Category Archives: Reading

To Blog or Not To Blog, That Is The Question

Posted by What It Takes To Be Me in Reading, Writing and tagged with , , ,
Quick art made using absolutely nothing but a piece of paper, a few seriously old ink cartridges, and my now very ink stained fingers. No pens or brushes used.

Quick art made using absolutely nothing but a piece of paper, a few seriously old ink cartridges, and my now very ink stained fingers. No pens or brushes used.

I had an email from one of my readers recently, someone who had only just found their way to my blog and who felt that they could really connect with what I was writing. It was a really nice email to get – as are all emails I receive – because they remind me of the fact that even though we are all unique and different and separate, our human emotions can connect people from all over the world, people who have never met –  and probably never will meet – in a deep and profound way. Also, it really reminded me of the reasons for keeping this blog going. And I really needed that, because, I’ll be completely honest, in the last few months I have been very seriously considering whether or not to retire from blogging – hence the ridiculously sporadic updates. Apart from finding life such a struggle a lot of the time, I also felt that I was beginning to repeat myself in my posts, that I had nothing more to offer people coming to this site.. And what is the point in posting, if that is the case..? But, this email – along with many other emails I’ve received – told me otherwise. In fact, it made me think that perhaps, rather than retiring from the blogosphere I ought to actually invest more time in my blog. Maybe this blog is the way that I can – in some very small way – help make people feel less alone in what they are going through? Maybe this is my opportunity to contribute to making people feel a connection to the rest of the human race? I don’t know how many emails I have received over the years of blogging where people express genuine surprise at having discovered that somewhere in the world there is another person – whose name they don’t even know – who shares similar experiences, feelings and thoughts as them. And who find that comforting. So.. for now, I shall keep my blog going. Maybe repeating myself isn’t the end of the world, because even if I am expressing a similar idea to what I have shared before, I will have changed since the last time I wrote about it, and maybe my readers will get something new from it, because they, too, have changed?

I wish I could promise that that from now on I will post more frequently and regularly, but, knowing me – that may turn out to not be true. But, at least I shall do my very best to carry on with it.

Be kind to your Selfs and look out for another update very soon, because for once I already have The Next One and even The Next One After That written and ready to post. How crazy is that!?* Just spacing them out a little to not shock and/or overwhelm any of my long time readers. ;)

xx

PS. I feel I should add that – not being a great believer in altruism – I, too, get a lot from this blog, because every time someone contacts me, whether it be in a comment or an email, I am reminded that I’m not alone, either. So, a big thank you to all who have written me over the years.

* How crazy is that!?*  Not quite so crazy. Turns out being in bed with a sprained ankle, a cracked rib or two, and a banged up knee [special clumsiness birthday gift to self] is exceptionally good for your blogging

An Uneasy Dwelling – Delayed Reflections On Living In A Therapeutic Community

Posted by What It Takes To Be Me in Boundaries, Community, Diagnosis, Expressing Emotion, Family, Friends, Group Dynamics, Home, Illness, Psychotherapy, Reading and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

It’s been a year now since I moved out of the therapeutic community I used to live in. And I’m still processing it. The ups and the downs, pondering what I took from my time there, what more I could have got from it, what I’m glad to have left behind.

I can say without hesitation that I don’t regret moving in there. I can also say that it is the most stressful living situation I’ve every voluntarily put myself in. With three group meetings a week [on top of my individual therapy sessions outside of the house] it’s a pretty full on experience. Even though I often made the decision to stand on the sidelines, to keep myself at a distance, it was a pretty intense way of living.

Would I have got more out of living there, had I been more invested in it? I don’t know. Maybe. I don’t rule it out. Certainly it made a difference to the sense of community within the house that I chose to not engage as much as I could have, to not push for communal meals, to not easily join in with the household. Yet, at the same time, it just never made sense to me to bring my worries and desperation to the house meetings, to be looked at by people, who – although I liked many of them – didn’t feel particularly safe with. [This, incidentally, is solely a reflection on me, – not on them.] To me, it always seemed like the natural thing to do, to turn to my sisters and the friends I have always been fortunate to have when things got tough, to turn to them for extra support. And for the things I felt I couldn’t necessarily share with them [for whatever reason], well, I had my individual therapy with A. for that. Bringing it to the group sessions, it just seemed a bit odd.

