Either that, or actually write about therapy after each session. The would be novel!
I didn't write after last week. Not particularly deliberately, just... I find it difficult.
In last week's therapy session we talked about my coping mechanisms. The list from my previous blog post, I had emailed to my therapist prior to the session. He had put them into two different categories - which I can't remember at the moment.
His two categories coincided strongly with my childhood and my teen years. I had developed some coping mechanisms that saw me through my early years, then developed a second set later on. I think it's fair to say that a lot of the childhood ones were to cope with being depressed. Mr Therapist read them very much as trying to cope with fear, or avoid that which made me afraid.
He also noticed that something that seemed important to me was writing. He's not wrong. As long as I've lived I've wanted to be an author. As a teenager writing used to just pour out of me. Poems, stories, letters. But I've been blocked for years. For a long time I thought I was being blocked by antidepressants, but I think I've just realised the cause:-
My sister is recognised as a journalist. She used to work for the Daily Mail, and has worked in editing, proof reading, etc, for a few sciencey things. I remember feeling absolutely gutted when my dad once referred to her as a writer.
I don't know what I'd expected her to become, but writing was so far off her radar that it was a complete shock to me. She was the science and maths brain at school, but had always talked about being a singer or children's TV presenter. Or a hairdresser. Writing seemed too considered, and creative, to be up her street.
The way we were brought up, was very much as if we couldn't both be good at anything. She was always referred to as the pretty one, the thin one, the clever one, the one that's good at piano, the one with all the girl guide badges, the one that went to Cambridge, the one with children, the successful worthy of being loved praised remembered one.
So I had to make my own world. I created characters in my stories who were good at things that I'd never actually get the chance to try. She couldn't take those away. And yet she did... by her becoming the one of us recognised for being a writer, I think I subconsciously felt that I could no longer write.
It feels as if I'm not allowed to. Like there's this wall that I keep banging my head against every time I actually think of writing. This is why it's really quite challenging to write these blog posts, too.
So, last week I had the homework to give myself some space each evening in which I could allow myself to write. But because I hadn't yet had the épiphane from 5 paragraphs up, I skulked into sleep each evening, guiltily wondering what alternative-me in an alternative universe might have written.
So that was last week.
This week we started off with Mr Therapist asking me what I thought of all the coping stuff. I shrugged. So he asked what I'd think if there was another child having to develop so many ways to cope.
My response was to go off on a tangent for an hour regarding feeling annoyed (angry, but I don't like that word) at my step mother all of the time.
So that was a waste of a session.
The truth is, I have no idea what I'd think. I often think I'll react one way to something, but in reality I act totally differently. I don't know what normal coping mechanisms children have to develop. Everyone has to develop something just to deal with getting through life. Who am I to figure out what's normal and healthy for other people?
That probably isn't the point. I'm probably supposed to be introspective about it. I don't think Mr Therapist has realised yet, just how much I really dislike myself. I don't want to think about me.
That's possibly why I'm in therapy.
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