Episode Summary
I have been having therapy for nearly 2 months now and so I thought I would use today’s episode to reflect on the value (or not) I’ve been getting from the sessions. I share what we talked about in today’s therapy session and explain my thinking about how I see it moving forward.
Episode Show Notes
00:26 – Reflecting back on the value I’ve received so far from the therapy sessions.
03:50 – Here’s just a sample of what I can remember that we talked about today.
- 04:22 – We reflected on last weeks “Blip“.
- 04:57 – I shared how I thought I was still hanging on to my past narrative and that is affecting how I behave today.
- 06:20 – We explored the options we have for dealing with the challenges – managing it in the short term and/or going back and looking at the memories at the root cause of them.
- 07:15 – I reeled off the major emotional traumas I could remember from my childhood.
08:38 – It is still early days at the moment so I can’t draw any conclusions from the few sessions I’ve had.
09:09 – I think the more active approach of CBT will have more of an obvious and immediate effect (when I finally get access to it).
Edited Transcript
Hi and welcome to today’s episode of Hope, Help, Happiness.
Now, today has been a therapy day and I haven’t talked about this for quite a few weeks now. So I thought having had today’s session, it was a good idea to reflect on the value I’ve received from this and how I feel it’s going.
If I reflect back on the time I’ve spent talking to my therapist, I think probably the biggest value I’ve had is the opportunity to talk through how I’m feeling and the problems I am having.
What is interesting is that I experience whatever feelings I have in my body and in my emotions. But when I start expressing them verbally and describe them i understand them better. What often happens is solutions for dealing with them arise.
Sometimes insights arise as I’m speaking and I come to those insights myself as I’m expressing my thoughts about what’s happened.
So talking has really helped me in some of the sessions – not every session, but I do find sometimes as I’m explaining it, I suddenly get an insight which is quite useful.
The other thing that happens when we talk is we often unravel and unpack what has happened to me. We peel back the layers of the onion to find out what is really going on and explore some of the issues that arise out of that. That’s been really useful.
Probably the other big benefit has been getting alternative perspectives on things.
I have a map of the world – that’s how I see the world. And so when I encounter a difficulty, I will deal with it using my map of the world. It’s not the only one, but it just happens to be the one I’m using.
And so what my therapist has been able to do sometimes, is just give me alternative perspectives I’ve not been able to see it because my map of the world doesn’t have that as an option or a possibility.
It’s been really useful as well to get their reflection on the challenges I face. Probably the biggest single thing I can say I’ve got from the time spent in the chair is this: I often find myself conflicted between options – this or that? What my therapist is encouraging me to explore instead of “either-or” is why not both?
It’s been really interesting to see how binary my thinking has been on some of these issues, which has caused me challenges. She’s allowed me to start blurring the edges of that binary thinking to think more holistically.
This has really helped and has given me different insights into my mind and how I operate and that there maybe alternatives I’d just not considered because I don’t think like that.
It’s difficult to really review what’s happened in the chair because I go in, I sit down, we talk, I walk away and I’ve often forgotten what we’ve talked about.
Today I took a few notes just to remind myself of the things we talked about.
Last week’s session was marred by the fact that I’d gone through that real bad adversity that knocked me back. So this morning when we spoke, I reflected on last week’s blip as I called it and we got into talking about how that happened.
We explored how it was interesting for me to observe the path I took from encountering the adversity, to monitoring my train of thought to feeling really, really low, and then the path I took to get out of that low.
We reflected on that and I talked about it in terms of my brain chemistry. She reflected back looking at it from a behavioural and feeling approach.
That was really interesting.
We then talked about how I am now managing that. I think I mentioned in an episode a few days ago how I’m doing that with the elastic band. on my wrist.
If ever I find myself allowing my explanatory style to drive me into a negative thought process following adversity I snap the band sharply on my wrist to snap me out of that train of thought.
We then talked about my story.
I’ve realised I’m still living by the narrative of not being good enough, having low self esteem, having to work hard in order to feel valued, that I’m unlovable and that I struggle with relationships.
It’s a story.
I’ve realised only this morning that I’m clinging on to that as part of my identity.
Until I deal with that, I’m probably going to get the same results I’ve been getting all these years.
We explored that and looked at the two options of how we deal with that. The elastic band option is managing it. So stuff comes up. I spot it, I deal with it and hopefully it shifts. That’s the management of it.
But my therapist suggested also going back and looking at some of the memories and maybe wrapping around adult based words on what happened to see if we can get a different perspective.
Because often a lot of the things that affect us are those that happen when we’re children, where we can’t make sense of it in the reality. So we make child’s sense of it, which causes all sorts of beliefs and angst and problems. So she suggested we should look at some of those memories.
I reeled off all the major traumas that I could remember to her.
There was a bullying incident when I was very young. There was an argument my parents had. I couldn’t remember my father actually leaving when my parents divorced, but I’m sure it must have had an impact – I can’t remember that.
I talked about how when I was very young we had two dogs over a couple of years and both were run over. The impact on me at the time was catastrophic. I can remember being so upset when that happened. It was my first case of loss. So we talked about that.
I couldn’t remember that many traumas.
We explored the relationship with my brother and how that has evolved over the years and how proud I am of him and the relationship we now have.
We explored that in detail and then all of a sudden the session’s over.
So that’s how it went.
There’s a lot of talking going on. I mentioned to my therapist I was taking notes because I wanted to reflect on this in my journal. She said she often forgot a lot of what was talked about because we cover so much ground.
Part of the reason is because there is so much ground to cover, but also because my mind works very, very quickly. I go from one topic to another topic to another.
Overall, I think it’s still early days. It’s only been two months. I’m still not feeling the benefits yet on a significant level other than the couple of benefits I mentioned earlier – how solutions to problems seem to evolve and the alternative perspectives I’m getting.
I’m willing to give it more time though.
I think that the intervention of CBT, the cognitive therapy later on in the year when it finally gets here, is probably going to be more impactful because it’s going to be more active.
Whereas this is a very passive approach. I look forward to getting involved in that. I may even start doing some of that ahead of time because there’s plenty of books on CBT and I could start looking into that.
But for now, I’m going to continue with the therapy. It is part of the package of me moving forward and in absence of anything else, it’s all I’ve got.
So that’s Today’s episode.
Until tomorrow.