That is not to say that I never shared anything in the meetings. I did. But not on a regular basis. It tended to be only when things were really really bad and I just couldn’t hold my tears back.

So, what was it that I found stressful? Well, in part what I have just written about; the expectation to involve myself, to engage and to share, and the feelings brought up by the fact that it was an expectation which I always felt I would never be able to live up to. Part of that was, as I said before, down to the fact that it didn’t quite make sense to me to share difficult things in a group of people I didn’t really know that well. But, of course, there were more deep rooted trust issues at work, holding me back. Other people, who may also have had friends and family they were close to, didn’t feel the same level of reluctance to take the plunge in the group meetings, and were much better able to let others see their vulnerability.

Another thing that was probably more stressful than I even realised at the time, was the constant stream of visitors to the house. Visitors who came to our meetings with a view to possibly join our household. This was a part of life in the house that I never got used to and always felt distinctly uncomfortable with. It was one of those things that made the place feel a lot less like it was my home as opposed to only being the place where I happened to be living.

People would come, share their story, share of themselves, [or in some cases not share] and we were, I suppose, meant to get a feel for whether or not this was a person who could fit into our house, who might benefit from moving in. It probably doesn’t sound particularly stressful, but it really was. Especially the decision making process, where – in theory – residents were said to have a big say in whether or not someone was invited to join, but which in reality often felt like a humongous and never-ending pressure to get new people in. Often at a time when all you really wanted was to find some headspace for yourself, to settle in the group you were already living with. I remember more than one meeting where one of the house therapists would say something along the lines of the process being about all of us reaching some sort of consensus about whether or not a person was suitable for our house, and in the next breath would not-so-casually mention how we needed to be X number of people living in the house for it to be financially viable. No pressure, right. :þ Also, I always took issue with the fact that the question “Is this someone I can live with?” seemed to be second priority to “Could this person gain something from moving in?”, which, it could be argued, sent the message that the gain of a person joining far outweighed the potential rise in stress level of those already in the house.

Clearly, there were times when the reluctance to accept new housemates were motivated less by worries about how a new person might impact the household negatively, and more about a strong wish to hold on to what was familiar. But, then, is that so strange? For a person to build a home, there arguably needs to be a level of familiarity and stability. A stream of new introductions allows little space for that.

Stressful was also the particular mix of people in the house at any given time. Without going into detail about any one individual, the people staying in the house – at least for most of my stay there – could be broadly grouped into either dealing with depressive and/or anxiety related issues, or difficulties which fell somewhere along the more psychotic end of the mental health spectrum. And, as housemates were supposed to support one another [rather than relying on the house therapists – who only come to the house for the meetings – to sort things out] it at points felt very much like the first group was responsible for the latter group.

It isn’t easy walking through the door, never knowing what you might be walking in to. I’m not going to say that I was in any way the person who most often ended up keeping track of others – I wasn’t – but, there were absolutely times when I had to drop what I was doing in order to help settle a very agitated housemate or, once or twice, call the police because someone had taken off, stating they were going to kill themselves. And I think this way of always being on the ready to put fires out, to some degree stopped me from being able to explore my own issues more. [Not the only reason for this, of course, but one of them.]

One of the really invaluable, yet hard bought, lessons from my time in the house, was having to seriously think and feel through what boundaries meant to me. Which ones were important to me, which ones did I feel able to be more flexible about? I had to work at asserting myself, when I felt the boundaries were being stretched beyond what was OK for me. Regular readers will remember that my decisions to ultimately leave the community came down to – in part – feeling that I needed to make a stand for myself, to not just go along with boundaries being pushed, but to recognise that what I feel OK with, or not, is important and worth holding on to. But of course, this was an ongoing battle, this getting a feel for when it was important to hold on to my way of living my life, yet at the same time question my reasons and motivations for doing so. When was there a valid reason, and when was I simply being stubborn and resisting change? When was it a case of me being the rebellious teenager I never got to be in my own family, when was it the adult me refusing to see things from another person’s perspective?

While I was staying at the house, one of the house therapists published a book about the community houses run by the Philadelphia Association. I made the conscious decision at the time not to read it while I was still living there.

Having now lived away from the house for nearly a year, I have read it, and I have to say that it’s a book well worth reading. I found it very interesting to read about the history of the houses [which I had some idea of, even before moving in, but, again had chosen to not explore too extensively], and how the philosophy behind the houses has altered and varied at different points.

