Getting the benefits of therapy

The therapy of understanding therapy

I attended the first of a possible six sessions with a clinical psychologist as a pre-emptive and ameliorative exercise to appreciate my situation and circumstances to chart a course for the future.

It was not difficult for me to get into the conversation after I had filled in an assessment form of multi-choice options. I never ticked any of the extremes, apart the one about way I dress, I do not slack at looking smart.

The rest tended to the sometimes, the somewhat or the possibly categories of the affirmative than the negative which left the psychologist with a bigger job than she would have expected.

Coming from a culture where the idea of therapy has negative connotations of mental illness or worse, one has to work out the benefits of accessing such a professional service with an eye on what outcomes one expects at the end of the sessions.

Realigning perspectives

I convinced myself that considering the catastrophic losses I have suffered in means, in status and much else, I could easily be vulnerable to moods amenable to despair, depression or worse. I could not afford any of those feelings.

As to my outlook, I consider my life a story, I am the main character living the events and making my own history whilst having an eye on the type of ending I desire of my story; a good ending. Every waking moment is towards making that story lively, living and happily liveable doing amazing things.

The form of our sessions will not follow any structure but a series of questions, kind of discussion, interactions and clarifications.

Managing the regret syndrome

The question that is presently on my mind is one I avoid asking because the answers can usher in regrets, regrets of what I might have or could have done before or even done better to forestall where I am.

I do want to learn lessons but not dwell on my past, I need to understand that the present is what I have and from the present, one has many opportunities to chart the future.

This broadened the concept of the Kubler-Ross Model beyond dealing with grief or illness to life itself. The ability to accept where you are, to be able to move on, because one can easily be angry, be in denial, be bargaining or be depressed about one’s circumstances, none of which has the scope to move on.

In all the surveys, I noticed none address hope or expectation that I felt were necessary to deal with the negatives that accompany seeking therapy, they are essential to acceptance and progress.

Rather than regret, I have decided not to condemn myself in the things I have allowed. I know have allowed many things to happen or affect me, but those things just become facets and perspectives of experience and life. They are the elements of the story and hopefully that of the richly lived life.

This is useful

Before I knew it, the hour was up but I found it very useful, she was able to understand me as many stories and recollections painted the collage and the landscape of the type of person I am.

I am beginning to understand the things that matter; what are the means and what are the ends, a time of meditation and introspection will benefit me greatly.

I guess that is what therapy is all about, getting a professional to help unravel the knotty bits. It can give you the lift necessary to appreciate that in the daytime there is a sun shining beyond the gloomy clouds and at night, the moon might be absent but the stars do shimmer beyond the clouds too.

Let us do life and enjoy living it.

Thought Picnic: Between healthy benefits and deathly demerits

Wherefore whereto

I find myself after a brief respite that has dealt with the pressing and immediate wondering again about what I need to do, what options I have and what possibilities are available to me in terms of the next role contractual or permanent without much of a clue.

The plans have been revisited, the profile rehashed, the strategy reviewed again and again without inkling as to whether I’ve got it wrong again or I should keep doing what I know how to do even more.

The constant graft

Daily, I put in requests to those who appear to need what I have to offer, a phone call, a form filled, permission granted, even telephone interview attended, but answers are long in coming and feedback literally has to be begged for – none of which keeps the confidence anywhere near where it ought to be, but the soldier trudges on thought swamp and enemy fire, ducking and diving – one must survive this war.

There is one preparation left that offers adventure, I will happily take if offered, it is what I love, being a Europhile beginning to have a love of the outdoors and looking to recapture a sense of youth with the new lease of life that accompanied my other adventure some 13 years before.

Keeping my head up

I cannot think too hard about what I don’t have, it will change nothing, though it never ceases to amaze me the many who pour into my bosom meeting immediate need that I want for the essential – God bless them all – it remains for me a story of lifelong gratitude that my privations have never been allowed to become desperately bereft of any hope or succour.

I am liked, I am loved, I am embraced, there is concern, some sorrow, some encouragement, some sympathy, even empathy – there be many that walk with me to pull me through all this – it will come good and I will do well – with that hope, despair will just have to find some other habitation, and that is fine with me.

Like I have just said to my good friend – you can only hold your breath for so long before the healthy benefits become deathly demerits. Then I smiled.

Thought Picnic: In the mists of the lost

Masts of mists

The thoughts wander marooned in the wildernesses of the mind, wells of knowledge and memory too deep to draw from that stretch to the limits of imagination only constrained by active engagement of the senses.

There have been good times and there have been bad times, they interweave and interleave with each other in recurrent clockwork motion as if there is a continued certainty that each time will have its time. The hour hand crawling through the bad times just as it races through the good times.

For he has walked the mountain tops and strode the plains, just as he has found his paths traversing the deep valleys under the gloom and dullness of life overcast by the sometimes terrifying shadow of death. Life cannot ebb out yet.

Lists of losts

Yet, it is life that he lives, not uncommon to many but precipitous and rocketing like the undulating frenetic adrenalin producing roller coaster given a name to strike fear in the hearts of those who drink lion’s blood for tea.

The day seems long, the future seems short, the hopes begin to fade and the hunger is all the more palpable because it was once three, then two and now one from dawn to dusk with the hope that ursine hibernation sets in to make it last until the next when the little left will do a little more.

For where is he a year on from that day, not much further, not much better, not much having, very much roaming and just another excavated mine of memories from which minerals are have been exhausted, he is faint in body but strong in mind and all he knows to do is bare his soul.