Therapy, and some thoughts on how to make the most of your time:
Speak the unspeakable in therapy – Include what feels shadowy, dare to bring the parts of yourself that feel unacceptable; include rather than exclude. Know that everything we reject we become. Ask what am I not bringing? And then bring it…
Keep a journal – write, draw, splurge – Keep your therapy alive between sessions, record and ground insights, creatively respond to your inner process, let yourself write everything and anything; be a poet, be an artist.
Let go of going anywhere. Stop striving – Set an intention for yourself, acknowledge your hearts yearning, but let go of trying to be a better person or fixing yourself. The imagined end point is an illusion, there isn’t a time when everything is sorted.
Prioritise what’s happening in the room right now – Get interested in your relationship with the therapist and how that can be a source of rich learning and growth; spend less time describing things that have happened outside the room, and more time getting curious in the here and now with your therapist.
Everything is valuable and valid – Trust yourself, notice things arising in the moment and include them in your therapy even if they feel irrelevant.
Meditate – Cultivating stillness, awareness and insight through meditation will serve your therapeutic work and vice versa. Simply observing the mind, body and emotional contents supports deeper insight and a personal container that can hold deeper work. Use mindfulness to track and report your responses in the moment.
Include your body – Bring your body and all it has to say into the room. Anchor yourself physically and listen carefully and respectfully to your body – there is a wealth of data and healing to be found here. Move about – free your body.
Embrace the unknown – See your stories as just that, stories. Bring your known narratives and then be prepared to put them to one side. Let yourself not know, get curious about your blind spots, let go of the sides and swim away from the shore.
Build a support structure for your therapeutic work – Find like-minded people and build a sangha of friends on the path.
And…..Be kind to yourself.
Written by the Psychosynthesis Trust