I think it’s an honest book, even though I at times found myself smiling at the discrepancy between the idea of the community houses and the reality of them. At least from my point of view.

Anyway, if you are interested in reading the book for yourself, click the link or picture below.

If you would like to read about my time in The House: entries written between January 2009 and July 2011 were written while I was staying in The House. The first post I wrote having moved in is called “On My Own – An Entry About Finding New Ways To Cope“.

xx

An Uneasy Dwelling by Paul Gordon

An Uneasy Dwelling
by Paul Gordon

Sisters, Study-Avoidance & Melting Crayons

Posted by What It Takes To Be Me in Creativity, Depression, Expression Through Art, Family, Flashbacks, Psychology, Psychotherapy Breaks, Psychotherapy with A, Reading, Studying, Writing and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

So I’m back from my trip to Sweden, and at the moment it feels like it has done me a world of good. It was simply great to spend a whole week with my sisters and their little families and just enjoy being alive. The weather was great and although we all took turns taking ill, all in all it was just really nice to hang out. We basically ate, watched my youngest nephew run around and ate some more. That is, that’s what my sisters and I did. The boys were busy digging in the garden, planting a hedge around it. And in between that we managed to watch a film, teach my sister’s dog to go on the slippery-dip and get my youngest sister and her man to understand how to solve the first two layers of the Rubik’s cube intuitively.

Oh, and my sisters and brothers-in-law gave me the super-awesomest prezzie ever; the new iPad [which I am, incidentally, using as we speak, in conjunction with my bluetooth keyboard].

I feel that this trip has really helped to reset my brain. I feel so much happier than I have in the past several months, and although I am still having flashbacks it’s nowhere near as bad as it was, pre-trip.

Since I’ve been back I’ve started a new course, and – true to form – I’ve excelled at the art of study-avoidance. I am feeling a bit unhappy about having chosen the course I have; a very basic psychology course about stuff I pretty much already know, but just want to get on paper that I do in fact know it. It’s very hard to motivate oneself to read material about stuff you already know, when the main focus ends up being trying to remember sources for future reference, rather than actually learning. That said, of course anything psychology related will always push your little grey cells into action, and you’ll realise you have thoughts and ideas you might not have had when you originally read about a specific study. In short; once I actually open the book, I do get quite into what I’m reading.. it’s just getting to that point of opening the book, which holds me back. There are always a million other things I feel I need to read; blogs, news, tweets, facebook updates.. You know how it goes.. And that’s before I’ve even got to the various iPlayer programs I simply must catch up on, not to mention the millions of YouTube clips I feel will enrich my life to no end..

I do slightly regret that I didn’t decide to do the course on the autistic spectrum which was also on offer. I would really have liked to have been reading that right now. But, I’m trying to use it as a carrot of sorts. If I manage to get through this course [ie find a way to utilise good days of fewer flashbacks, days when I have a reasonable level of concentration] then I’ll be allowed to do the autistic spectrum one after.

So, I suppose that’s all good. Especially the part where I am actually, actively, looking ahead, into the future. The last few months have been so rough, it’s been very hard to think like that, to imagine a time when things feel different, but right now things seems to have swung around for me a bit.

Also, since I’ve been back, I’ve been feeling a lot more creative. I have been working on my book, which is ever so slowly taking shape, and I find myself curious to find out where the characters will take me. And that’s always a good sign.

On top of that very specific writing, my sister and I also hatched an idea about setting up a collaborative writing site online, the idea being that you could go to the site, read something someone has posted and then take over the writing, or join in. I for one have several writing projects which I have started, but which are now mainly collecting dust on my harddrive. What you could do on this new site is to upload what you have written and invite others to complete it, or to co-write it with you. Or you might want to be someone else for a day [come on, we all have those days].. Well, you could go onto the site as a character and join in some playwriting, adding lines on behalf of your character. This is all still in its infancy, but, I only posted the idea late last night on another blog, and I’ve already had people contact me to say they would be interested in joining or starting writing projects.

