To be honest, I don't much like being in Therapy.
If you are doing it properly, it's awkward, often uncomfortable and often painful... and if it isn't painful and uncomfortable, odds are you're not taking it seriously, and not getting the work done.
A lot of people will say that it is a waste of time to dig around among the old skeletons in our closets, but the thing about doing so is that it tends to "shake loose" a lot of our old memories.
Clouds building over the Sound, Evening
Shaking the Tree!
When you "shake the tree" of your psyche, it isn't necessarily some "snowflake" attempt to find ways to "blame your parents" for everything that's causing your life to have become a clusterfuck in adulthood. It's not about finding ways to blame something outside yourself for what's happening.
Far from it.
What you end up with is a sort of understanding.
An understanding of the way you've been "conditioned" — sometimes even by yourself — to respond in certain ways, when certain conditions are met.
A lot of the time, makes perfect sense and offers us valid (emotional and psychological) survival strategies in life. Where we start to run into trouble is when we persist in doing things that are no longer applicable.
Mountain spruce needles
Insights, and Such...
What good therapists do (and I'm blessed to have one of the best!) is help us re-map the territory of our psyche that has become outdated.
And that's where those old memories suddenly get shaken loose. In the past month or so, I have remembered loads of incidents from my past — long forgotten — that often show just how/why I do some of the things I do today.
I'm reminded of an old story...
It's Christmas time, and several generations are in the kitchen, preparing the food... including a large ham. The ham is being prepared just like great-grandma used to do.
Present in the kitchen this day, is Grandma, Mom and two daughters. As the ham is readied to put in the oven, mom cuts a large corner off one end, just like it has always been done... and because it's part of what makes the ham "perfect."
Unbeknownst to everyone else, the youngest daughter (aged nine) has gone to the living room, where Great-Grandma — now too old and frail to stand in the kitchen — is sitting.
"G-Ma," she asks, "why do we cut the corner off the ham?"
Great-Grandma, in a moment of lucidity, looks at the young girl and replies "Well, sweetie, the hams were always too big for my old-fashioned oven, so I HAD to cut a piece off to make it fit!"
And so it can be with our minds. We keep doing something because it seems like it has always been necessary, but in fact the necessity was temporary... while the habit persists, and now may even be holding us back!
Thanks for reading!
(Another #creativecoin creative non-fiction post)
How about YOU? Any old habits that once were perfectly appropriate, but no longer are actually relevant? Are they holding you back, or getting in your way? Have you ever been in "serious" therapy? Comments, feedback and other interaction is invited and welcomed! Because — after all — SOCIAL content is about interacting, right? Leave a comment-- share your experiences-- be part of the conversation!
(As usual, all text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is original content, created expressly for this platform.)
Created at 190917 23:48 PDT
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Oh my God! I don't have to cut the ends off my hams anymore?
But, then, what will I feed to the dogs?
Isn't that just life, though? On one hand, the relief of no more corner cutting... but then the dilemma of what to feed the dogs arises out of that relief.
And so, we circle back to the whole "accepting what IS" philosophy...
Not unhappy about those convolutions, in the greater scheme of things as it keeps me well stocked with fodder for future blog posts....
I've never been to therapy, but I do try to understand where I come from, it's sort of a constant exercise that I do to, maybe to have more control over myself, or maybe just for the sake of understanding. The thing is, every time you think you figured something out, there's something else hiding behind it. I guess that is our nature, after all :)
As Socrates allegedly said: "The unexamined life is not worth living," and I tend to agree with that. And yes, we are all like the layers of an onion... there always seems to be another layer hiding below the one we just examined!