I have found that therapy is a lot like knitting-- I've been knitting for about 10 years, and I spin yarn on a spinning wheel too (from fiber directly off the sheep or other creatures, sometimes). It gets me outta my head.

I am not one of those intuitive knitters, you know, someone who can pick up yarn and then just make a perfect-fitting sweater. I have to follow a pattern, which in knitting terms, is just a set of step by step instructions. The first time I knit from a pattern, I read the pattern before I started, and it made absolutely no sense to me. I took it to my local knitshop and asked the expert knitter on staff why this pattern didn't make any sense and why was I so dumb that I couldn't understand it.
She said, essentially, there is no way that the pattern can make sense to you in the abstract.
YOu cannot possibly visualize how the sweater will be completed by reading the pattern. You
have to just do it-- take it step by step. You start by making the neckline. Once you finish the neck, you will understand how you create more stitches for the sleeves. And she was right.

Anne