Tuesday, October 29

Themes

In counseling we talk a lot about themes. Sessions and sessions go by and themes start to emerge. In counseling we refer to these kinds of things as schemas. A person has patterns in behavior and thought and insight into those really helps make changes.

Sometimes we see themes in life too. I have been seeing lots of things lately in my life that all fall into line... Here's some of what I've been seeing lately...

From a book...



                                             


from a TV show...

and in my own life... (Taken from a journal entry written for my hospital internship)

"This place is really a sort of microcosm for the world at large.Things never slow down, but once in a while I find solace in small places and spaces of time. My moments of solitude are even more precious here as I see people hurry past me. The fluster serves to highlight my own stillness and I find myself wondering as I sit here why I don't look for that in life outside the hospital walls. I'm often times in such a hurry. Sometimes you have to hurry, especially here at the hospital. But the more I watch people rush, the more I see that there are some things you simply can't rush through. You can't rush through emotion. Boy do I want to sometimes. You can't rush sadness.You sometimes have to sit there in it. Let it envelope you. Even though it doesn't feel good. I've been looking for the words to put to that for weeks now. And as I sit here it has finally come together in a few sentences that make a little sense. I was reading a book the other day and a line jumped out and bit me, attached itself to me... "That's the thing about sadness, pain. It just demands to be felt" . I couldn't say why those words clung to me so tightly until right now, but I see it now. The more you deny pain the right to be felt the greater the demand becomes until there's nothing you can do about it.
Through the semester so far I've found that my work here isn't what I thought it would be. I expected to work with or on behalf of patients here, but I am seeing that the bulk of my work here is on myself. I think that this program at winthrop has been easier for me in a lot of ways than it has for other students. I have a really easy time with the academic side of things. I've always made really good grades, and almost any subject I can grasp fairly easily. I don't say that to sound arrogant, but because it demonstrates how this year is a new experience for me. I've always been able to skate by. I could not crack a book all semester and still end up with Bs in all my classes. But this...This work that I'm doing now, this work on myself...There's no short cut. There's no way to handle this overwhelming sadness except to feel it, so sit in it, to embrace it. Because to choose not to feel it, to push it away is to deny the significance of someone or something in my life..."





People say that things come in threes... and maybe that's true.  Stop and look around.  When things seem to be repeating maybe its because there's a lesson waiting to be learned.

xoxo

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