Observant readers will have noticed that while I have written about how great it was to be with my sisters and how that’s really helped resetting the serotonin levels I’ve omitted to talk about seeing my father the first time in over two years. This is, of course, not by chance. In short, it was actually really lovely seeing him and his boyfriend, and spending time with them. But, knowing me, I tend to only begin processing these kind of encounters a while after getting back to the UK. So, keep an eye out and there will more than likely be an update on this particular part of my trip to Sweden.

In terms of not having therapy, well, there is no getting around it – that is still really hard. I miss my space to voice my thoughts. Of course I talk to my friends and I do my writing and all of that, but there just isn’t a substitute for therapy. Therapists definitely should not be allowed to have children! [..says the Therapist’s Daughter..] July – or whenever A. in reality decides to go back to work – feels very very far away indeed..

Anyway, me and my new iPad and bluetooth keyboard need to get to the library now, so I’ll leave you here for now.

Do be kind to yourself, and enjoy the utterly ESSENTIAL YouTube video below..

All the very best and more,

xx

I really need to try this, but maybe on a black or gray canvas, 
and just letting the crayons melt organically in the sun..

Being Wrong & Self-Elected Madness

Posted by What It Takes To Be Me in Being Alive, Expressing Emotion, Faith, Identity, Judaism, Psychology, Reading and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

No one likes to be wrong, right? Wrong.
Right now I’m ecstatic to have been proven wrong. As it turns out snowballs do have a chance in hell; Sweden just knocked the Czech Republic out of the Ice-Hockey World Championships and claimed their place in the battle for gold on Sunday evening. Can’t wait! Go Tre Kronor!

Later tonight Finland and Russia go head to head over the other slot for the final. I’m rooting for Finland in this game. I probably shouldn’t, because Sweden-Finland games tend to be very hard on the old ticker. Lots of history there. But – the games are usually well worth watching. Maybe we should strike a deal with the Fins if they make it to the final; if they let us win the ice-hockey they can win the Eurovision Song Contest.

All this ice-hockey excitement aside, there is something to be said about sport on an international level. It boosts our national pride and strengthens our national identity: we get together and celebrate or commiserate. We’re united, a team. And in a world where we are becoming more and more detached, where even our next-door-neighbours are often faceless strangers, this is not to be underestimated.

Also, sport is an excellent opportunity to express emotions. To let both victorious jubilation and devastating disappointment out, to let it show on the outside, to not hold back. Complete and utter release. It’s good stuff!

So, to those of you who don’t see the point in playing or watching sport, it’s actually a pretty healthy thing to engage in. There’s even been books written about the psychology of it all. More than one, in fact. One which I particularly liked was Football Delirium by psychoanalyst Chris Oakley in which he argues that football offers us the possibility of manageable doses of self-elected madness. This guy gets sport. He is also self-electedly mad. In a good way.

Whether you’re into sport or not, I’d recommend it:

Anyway, soon be time for face-off in the second ice-hockey semi-final of the day, and I need to do some manic last minute pre-Shabbat prep. As much as I love ice-hockey, Shabbat comes first.

That’s just the way I roll.

Be good to yourselves,

xx

Alice in Wonderland, Jefferson Airplane & The Lighter Side of Grammar

Posted by What It Takes To Be Me in Being Alive, Identity, Memories, Music, Reading, Sef-Awareness, Video and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I just finished watching the Royal Ballet’s version of  “Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland” on the BBC, and it reminded me of how I always loved the hookah smoking caterpillar from Lewis Carroll’s wonderful story, who – in the midst of all the wondrous madness – stops to ask the very sobering question: “Who are you?” A question most of us spend our entire lives trying to answer.

One of my bosses insists on calling myself and one of my other workmates Tweedle-Dee & Tweedle-Dum, but, really, in terms of Alice-in-Wonderlandness I would say that I am a lot more like the aforementioned caterpillar, sprouting questions which at first look may come across as utter nonsense, but on closer inspection has the potential to make us look at ourselves more deeply.

I wrote in another post about question marks and exclamation points, and if I remember correctly, I said something along the lines of finding it easier to live with exclamation points that question marks, and while that is certainly true, I do still like my questions. I like the idea of knowing that I don’t know everything, and I love how one question leads to another, like pearls on the string of life.

While exclamation points can be exciting statements about yourself, a question mark asks you to look further, to get under the skin, to think harder.

That said, my favourite punctuation mark is, by far the semi-colon. Not quite as open as a colon, nor as characterless as the common comma, a semi-colon stands out as strong and purposeful, challenging us to say more.

