[autumnleaves]

Hello everyone. I'm sorry if this seems like a stupid question. I have been thinking a lot about different problems I have right now like that my best friend is leaving in a month for an 18 month missionary trip (our contact will be limited to snail mail letters), I'm trying not to fail my classes or just get terrible grades, I'm in a financial tough spot that will get worse if I have to take summer courses to make up for this semester, I'm still addicted to porn... etc. And I get SO frustrated at how long it takes to sift through each of these issues. I feel like I go into session thinking that I'm going to accomplish so much, but I leave feeling like I did accomplish quite a lot, but that there is still SO MUCH that I haven't touched. I also worry about when I student teach next spring, I will be working from 7:30-3:30 at least and probably some after-hours work. How will I have time for therapy? Any advice? Can anyone relate to feeling like the work will never be done? I entered therapy in October of 2010 and never dreamed that I would be working this long and hard. Am I really just that screwed up? Ugh.

[Sannah]

Hi AL, sounds like you are living in the future and not in the present at all. Like the present is so painful for you to endure so you escape to the future but the future just brings worry. I had to learn to live in the present. This really is where life is lived. It sounds like you want to hurry and get somewhere, anywhere but where you are at right now. Learning to live where you are at is a gift.

[autumnleaves]

Thank you. I had not thought of it like that before, but it makes a lot of sense. Perhaps continuing to study the works of Pema Chodron will help me. She writes a lot about mindfulness in the context of Buddhism, but so that it can apply to nearly anyone. I just ordered her book "The Places that Scare You" and have been reading "When Things Fall Apart"

[CantExplain]

It is easy to be intimidated by how far you have to go.
Try to celebrate how far you've come.

How far have you come?
It is often very difficult to see the progress you've made. Perhaps your therapist can help you there.

Have you ever worked in the construction industry?
Sometime they spend six months on the foundations, and all there is to show for it is a hole in the ground. But three months later, the building is up.

The hardest work in therapy happens at the beginning.

[critterlady]

I feel like that, too. I've only been in therapy for 7 months, but there are so many things I haven't even brought up yet, let alone resolved.

My T just told me yesterday that he thinks I've been working too hard and it's causing me undue stress. He wants me to pull back a little and cut myself some slack. It's hard to do when I know there's so much to work on.

He does remind me often of the progress I've made so far. It's good to focus on that.

[Perna]

See if you can make the problems more concrete.

I would get or make a calendar for the next 18 months, for example (two?) and put various personal dates on it that are relevant to your best friend; maybe mark what day you will write every couple weeks and, when you receive a letter, put that on there? Just use the calendar for your friend, to represent the time apart and how soon they'll be back, etc.

Take a moment to write a schedule of your classes, what they are, what homework, papers, tests are left, where you are and how you'd like to do. Get it outside of your head so it isn't just swirling around and so it can be uncoupled from the money issues.

Make a budget for each of the next 4-6 months and a projection for the next year or two; see if you can free up some money so you are not so crunched if you have to take courses in the summer and also make sure that makes sense rather than adding a course or two to the Fall courses instead or putting off the student teaching; taking things slower until you don't have so much going on elsewhere.

Look at the porn use, maybe use your "friend" calendar to work with it and mark its use on there? Thinking about your friend might help with not using the porn? But start recording your use of it and keeping track; with it just "there" it can seem more/less than it actually is.

Get a handle on each problem you have and write it out, get it out of your head where you can see it.