Wisdom Therapy
Honestly, the wisest decision I made this year was therapy. Not "start", not "try" but just full out get a therapist and do it. It was an instant shift, like other smart, intuitive decisions I've made, but a friend had floated the idea for a long while. He mentioned "resistance" and that I'd do it when I was "ready". This April, I took the leap.I've learned so much. It's so funny how just talking to someone for an hour once a week can change your whole outlook, but I feel I've moved up a wrung on the ladder of life. I am not better or worse than anyone, I just know myself better. I make connections that I don't make when writing or talking with other people.If you need to love yourself first before loving others, then therapy is as selfish as anything and I am thriving under my own attention. I've been everyone else's faux therapist for so long that I couldn't hear a word I was saying in my own head.(No joke - a month or two into therapy, I was napping on the couch one afternoon. I wasn't dreaming really, I was in that half-asleep mode where the noises of my house could enter my conscience and I wasn't dreaming in pictures yet. My whole head was flooded with the noise of the busiest crowd, like you'd hear in a rush hour subway station or the commotion before a theater show. I woke up abruptly, knowing full well that all that noise was from everyone else in my life, in my head. I couldn't hear my own voice and I certainly didn't have a quiet mind. But, awareness is the first step, right?)Therapy has given me: This blog - a major theme we work with is "allowing myself". Perspective. More energy for others. Gratitude. The chance to connect the dots. Space. The ability to let go a bit. Understanding, about myself, my needs, my habits. Rage disappeared, anger is infrequent. Support. The feeling that someone cares.
I don't go to therapy to find out if I'm a freakI go and I find the one and only answer every weekAnd it's just me and all the memories to followDown any course that fits within a fifty minute hourAnd we fathom all the mysteries, explicit and inherentWhen I hit a rut, she says to try the other parentAnd she's so kind, I think she wants to tell me something,But she knows that its much better if I get it for myself... ~Dar Williams
Byron Katie writes that the world is our projection. It's not that the image is fuzzy, but that our lens is. When you see a spot on a movie screen, your first instinct is to clean the screen, the surface that the movie is being projected on to. But if you look closely, the spot is really on the lens and it's the lens that needs cleaning.Therapy has given me a way to clean my own lens. It's a weekly hour where I can be the center of attention, where I can work on focusing on my own problems without the input or judgement of anything else.And it's made me so much happier. Best.decision.ever. 