ran into his car and raced off.

Mr Blackstone came running over to me to see if I was OK and like Nathan he walked home with me and rang the bell. When my dad opened the door he told me to go inside which I did and then he must have told my dad what he saw.

Dad was fussing over me then all evening and asking if I could remember what he looked like and if he touched me and I remember being very blasé about the whole thing. After all, I hadn’t felt scared at any point. I clearly didn’t realise the potential danger of it all.

I’m guessing my parents didn’t involve the police as I don’t remember ever speaking to them, or anyone else about it. However, thinking about it now it probably explains why Dad pretty much gave me a lift everywhere after that until I started driving myself. All my friends thought I was terribly spoilt but he was clearly scarred by what could have happened to his precious little girl, whereas I just put it out of my head ……until now.

The Law Of Attraction

I thought this might happen one day and on Monday evening, it did.

I got mugged.

It happened on my way home from work, on my own street! I had just turned the corner and I saw this black guy a little way off walking towards me. His hoodie was up and his jeans were typically halfway down his legs with chains hanging off his pockets. I remember fleetingly wondering if I should cross the road and then got really annoyed with myself for thinking like my mother, so I stayed very firmly on my intended route.

It all happened very quickly and silently.

As he passed me, he suddenly pushed me against the wall and tried to pull my bag away. I had it over my shoulder and was holding on to it and stupidly I thought, “You’re not having this. Ewan got it for me at Christmas and I’ve only just started using it so no, piss off!” and I pulled it back. He then grabbed both my arms, pulled me forward and hit me across the face.

It’s strange as it all seemed to happen in slow motion and so I sort of saw it coming and managed to steel myself against it. I think because of that it didn’t hurt as such but the force threw me back against the wall and I saw stars…just like in the cartoons!

He probably would have got my bag then but my neighbour Nathan was just getting out of his car and he shouted out and ran over. He’s a big guy and so my attacker scarpered.

The whole thing was over in a matter of seconds and I didn’t have time to be scared really. But Nathan was such a hero. He doesn’t even live here anymore as he and Tamsin split up a while back but he comes over regularly to see the children. He walked me to my door and tried to persuade me to call the police but I knew it was pointless. I don’t even remember what this guy looked like and he didn’t get my bag in the end, so what’s the use?

My face isn’t marked or swollen and I’m not in any pain but I do admit to feeling slightly shaken. I rarely ever bruise but this has left me with a huge blue-black patch on the inside of my right arm where he grabbed me. There’s a tiny one in the same place on my left arm but it’s the right one that is really a beauty and I’m almost quite proud of it, in a ridiculous way.

I should be much more upset about the whole incident but I’m not. It’s not bravery – I just think it’s a kind of resigned acceptance that something like this was bound to happen at some time or other.

My mother had a chain snatched from her neck many years ago and since then I’ve almost been waiting for my turn. Unfortunately, it’s probably just part of life if you live in or around London.

Ewan strongly disagrees and says it actually proves the law of attraction which he is really into. That because I’ve been expecting it, it happened.

Maybe I should apply that to, oh I don’t know, a millionaire lifestyle ??!!

Duh !

As many of you will know, I’m not very technically minded and so, this is a call for some advice.

Can anyone tell me why I can no longer see the pictures of my followers on my blog? I can’t see a list of them on my dashboard either.

I’m worried that this is the beginning of the end and I’m going to log on one day and find I have no blog and it will be my fault for neglecting it so much recently!

Anyway, if you know the answer and what I need to do to get them back, please reply in words as near to one syllable as possible, because you are dealing with a complete dullard !!

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??