Anyway, that’s my two pennies for this beautiful sunny morning.

All the very best and more,

xx

On the Alice theme, one of my favourite songs of all time; White Rabbit by Jefferson Airplane.


Another Day, Another Blessing – Writing Myself Out Of A Phunk

Posted by What It Takes To Be Me in Friends, Poetry, Reading, Writing and tagged with , , , , ,

Another day, another smile. Another blessing. Met up with a friend at a café yesterday, and it was great, as always. I have this café which has become The Café, the one where I usually meet with my friends. And it’s kind of nice. I know the place, the staff, the menu. Very reassuring.

Woke up on Sunday, a day which was ridiculously sunny, and I though, let’s do something nice today. So I decided to try to organise a little get-together for the women from my poetry group. We last met as a group at the reading back in December. We’re overdue a meet. Said and done. Got my phone out and sent a mass-text out, suggesting we meet up. But as soon as I had done that, that little negative voice in my head started making itself heard, and I almost immediately decided that it had been a silly thing to do. People won’t want to meet up, they’ll think I’m being pushy, they’ll have forgotten who I am altogether.

Thankfully the anxiety levels didn’t have time to rise too high before I had the first text back, in the affirmative. Then I had another. And another. Great! People want to meet up, they don’t think I’m pushy – and most importantly – they do remember me.

Next step was figuring out a time and place. Well, a time, at least. The place was basically a given, since most of these women will have shared a hot chocolate with me at The Café at least once before, so it made sense to keep it simple. Time was a bit trickier. As it always is when it comes to finding a time that will suit as many as possible, but after some fiddling and a few phone calls to a few people a time was agreed; next Sunday, early afternoon. Works perfectly for me since I’m basically incommunicado over FriSat, closing down for shabbat and also taking some proper me-time. So meeting up with friends the day after, once I re-connect my various devices, is always nice.

Finished the Maroda book this morning. And as always, it was with a slight feeling of loss. I absolutely love reading books that make me think, both on a more general level, but also to reflect on my own personal situation, and this book certainly did that for me.

As I’m writing this, I realise that this doesn’t feel like a real blog entry. It’s a bit too positive. And, in all honesty, up until I sat down to write this, I really wasn’t feeling all that up-beat; feeling a bit caught up in some sort of greyness, clouding my thoughts in quite a bad way.

But hey, if it works, it works.

Be good and well.

xx

Ruins, Emotion & Change – Learning How To Feel

Posted by What It Takes To Be Me in Anxiety, Family, Personal Growth, Psychotherapy, Psychotherapy with A, Reading, Regression, Sef-Awareness and tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

Had my first session at A.’s new place yesterday. Owing to my negative sense of direction I gave myself a ridiculous amount of time to find the place. As it turns out it was both needed and not needed. Went down the wrong road twice (not great when you’ve got a knee injury which is making every step agony) – but I still found the road well in time for session, meaning I ended up loitering on a side street for some thirty minutes. Luckily someone in the area had an open internet connection so I filled the time randomly browsing the interweb. Also it gave me the time to read another chapter of Dr Maroda’s book. (See previous post).

As I’ve mentioned in earlier blog offerings anxiety levels have been on a steady upward curve for the last couple of weeks, since I found out about A.’s move. Things, big things, are stirring inside of me. I do realise this is not all to do with A.’s move; the effect is far in excess of the cause. Admittedly, there are a number of things happening in my life, all of which have an effect – but this still feels different, disconnected somehow, to present events. It feels like a change on a much, much deeper level – outside of specific causes; on a basic human level.

Last Thursday I suddenly felt absolutely overwhelmed by emotions. I happened to be on the phone with my sisters at the time, but even that didn’t help. It was a tsunami-like wave of feelings that completely swept me off my feet, made me loose my grip. So I hung up on my sisters to try to deal with this. My initial feeling – or actually it was more of a self-protective instinct – was to try to shut down. Only I couldn’t. Next this very intense urge to cut hit me, wanting desperately to reach for those scalpels. But even at the height of intensity, in the middle of the urge, I knew that I wasn’t going to resort to that. Instead I tried to just stay in the moment – allow those feelings to be. To not fight them, even though every cell in my body was preparing for flight mode. I ended up curled up in bed, foetal position, unable to do anything but just breathe. In and out, through the experience. Just breathing. That was all I could cope with.

