Therapy does seem to work mysteriously and well, as you say.

I had trouble with the onion metaphor and applying it to myself, one ends up with "nothing" if all the layers are removed? and I preferred to think of myself as a multi-walled city like Jerusalem



But then, I was a medieval history major once upon a time. . . I still remember how in 6th grade I wanted to grow up to be a Squire; not a Page or Knight, but the in-between state of Squire.

Eventually I decided to think of the "process" as like the process of getting an education; you can see what happens when you go from 1st grade to 12th but can you describe well what happens, day-to-day? It was a little easier for me to sort of understand learning addition and then multiplication, they follow on one another well enough as do subtraction and division. The first day of 3rd grade when we were supposed to learn that multiplication and division stuff, we were given a test that included them (??? why do educators like to mess with children that way?) and I had a clue about multiplication but not division but, happily, the girl next to me knew about division but not multiplication and we quickly showed each other what we "understood". A highlight of my life.