Oh yes, I can see it now: t-shirts, buttons, bumper stickers, Facebook groups. It will sweep over the nation like a giant broom... Am I going too far with this?
Back to reality...
I went to lunch today with my dad because our "stress-catalyst" had chosen to give us the silent treatment yet again and for God only knows what reason. We met up at McDonald's because it was close, I had a cramp the size of the Giza Pyramids, and I thought some deep-fried processed chicken in nugget form sounded delish. We sat down and almost immediately our therapy session started.
Therapy is definitely not something you can only receive from a licensed professional with a degree neatly framed and nailed to the wall. Therapy is everywhere if you let it be. You have to have an outlet for your stress. For a lot of people though, a licensed professional is the best outlet they can find.
I started actual therapy last weekend and decided that I like going but I may try someone else. I am a big talker and I need to talk for long periods of uninterrupted time in order for me to feel like I am spilling all my beans into a neat little pile that my therapist can then sort through and separate the good beans from the bad. The therapist then teaches me how to do the same and keep them separate... you see where I am going? Well, my current therapist, though I will go a couple more times to give him a fighting chance, is also a talker. He likes to interrupt me with his opinions and thus cuts my stream of bean-spilling and causes said beans to splatter all over the room and we lose the ones we were talking about. I get distracted, he gets distracted and starts talking about his dogs for 10 minutes and I start losing interest in anything he has to say. I am sorry but listening to someone talk about their dogs when they are supposed to be listening to me vent about crap is not condusive to my mental health. At least, I don't think it is.
Does this make me sound annoying and selfish? I really hope not.
I don't think this blog even went the avenue I had planned it to go. The point I was going to make before I went off on a tangent about my therapist, his dogs, and bean-spilling was that meeting someone over lunch, like my dad and I, or meeting someone over coffee, like my grandma and I frequently do, can be really good for you. However, this shouldn't be your only outlet. If you have major issues like my family seems to have, venting to friends and family won't always get you to where you need to be. My grandma likes to point out that she says a lot of the things that a therapist later tells us, and it's true sometimes. Hearing something from your grandma and hearing the same words come out of a doctors mouth, though, sound extremely different.
I don't really know where I was going with this anymore. Sometimes I cut off my own bean-stream.
Well, I had better finish my English homework before I leave for class in two and a half hours. I'll leave you to your life. Good-toodles to you.
I reside in dreams. Even while wakeful, my heart yearns for the unreal. In mind and spirit, I dwell in a world of imagination, whimsy, magic. If only my wings were strong enough to take me there, to free me from my cage of reality. One day... One day, I'll fly away.
1 comment:
sometimes i wish i could meet my counselor over coffee... so much more relaxing. but alas, i bring my dr. pepper to sessions... and sometimes lunch. not the same, but it works. having something else to focus on... helps :) even if "focusing" is merely holding the can...
anyways. i think you're right, you need to have an outlet, and family and friends are good, but i think that counselors who are trained to deal with your (general your) *&@* is better all around. they are less bias. they can see things as a third-party, so they can give you advice from the outside. they can help you separate your life and compartmentalize it into little boxes, so you can say, "ok, today i'm gonna deal with my "stress-catalyst" and today i'm going to avoid that because today i'm dealing with "boy crisis" or "job crisis"... or whatever.
as far as a counselor who talks a lot... yeah, you need one that talks less about himself. maybe one without a.d.d. but one that does talk some, interrupts some, only to get you thinking more. or to challenge you in something... but for a while my current counselor only listened and summed up her thoughts at the end of session and i went crazy, cuz i couldn't process it quickly enough, cuz it was the end of the session. so the next week i told her, um... you need to give me advice throughout... or ask questions, pointed questions... that kind of thing... anyways.
um.
i feel like i myself am babbling. but i hope this helps. give your counselor dude a chance, but know there are others out there... you need to be comfortable enough to spill the beans... there needs to be trust and some sort of connection. otherwise you'll stay stuck on surfacy crap. and no one in counseling needs to stay at surfacy crap.
love you chica. i'm proud of you for spilling beans and guts and whatever else. :)
hang in there. :)
and check out my facebook pictures for some serious smiles. :)
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