Getting a scalpel out would have been the easy option, but I knew that something big was happening, and that I had to find a way to let it. I had one single thought in my head that I can consciously remember: I need to find a way to bring this experience to session on Tuesday.

So this session, the first one at The New Place, was, at least for me, very different to other sessions. I’m not sure if it was noticeable to A., but I was very consciously allowing myself to just go quiet every time a feeling came over me. I didn’t really try to verbalise it much, because for me, even just allowing the feelings to exist (as opposed to immediately, and by any means necessary, control them) is pretty big. I don’t know if it showed on my face or not; it’s possible that to the outside world it would not have been possible to discern this difference in me. But, to me, this was a huge step. To allow myself to fully feel. And in the presence of another person.

At one stage in the session, having tried to explain what happened on Thursday (and has been happening – albeit in smaller doses – since then) to A. I asked if maybe this is me regressing. I posed it as a question, but, really I suppose what I was doing was trying to tell A. that this is what I believe is happening.

Later A. asked what I was regressing to, and also commented that I seem unsure as to whether I’m going backwards or forwards. I explained that I don’t really think of it as regressing backwards in a real sense, but more about somehow allowing myself to feel the things I should have felt a long time ago. Acknowledging these feelings.

As I said that a song popped into my head, so I quoted part of it to A.:

“..I will crawl through my past
over stones blood and glass
in the ruins

Reaching under the fence
as I try to make sense
in the ruins..

But if I am to heal
I must first learn to feel
in the ruins..”

Now, I’m not convinced about the need to be crawling over stones, blood or glass, nor am I sure that it is possible to make sense of the ruins or the damage done – some things are simply senseless – but I do think that there is a need to explore the past. Not necessarily through recounting and re-visiting every single memory in graphically verbalised detail – but rather through a true acceptance of the feelings attached to those memories.

“..if I am to heal, I must first learn to feel..”

So, frightening and painful as this experience is, I am absolutely sure that without allowing these emotions to play out you can’t bring about real change. Yes, you can change things on the surface. Of course you can. But not on a real lasting and deep level. For that you need to accept yourself as a vulnerable, feeling human being.

xx

PS. I was going to post a link to a YouTube clip of Melissa Etheridge performing Ruins – but I couldn’t find one that matched in emotion what the lyrics are saying. They all seemed too “showy”. Instead I recommend you listen to the studio version, which can be found on ME’s 1993 Yes, I Am-album.

Unconscious Communication

Posted by What It Takes To Be Me in Communication, Countertransference, Psychology, Psychotherapy, Psychotherapy with A, Reading, Self-Disclosure, The Therapeutic Relationship, Transference and tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

Anxiety levels soaring, I’m trying to control it the best way I know how; by reading. Thankfully a book arrived in the post on Friday, one which I have been waiting for for over a year. (Yes – over a year.. It was meant to be released in Jan 2009, but wasn’t until just recently).

Regular readers of this blog will already be aware of my love of books of all sorts, but in particular books on therapy and/or psychology related topics. The book I’m currently reading is Dr Karen Maroda‘s most recent offering; “Psychodynamic Techniques“. I’m about a third of the way through this book, and I have to say, I’m liking it. It should probably be noted that this volume is primarily aimed at neophyte therapists starting out, and touches on issues like the use of self-disclosure in the therapeutic relationship, therapeutic and non-therapeutic regression and how erotic feelings can either help or hinder the process.

Having previously read Dr Maroda’s books “The Power of Countertransference” and “Seduction, Surrender & Transformation” (see links to the right and previous blog entries) I notice that this book is written in the same ultra-accessible style, with many case studies to illustrate the theory in a real in treatment situation.

