Journaling Gratitude
I have written about the gratitude journal before. If you missed that episode, here are the Cliff notes: angry client complains about everything under the sun for several sessions. Therapist suggests that journaling things client feels grateful for might make client feel better. Client vehemently rejects notion of not just journaling gratitude, but the concept of gratitude itself and proceeds to give a view of the world that would make even the most enthusiastic goth feel a bit overwhelmed.
The gratitude journal incident was many things, but primarily it was a point of deep contention because it rose out of what felt like a fundamental misunderstanding of who and what I was. Granted, it was an easy mistake to make. Going into a therapist's office and listing all the things wrong with the world from sick kittens to road cones might reasonably be interpreted as a fixation on the negative which could be addressed with some kind of shift in thinking.
There can be no doubt that at that time I felt broken. But more than that, I felt that the whole world was shattered, to the very core of creation. One of Douglas Adams' books contains the following opening lines:
“The story so far:
In the beginning the Universe was created.
This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.”
Douglas Adams wrote that as a joke, but sitting in the therapy office his words rang true for me. It was all bad, it was all broken, it was all wrong. Hand me my towel, I'm ready for the hyperspace bypass to come on through.
That does sound negative. But as is so often the case in life and therapy, one shouldn't confuse the thing being said with the thing being meant. Small mouth noises are so inadequate for speaking to the human condition, especially when one does not quite have the courage or the ability to see through internal turmoil to what one is really trying to express.
It's taken months for me to realize it, but what I was really saying was this:
My life has been very hard and very devoid of joy for a very long time. I have been taught that the good things are not for me, that nobody will ever like me, and if they seem to it will be because they want something. I have been taught that I am bad, and that I am wrong, that I am to blame, that the world would be a better place if I were not in it. I don't even believe in good things anymore, because they have been so infrequent, so fleeting, and so sullied by betrayal that I have almost entirely lost hope in everything and everyone. Even though I have a partner and a family, I am alone. Horribly, indelibly alone. I continue to exist out of sheer bloody mindedness and not much else. What can you do to help me?
Though I didn't know that was what I was saying, and I doubt he knew it either judging by the way we went back and forth that session, he answered the question anyway: He could be there.
And that I am grateful for, more than anything else. I'm pretty sure that he has not always known what to do with me, or why I'm relentlessly talking about an apparently completely unrelated topic. Therapy has not been easy for me, and I doubt it's been a walk in the park for him either. He remarked on one occasion that he doesn't usually have to spend a couple months (and couple is a conservative estimate, I'd say we're at five months and counting) defending the very nature of therapy to clients, and I'm sure that a less patient therapist probably would have done what I always expected him to do when I was questioning the underpinnings of life, the universe, the theory of therapy and everything else, and lose their temper. But he never did. He never got angry, he never got curt, he never snapped. He was perhaps mildly sarcastic a couple of times, but in the most benign way possible so that it was funny rather than cutting.
And he was there when he said he'd be. Always. Even if he'd shown up and done nothing but stared at the wall, that alone would have been huge. Fortunately, he's done more than just be there. He's listened. Some things he's understood. Some things not so much, but he always tries. He's been there when I questioned his philosophies and beliefs and methods. He's been there when I spent an hour snapping at him and then called the next day in tears because I felt so guilty for being mean. He's been there while I've explored painful parts of myself and my life. He's listened to admissions of the things I have done without judging me. He's received more pictures of foster kittens than he probably knows what to do with. And, again, he's been there.
Even more astounding, he's made me feel not only cared for, but actually liked. And the beauty of therapy is that I know it's not because he needs anything from me. Sure, there's monetary exchange in therapy, but I know for a fact that there are easier clients out there, and he hasn't dropped me for one of them. As a result, I'm starting to feel a peace and a security which I always wanted to feel and never quite managed to before. It's incredible what a difference having someone in your corner makes.
Maybe this isn't quite a journal of gratitude, but hopefully it's a start.
The gratitude journal incident was many things, but primarily it was a point of deep contention because it rose out of what felt like a fundamental misunderstanding of who and what I was. Granted, it was an easy mistake to make. Going into a therapist's office and listing all the things wrong with the world from sick kittens to road cones might reasonably be interpreted as a fixation on the negative which could be addressed with some kind of shift in thinking.
There can be no doubt that at that time I felt broken. But more than that, I felt that the whole world was shattered, to the very core of creation. One of Douglas Adams' books contains the following opening lines:
“The story so far:
In the beginning the Universe was created.
This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.”
Douglas Adams wrote that as a joke, but sitting in the therapy office his words rang true for me. It was all bad, it was all broken, it was all wrong. Hand me my towel, I'm ready for the hyperspace bypass to come on through.
That does sound negative. But as is so often the case in life and therapy, one shouldn't confuse the thing being said with the thing being meant. Small mouth noises are so inadequate for speaking to the human condition, especially when one does not quite have the courage or the ability to see through internal turmoil to what one is really trying to express.
It's taken months for me to realize it, but what I was really saying was this:
My life has been very hard and very devoid of joy for a very long time. I have been taught that the good things are not for me, that nobody will ever like me, and if they seem to it will be because they want something. I have been taught that I am bad, and that I am wrong, that I am to blame, that the world would be a better place if I were not in it. I don't even believe in good things anymore, because they have been so infrequent, so fleeting, and so sullied by betrayal that I have almost entirely lost hope in everything and everyone. Even though I have a partner and a family, I am alone. Horribly, indelibly alone. I continue to exist out of sheer bloody mindedness and not much else. What can you do to help me?
Though I didn't know that was what I was saying, and I doubt he knew it either judging by the way we went back and forth that session, he answered the question anyway: He could be there.
And that I am grateful for, more than anything else. I'm pretty sure that he has not always known what to do with me, or why I'm relentlessly talking about an apparently completely unrelated topic. Therapy has not been easy for me, and I doubt it's been a walk in the park for him either. He remarked on one occasion that he doesn't usually have to spend a couple months (and couple is a conservative estimate, I'd say we're at five months and counting) defending the very nature of therapy to clients, and I'm sure that a less patient therapist probably would have done what I always expected him to do when I was questioning the underpinnings of life, the universe, the theory of therapy and everything else, and lose their temper. But he never did. He never got angry, he never got curt, he never snapped. He was perhaps mildly sarcastic a couple of times, but in the most benign way possible so that it was funny rather than cutting.
And he was there when he said he'd be. Always. Even if he'd shown up and done nothing but stared at the wall, that alone would have been huge. Fortunately, he's done more than just be there. He's listened. Some things he's understood. Some things not so much, but he always tries. He's been there when I questioned his philosophies and beliefs and methods. He's been there when I spent an hour snapping at him and then called the next day in tears because I felt so guilty for being mean. He's been there while I've explored painful parts of myself and my life. He's listened to admissions of the things I have done without judging me. He's received more pictures of foster kittens than he probably knows what to do with. And, again, he's been there.
Even more astounding, he's made me feel not only cared for, but actually liked. And the beauty of therapy is that I know it's not because he needs anything from me. Sure, there's monetary exchange in therapy, but I know for a fact that there are easier clients out there, and he hasn't dropped me for one of them. As a result, I'm starting to feel a peace and a security which I always wanted to feel and never quite managed to before. It's incredible what a difference having someone in your corner makes.
Maybe this isn't quite a journal of gratitude, but hopefully it's a start.