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sunrise · Oct 03, 2011, 01:43 AM

This week, T and I continued making headway on something I have tried for years to bring up. We've had a few recent sessions where progress has been BIG and core issues tumbled out--stuff I had not even been able to articulate well to myself. This core stuff dates back to when I was a young woman and has influenced important life choices/decisions I have made. Sometimes that is hard for me to acknowledge--I did such and such because of this??? Yes. As I told T, it makes me feel like much of my life has been spent behaving as a planarian might--swimming in the opposite direction of an anticipated painful stimulus. I am just a planarian. T said that I have dealt with a lot of painful stuff in the last few years and have not run from it--true. So maybe I'm finding some courage at last and am not forever locked into stimulus/response.

I have sometimes felt dealing with these events from young adulthood and their aftermath is the last frontier of my healing (and work in therapy). When and if I could deal with this, there would be no big stuff left--the "junk" would be pretty much gone. As I talked to T of these past events, I felt like maybe I wouldn't come back. Now there is nothing left to work on that is essential to heal. Bim bam bop, we is done!

I became sad because I don't want to end this. T was giving me a pep speech at the end of our session, and I was not listening. I was crying as I thought about us splitting up. T thought my tears were continued sadness related to the stuff from my past we had discussed, but it was because I was sad to think of leaving him. I wondered how ever was I going to be able to get through the next moments when he would ask when we should schedule our next appointment. Would I say "never"? How could I do that? Maybe I could make an appointment then email him later to cancel. Maybe I should come back for a last session to say bye. All these thoughts swirling--I did not hear a word of his speech.

When he asked me when I wanted to meet next, I didn't deal with it and chose a date in 3 weeks. He commented on the longer interval--lately we have been seeing each other every 2 weeks--but I didn't respond. Choosing a longer interval helped me feel like I was honoring my impulse to end things. Then I left.

I just felt sad. It's over. This is it. No one told me it's over--it was all in my head, just a feeling I was having.

The next day in school, I watched this very strange movie about quantum mechanics, the nature of the universe, neurobiology, and the unity of all things. It included interviews with scientists, philosophers, and spiritual leaders. What they were saying seemed to be beyond where I was in my development. I wasn't completely on board with their ideas because of the weird factor, but maybe this was the sort of thing one thought about and did once one was beyond the junk in one's life. Like if you are healed, you are now at a zero point or sea level, and now you can start moving into the positive--up the mountain. All this time I have been working on being healed, thinking that if I ever managed that, I would be done with therapy, done with personal growth, done with figuring things out. I would now be "OK" and that would be it. But this movie, despite its strangeness, made me think that there might be something beyond healing. And maybe that is a direction T and I might take now in therapy. I think for the first time, I saw that there is something beyond the junk.

Then I didn't feel so sad--it wasn't over after all with T! I wanted to tell T that now I want an appointment in only 2 weeks, not 3!

So I feel better now.

If I had discussed this with T, he would probably have told me much the same thing as I discovered. He would not have said, "when you're healed our work is done." He would have had me look beyond that. My T has always said to me, "only you know what you need to heal." Mostly, I have, and T has helped make that happen. But if there isn't much more healing to be done, how do I know what to do next? Is T now gonna say, "only you know where you need to go next"? I don't! It's too beyond me. I need T's help with vision, I think.

T said we should bring poetry next time. So he has something in mind for our session (he didn't think we were done with therapy). I think I'll try to bring something that connects with ideas about what might be ahead.
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