On the way to the psychologist’s office, I noticed a slight shift in my attitude. Gone was the urgency, the need to accomplish whatever within a set frame of five sessions. Most of my flustration has been what I perceived as a lack of clear direction, a defined path of cognitive behavior therapy, crippled by miscommunication going both ways. I felt like I was shrinking myself with alternative guidence found online, making more progress by those means than what I was gaining from these sessions. Yesterday was different. I did not expect to gleam anything from this session. It just is what it is… just go, it does not matter. I am responsible for my own recovery. If the session helps, so be it… if not, then oh well.
Okay, so if you think that I’m about to say that it was the best session ever, experienced a major breakthrough or whatever, nah… nothing like that at all. Just honest communication with some things to think about.
It does slightly amuse me, the questions he asked about guns. Do I own any? Do I feel this or that when I hold a gun? First thought was oh, he is trying to determine if I am dangerous to myself or others, but then I realized that he honestly doesn’t know. I don’t feel a surge of power or anything, like it is just a gun, no big deal… but I was raised around guns and he wasn’t, so having guns in the house is no different that having knives and forks in the drawer or rakes in the shed. Guns are tools, they have a purpose. I don’t feel empowered picking up a garden hose or say, any tool that is potientually deadly so as not to compare apples and oranges. The thing is, you have to respect the tools.
So, guns are weapons but so is anything, just ask that guy who was thinking about snatching my purse-looking handbag out of a cart of groceries while I was outside waiting on a taxi awhile back. He was eye-ing it down so much that I could feel him thinking, debating how to make his move as he passed me three times so we had a bit of silent communication with a jar of pineapple preserves. He got the message: try to snatch that bag and I’m going to cold cock ya with this jelly. Yeah, he walked after we had a stare down with the jar in my hand and an arsonal of canned goods at the ready. Sometimes it is good to come off as being a little crazy.
I didn’t tell the shrink about that… we talked about my experience (and his lack of experience) with guns and discussed whether or not people with depression should own guns. My opinion is guns are okay if not easily accessible so the depressed person cannot act on a stray impulse thought without thinking, like I quit keeping a handgun by my bed after a stray thought about not having to fall down popped into my head as I was waking up one morning during a particular bout with depression years ago. I also told him that my favorite thing to shoot is those toy rifles at the old west shows in amusement parks, where hit the sensor or something gets things moving, makes the piano play and all that. I’m really good at that game, or at least I used to be good enough to drawl a small crowd of on-lookers. It’s been awhile… haven’t been to an amusement park in years.
Maybe I should have, but I did not tell him that I have been busying myself with unfinished projects to take my mind off things. It just didn’t come up. I took the words to the wind (art therapy related to this cbt) and looked it over, read a bit, and gave me something to think about. In a nutshell, with “rage” and “nice” are at opposite ends of the spectrum, if nice is sometimes inappropriate, then sometimes rage is appropriate. I’m trying to learn how to express anger in a non-distructive manner, as in non-distructive to others as keeping it inside has proven to be self-distructive.
After I left the shrink’s office, I went to a store and bought seeds to start indoors. With any luck, they will sprout and grow into roma tomato plants, black eyed susans, and shasta daisies. Maybe that is what therapy is, just seeds of thoughts that may or may not grow and bloom to beautify our lives.
Thanks for reading! I’m almost done with the dollhouse. Those shingles go on one by one, so maybe I can post photos tomorrow.
Barnbees 