Who Needs Therapy?
For too many years, I thought therapy was for other people. I could think my way out of problems.
The thinking solution only half works. And your partner will be the first to notice when the other half is missing. They did not just choose a thoughtful and practical partner. They chose one with whom an emotional bond could form. This part often retreats when couples get closer (ie. move in, get married, share a family…). It seems easier to manage a relationship without the messiness of the emotional half. But this retreating half never goes away. It is always a part of you. It is there but it is neglected. It hurts. This is who needs therapy.
Watch the video below entitle “How to Beat the Bully" and consider this: Sometimes we bully a part of ourselves.. One half dominates the other. We may decide that emotions are weak and cannot be trusted while thoughts are strong and reliable. The experience of therapy will help you to discover, your neglected half was a strong trustworthy partner all along.
Relax! This Will Hurt!
When my chiropractor tells me to relax, I brace myself for pain. It’s about to hurt, but I will be thankful after the adjustment when the pain I came in with is released.
She counts down, “relax in 3, 2 ,1…” but before “1” is fully formed into word, the adjustment has already happened. She tricked me again! She knows that when it hurts, it is almost impossible to relax.
It’s the same with emotional pain. When it hurts, we tense up. Just like on the chiropractor’s table, a protective reflex kicks in to keep it from hurting more. But this reflex is the very tension that holds on to the pain both when it is physical and when it is emotional.
It is difficult to relax when it hurts.
Psychotherapy gives us the ability to relax with emotional pain so that we can hear its complaint, adjust appropriately, and release the pain.
My therapist needs a therapist... and that's no lie!
Transcript:
It's getting to the end of February and the days are much brighter again. Every year at around this time i also welcome back a brightness to my emotion. I don't notice it so much on the other end of the season as I'm lulled into a somber winter sleep.
It's so gradual that on on most days I don't realize how difficult the winter has been, and how much i miss being more happy. Dr. Elvin Semrad taught the the sources of human suffering are the lies we tell ourselves, and he insisted: people never heal without knowing what they know and feeling what they feel.
Now he's not saying that that people suffer because they go about life with a deliberate dishonesty, but he's saying that hardship and trouble can lull us into a numbness. And to not feeling emotional pain that's still there, and into ignoring trouble we know has happened to us.
Now, numbing and ignoring, may be what got us through a very hard season, and that's good. Sometimes that's the only way through. But if we keep numbing, and if we keep ignoring what hurts, parts of ourselves are held back. And this is where the lie is.
A denial of our fullest self. We're not able to fully show up emotionally. We're not able to fully show up in our relationships. And we suffer. The trouble is it's hard to feel what we've adapted to not feeling, and to know what we've spent so long forgetting.
It's like a winter has gradually come over us and it's hard to remember. Well it's winter, what we were like in the summer. May not even feel like a winter suffering until in retrospect we've had the renewing experience of a summer again.
This emotional deception or or lie as Semrad insists is something I experience just as much as anyone else. And for me sitting down with a therapist has been so helpful in allowing me to fully reconnect with myself; to feel what I feel, and to know what I know.
To see what healing can come to hurt so that it can finally be left behind. Every season surprises me with a lie and a suffering that's waiting for retirement. And so i look forward to seeing my therapist this season and I look forward to fully reconnecting with myself.
And I hope you do, too.
How to Fail
“Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die ”
We want…
the success without the failure,
the joy without the sadness,
the security without the risk,
the patience without the frustration,
the intimacy without the antagonism,
the pleasure without the disappointment.
And there appears no shortage of expert advice to encourage us along a path to obtain all of these. But eventually, in this frenetic pursuit of success, we forget how to live…
with failure,
with sadness,
with risk,
with frustration,
with antagonism,
with disappointment.
We hope success will mean averting all of these, but our skillful escape distances us from the very matters of life which contract hope. A “successful” life costs more than we realize. The cost is indeed more than any earnest vitality can afford.
Sooner or later we hope there is more to life than “success”. Sooner or later, we return to the problematic and yet crucial growth edge of life with a newfound affinity for failure, sadness, risk, frustration, antagonism, and disappointment. We intuit a confidence that these will achieve for us a reward that far outweighs their trouble. In consenting to our personal trouble, our hope renews. We’re ready to be complete …even when it means learning how to fail.
“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”