At my third therapy session, we finally talked about real life. No more of sticking to the intake questions. We didn’t focus on my past and we were able to talk about how my life looks now.
My therapist asked me what it was that I do for a living. For those of you that don’t know, I used to be a child care teacher, for a decade. Now I train child care professionals for a living and facilitate playgroups for parents and children. I love my job.
Well talking about that fascinated her. She asked me if I felt stress about my job, if I am happy, how I came to be working there. You know all the usual things. We had just gone through the most stressful few months at work, and I had decided to just take the whole thing in stride. It was a very unusual concept for me, but I was much more calm than normal. She of course asked me why that was ? Why did I think that with all this change going on at work, I was able to keep myself calm?
Still thinking about this right now, I am not sure how or why I was so calm at work. The truth is, that I think I was stressed about it at home. I didn’t realize at the time that’s why I was so emotional over that time, but looking back. Obviously I hate change, it takes me so long to adjust that I can easily push people away while I am working through it. I kept myself together as best I could while at work, but at home it was safe for me to freak out.
Anyway, we moved on to talk about my education a little bit more. Where did I go to school, Central Michigan…fire up chips. What was my degree in, what did I think I would use my degrees for and do I have any interest in furthering my education? The answer to that is yes, she said we would discuss that further on a different day. I currently have a Masters with a Human Resourcees concentration. (I thought I would be an HR assistant to start, but I couldn’t get a job without experience and couldn’t get experience without a job.)
When she asked me what I most like to do for fun, to relax….I told her that I like to blog. That as a kid, from the age of 10, I journaled. By the time I married Matt, I had filled up 12 journals. (I really wish that I would have kept them to reflect back on). Anyway though, blogging had become my new journaling. She said that we would definitely talk about that in the future as well.
Lastly, we spoke about an upcoming situation in which I knew my need to control would take over. It really helped to talk about it out loud with an impartial person. Anticipating the parts of the situation that would make me anxious and talking about all the things I have no control over.
Over those next few days, I took a lot of deep breaths, I truly enjoyed myself, and I kept my anxiety to myself (for the most part). It felt like HUGE progress for me. Maybe this whole therapy thing is working!
Making Time For Me 