The cat ate my homework

At my last shrink appointment, I was given an assignment to journal a line or two every day and we would discuss the ideas and feelings I recorded at our next session. So after a fun game of "Does This Time Work For You", we landed on a session 3 weeks out from the last.

Lots of time to journal my thoughts, and hopefully lots of thoughts to journal.

Uhhh, not so much.

When you look up taciturn in the dictionary, you'll see my picture. I don't like talking at the best of times, and I especially don't like talking about myself. It's not that I'm shy, I just honestly feel like anything I have to say related to my 'feelings' is apropos of nothing. My feelings are ephemeral and, in my mind, merit no conversation.

That said, I find other people's feelings fascinating.

I've decided that I'm going to hand my shrink a single piece of paper on which I'll have written "I don't like writing about myself anymore than I like talking about myself." That should stimulate a good 60 minutes of something. Perhaps I'll bring some sandwiches and we can stare at each other whilst eating.

Does anyone find it easy to talk about themselves?

You're absolutely right, there is a lot of self-editing going on. Every time I was on the cusp of writing something down, my inner voice would say "dayumm ... do you really want to have to talk about THAT?"

A quick walk back through the last 3 weeks pretty much tells me what rocks I need to look under. **** - I guess I can't avoid this s&&t forever.

darn you MO9! ;-)

When I finally got a sponsor, my 3rd time in AA, she gave me a 'marble composition book' and a personalized pen and told me to write about my day, as I was going through my day. She said to write as honestly as I could not writing what I thought she should 'hear'.

My first entry went something like this...I want to kill my son for dripping cherry ice pop on my new white sofa.

Next day, she reads this. Keeping in mind that she was younger than me and had no children...she says "Alrighty then!" "I must ask you, since you have 2 children, 2 dogs and 2 cats...Why in the world did you buy a WHITE sofa?!"

Instead of focusing on what I 'wanted to do', she focused on what I had already done! My response was that I 'needed' a new sofa, wanted a sofa bed, and the only color I could drive out of the parking lot with was white...other colors would have required ordering and waiting.

"I want what I want when I want it and to heck with the consequences!"

The book, Alcoholics Anonymous contains a sentance that goes something like this..."We invariably find that we had made decisions based on self, which later placed us in a position to be hurt." So you can see where me wanting it 'right now' led to me being 'hurt' later.

Then, of course, we had to discuss why I let him have a cherry ice pop on the sofa to begin with and found the decision to do so based on self as well. Gee, what a surprise!

I must say that the first experience was so enlightening and had me on track to start making 'better' less selfish decisions that the practice of the marble composition book continued for about a year!

Some of my absolutely fondest memories...my sponsor helped me learn so very much about myself.

I was just working with a student proofing a paper. He just kept saying,"Wow, I didn't know there were this many mistakes."

Everything has two sides-form and content. Sometimes, you are too busy creating content to take the time to correct the form. You can focus on form when you move further away you are from your object. Aesthetic distance.

You provide the content.

Yeah Karen, this whole modality is new to me. I would much prefer if my shrink could chop the top of my head off, stick her hand in my skull, scramble a few key brains, and fix me. That would be awesome. I'm willing to put in the work, just not sure yet how to do it yet.

I love that story, Pitmom - kinda makes me realize that there's no wrong answers. I've found my two visits quite illuminating so far, who the hell knows what I'll figure out in the next 13. I don't have any children and my cat is too cute to kill, so I'll have to think harder to come up with a jumping off homicidal fantasy of my own. ;-)

You what else might work Lynnwood? If I cut and paste SOMEONE ELSE'S conversations. heheh

Glad you're working again, M09. I'm sure the money is nice, but that the working is better. Yes, form and content - I think my content will have to be in oral form for tomorrow's appointment, but I do see the value in working on the spontaneous jotting of stuff.

NCOT, we could live the dream. We'll hold our counseling sessions in a movie theatre, eat popcorn (you sweet, me salty) and contentedly munch in silence while giving everyone who's talking the stink-eye. We could nap while the promotions were playing - it would be glorious.

And the weak pound is pissing me off too - I already pay way too much for my imported jelly babies.

Ha, you lucked out this time F27!! ;D

I might say that since you're paying for the therapy, might as well give it as best of a shot you can and do your homework!

At least it's not trig! ;D

That's fantastic advice Trina, thank you. It's been a difficult couple of weeks so I know I have tons of stuff to write about. I love the idea of stick figures - I'm so going to do that. And thank you for the back pat, I needed that today. :)

Supapfunk - but I love geometry! I follow the Twitter account "Science****", which is all science and no ****. They routinely post cool geometry stuff. I know, 'cool' and 'geometry' shouldn't be in the same sentence, but I am a geek. Heheh.

Glad to be of some help

Check out this link, hope fully it will go to the home page.

/www.facebook.com/berkeleybreathed/
Peace
Trina