[Ygrec23]

Good things have been happening in therapy. Very good things. I’ve hesitated to post about them here because I was worried that those still struggling, without much good news of their own, without much past success, might feel badly about someone else’s good luck. Though it’s true that the luck has aspects that won’t seem very lucky to younger people. But I’ve been told that good news for one is good news for all, and that any news of success in therapy (particularly in my case of decades of trying, without success) will be a message of hope for others.

I started in therapy when very young, feeling that something, somewhere was very wrong and needed to be fixed, though I couldn’t describe (or even imagine) what exactly was wrong. As I know now, I was running my dissociation machine on triple overtime and was so buried beneath layers of avoidance and self-protection that regardless of what my T’s said to me they just couldn’t get through. They did believe, though, and for all I know they may have been right, that I was pretty fragile, mentally speaking, and gave me what I now understand to have been “supportive therapy,” which really means no therapy at all.

I spent twenty-five years doing such therapy with a variety of T’s as I moved around the country. As I said, nothing happened. And as sometimes happens I ran out of money and health insurance and had to leave off therapy for a further twenty-five years. Then three years ago my mediation practice ran aground on the shoals of the Great Recession and we lost everything we had, as well as an income. But then last summer I qualified for Medicare and decided to go back into therapy. My wife had already been in therapy for some time with a local woman T, and I’d sat in (by request) on many of their sessions. I decided that my wife’s T was the T for me, and with the permission of both of them I started out.

The severe financial pressures we have been (and continue to be) under just made entirely untenable the massive defense mechanisms I had unknowingly lived with my entire life, since babyhood. The defense mechanisms had already severely limited my income potential, and with the recession they were the only things holding me back from trying to re-enter the middle class. The pressure was great enough, on re-commencing therapy, for me to get a lot of cooperation from my unconscious, which apparently decided it was better to eat than to keep insisting on a bunch of ancient mental rules (that had probably not done any good anyway since I was four or five).

And so we began last July. I was totally serious. It really was make or break. It was totally unlike any prior experience of therapy. I told T of my very specific goals for therapy (on which she agreed), informed her at length, without her asking, of everything that I thought basic to myself – many things I hadn’t said to prior T’s. And then we really started to roll. I brought her dreams on a regular basis (something I’d never been able to do before) and we puzzled through them for the messages they contained. I answered her questions, listened to her comments, spent many non-therapy hours chasing feelings, connecting dots, thinking about my parents and my family. Luckily, since the 1970’s I had read quite a lot about attachment theory, and this played a large part in my efforts at self-discovery. Insight piled on insight, one thing led to another, and I couldn’t (and can’t) slow down. It’s like pulling a sweater thread, and pulling and pulling, and finally the whole thing just comes apart. We’re not there yet, but that’s what’s happening.

Last Monday (12/20) I was doing a mediation in a town about forty miles away and a large, large chunk of insight just popped into my head, uninvited, unsought, unasked for. It had to do with the consequences of my traditional “freezing” and dissociating instead of having a fight or flight response. I’ve been “frozen” all of my life, and that has significant effects on cognition and all kinds of perception, material and emotional. I was able on that morning to just “see through” everything I’d been doing and feeling my entire life. I was starting to become transparent to myself. And it gets better. When you start unraveling that kind of thing it just keeps coming and coming. I told T all about it on Tuesday (12/21) and she was really, really pleased. She does want me to slow down, but I am not in control of the process. If I can get “the man upstairs” to accept that, then it will happen. Otherwise we’ll just keep roaring forward. At the rate we’re going, I don’t know that I’ll need therapy in 2012. Contrary to my previous thinking, therapy is much, much more self-help than I'd thought.

I’m not boasting. I’m not throwing this in your way to show how great I am. Nor even how lucky I’ve been. Can a person really be considered lucky if, like me, they have to wait until the age of 65 to make progress in therapy?

No. I offer this story to you as a good reason to keep plugging. To not give up. To always have hope. But there’s another lesson too: many people really have to be willing to give up everything else in order to succeed in therapy. It took complete economic failure for me to be able to tell my unconscious to get serious and have him accept it. And it took complete willingness on my conscious part to share everything, every single little thing, with T, and to chase tiny wisps of feeling and mood to their logical ends. If I have done it, others certainly can, and they can do it faster than I’ve done.

Therapy can seem like an infinite vista of locked doors that you try one by one, and then, finally, the 17,061st door opens when you turn the knob, showing you a landscape of peace and happiness you’ve never seen before but which is yours to enter and take possession of. Don’t stop now. Keep chugging along. If you really, really want to, you’ll make it.

A wonderful Christmas and successful therapy in the New Year to all PC'ers!!! Take care.

[geez]

Thank you so much ((Ygrec)) for sharing your experience. I too feel like I'm going through this process where things are coming to surface in a crystal clear fashion. Keep posting your positive experiences and I'll be sure to do the same!

[Gus1234U]

it is so good to hear of your progress Ygrec~! i'm a firm believer that "mental Health" can be restored, regardless of chemical imbalances,, a kind heart and compassion towards all, starting with oneself,, are the very foundations of personal growth.. Well Done, and thanks for sharing ~! Gus

[zooropa]

this is wonderful and moving, thank you SO MUCH for sharing it with us.

[rainbow8]

Thanks for sharing!! Your story is very inspirational and I'm very glad you're making such strides in your therapy!!!

[sunrise]

Thank you for telling your story, Ygrec. My T has told me before that sometimes the progress people make in therapy is meteoric. I think this describes your recent experience. I am very happy for you.

Originally Posted by Ygrec23

But there’s another lesson too: many people really have to be willing to give up everything else in order to succeed in therapy. It took complete economic failure for me to be able to tell my unconscious to get serious and have him accept it. And it took complete willingness on my conscious part to share everything,

There is a strange kind of motivation from being on the bottom. That "what do I have to lose?" attitude can make possible what was not possible when one had more.

Much luck on your continued "unraveling"!

[WikidPissah]

very cool