View Single Post
 
Old Apr 25, 2007, 09:31 AM
Perna's Avatar
Perna Perna is offline
Pandita-in-training
 
Member Since: Sep 2006
Location: Maryland
Posts: 27,289
I was in therapy the last time from February 1996 through June 2005. Like Life, not all periods of therapy are full of motivation and clarity?

I was in therapy, basically 35 years of my life (started at college, 1970), because I was stuck inside my head and kept trying to make the area smaller and "safer" and eventually ended up in a too small, cramped area and realized smaller and safer wasn't going to work. I had to reverse that and man was that hard!

You are alive now and that, sometimes, is one's only motivation to work at and keep doing it? Since you're looking for motivation, that "search" is sometimes all you'll have as motivation. There's a dissatisfaction somewhere making you search.

For me, that was often enough. I didn't miss any therapy sessions (nor did my T) and I kept going whether bored or motivated or we said nothing (the first time I was in therapy with this T, from 1978-1987, I didn't "get" anywhere until the last year or two!). Sometimes I would just keep plugging away because there was nothing else I could do and because I'm tenacious that way.

I hate to "exercise." I spent several years trying to think up alternative/"natural" ways to exercise. I had a mailbox and post office 1/2 mile from my home so I started mailing postcards to myself daily, walking to the post office to mail them :-) I'd find/write a quotation on each that I liked. On another walk I fould 9 pennies halfway through my "route" and so I created a fantasy about "The 10th Penny" :-) For weeks I walked the exact same route looking for that penny and finally thought of "crazy"/creative things to do like ask the next person I encountered if they had a penny they'd give me. I wrote stories like "Imagining John" about an invisible/imaginary personal trainer and the girl who imagined him and talked to him, etc. and others saw :-) She couldn't afford to join a gym and I thought of all sorts of exercises one could do outside without "real" equipment (pull a head-high, two-inch thick, tree branch down to one's shoulder) She even mentioned John in her sleep so her boyfriend misunderstood and got jealous and all sorts of other adventures ensued. I wrote a story about a school where you had to write "action" stories and then go out and live the story during the next week (so be careful what you write :-)

I love your real story about the coat. Can you start from scratch and make a story for therapy? I use to use "workbooks" like The Castle of the Pearl by Christopher Biffle, and Following Your Path by Alexandra Collins Dickerman. I lived near an "antique mall" with hundreds and hundreds of booths and use to take $10 only and go walk and look for "the" thing that spoke to me :-) I love stories and symbolism (and Jung). Find some little thing that gives you a story forward or hope. . . For a long time I had to use my therapist for hope, went to therapy in case she said something "important" that would sustain me while I searched and struggled. That worked well.
__________________
"Never give a sword to a man who can't dance." ~Confucius