In my most recent session with A. she made the comment that (in contrast to other situations in my life) I seem to feel that in therapy I perceive her as being the one holding all the power. I responded that I don’t entirely agree with that statement, but that, although I choose what to talk about and what to withhold, I am not the only person in that room, and that just as she plays off me, so I play off her; that she brings something to each session through being who she is. I don’t think I managed to quite verbalise what I meant, but reading Maroda’s chapter on mutuality and collaboration in the therapeutic dyad, I found something that much better expresses what it was that I was trying to say: both therapist and client will inevitably repeat past patterns (within the therapeutic relationship), and so, even though the focus of treatment is (as it should be) on me and my progress, A. does have a certain directional power in the way she responds to me and how she either encourages or discourages me to delve deeper into certain areas. Naturally, this is not necessarily a conscious choice and often not expressed verbally, but it nonetheless plays a part in how the therapy develops. I suppose what I am trying to get at is that far beyond our conscious and surface choices our respective unconscious are also in some way connecting, communicating; in short are aware of what the other is experiencing in the situation. Naturally not in a psychic I-know-what-you’re-thinkings ort of way, but on a more subtle level of knowing when we’re hitting the mark and when we’re not.

Anyway, must end this here. Time to (hopefully) watch Canada trash USA in the men’s ice-hockey final.

All the very best and more,

xx

Additional comment: YEEEEEAAAAAAHHH! Go Canada, go!

Blogs I Read

Posted by What It Takes To Be Me in Community, Reading and tagged with ,

I love reading.

In addition to that I like hearing other people’s thoughts. So, as a consequence, I read a lot of blogs. Masses of them. In fact I spend a ridiculous amount of time reading various blogs. Some sporadically, admittedly, and some which I check for updates on a daily basis. [Yes, yes – I know of the RSS feature, but I find it much more exciting to actually go to a blog and find it’s been updated]. I would list all of them on here, but it would be a bit of a chore, so instead I’ve added a section to the right, appropriately called “The Blogs I Read”. They’re basically the blogs I would not miss a single update of, because they’re simply that good. Listed alphabetically, for fairness.. :)

Now, if you know me, and know that I read and love your blog and feel somewhat offended at not having made The List.. well.. it’s all been done in the interest of relative internet anonymity. Both for you and for me. Best intentions, and so on. You know me well enough to know I’m in no way dissing your blog offerings. I still love your blogs nearly as much as I love you.

Anway, good friends and other random internet wanderers: time to get a move on. Or at least, at a leisurely tempo, get myself in the shower..

What? Too much information?

Bah!
:)

Be good to yourselves,

xx

PS. Can I just point out that it took me nearly an hour and a half to get the heading for S’s Blog Reading List to stop linking to Kellevision? My web design skills are getting rusty..

PS2. If you’re using Firefox, iExplorer or Safari, could you let me know if the right hand menu looks ok? I’m a Google Chrome girl myself, and a lazy one at that.. Can’t be bothered downloading the other main browsers to find out for myself..

Who Is It That Can Tell Me Who I Am? – An Entry About Search For Truth

Posted by What It Takes To Be Me in Reading and tagged with , , , , , ,

By virtue of being a self-proclaimed writer I also spend an awful lot of time reading, getting a feel for other people’s ways of expressing themselves. Also, reading has always been an obvious form of escapism for me, especially when suffering from the inevitable writer’s blocks that every writer encounters at one time or another.

Ever since I was very young I devoured books as were they the very essence of life. Food for thought, but also, nourishment for a starving soul. I had, and to a degree still have, the idea that within those pages of black on white there was truth to be found. Hints to the mystery of life.

I am a slow reader; painfully slow, if you ask some – but for good reason. I need to take my time because reading is for me not only reading, but it’s a combined experience of taking in what someone else is trying to say and figuring things out for myself, sometimes even applying new ideas to my own sense of reality and identity.

I have a tendency to read more than one book at any one time, partly because not every book fits every mood, but also so as to ensure that I don’t get too locked into one set view.

I finished reading a book a couple of weeks ago, Who Is It That Can Tell Me Who I Am? by Jane Haynes. And there was something about it that really touched me in a most profound way. I don’t think I could ever exactly specify what about it it was that so moved me, but I think it was something about the utter honesty and human vulnerability with which it had been written that somehow connected with something inside of me. It’s an enormously beautifully and elegantly written book, but there was something much deeper than just the choice of word, the turn of phrase, that did something for me. I don’t think I’ve even quite fully comprehended what myself. At least not on a conscious level. It is more an instinctive understanding that this was an important book for me to read, than actually knowing what about it it was that made it so important.

So, that, dear friends, is what I intend to ponder on my next lap around the library. I’ll let you know if I come up with something which can be coherently shared.

All the very best and more,

xx

PS. I love the King Learian title of Haynes’s book. How anyone could not love Shakespeare is beyond me.