Therapy Session Reflections #7 – Unpacking Week 35, I’ve Never Felt Better and I’ll Tell You Why

I wrapped up week 35 of therapy, and I am moving into week 36. I am also heading toward the first anniversary of walking into my therapist’s office. Whew, this has been an enlightening journey. Therapy can be like a balm to your soul AFTER it makes you reach deep to pull your most heart-wrenching moments from your soul. The process will challenge you before it heals you. That’s especially if you are not open to receiving the tools given to help you unravel the things that have been ailing you.

People will advise you that finding a great therapist is essential, but they will never tell you that YOUR ability to do the work along the way is just as important, if not more. That’s because no matter how magical your therapist is, they can only help you to the degree that you are willing to put in the work afterward to assist in your own progress.

After I dealt with the grief of my dad’s death, my secondary goal was to place myself in the frame of mind to build better relationships. That includes professional, romantic, and non-romantic connections.

Although I had spent time focusing on my professional life in the past, I never put in the degree of attention needed to develop the relationships behind professional or personal connections, for that matter, to develop them properly. Honestly, I hadn’t given it much thought before my dad died. Death has a way of making you think, and take stock of your life. That’s what the last year has been about for me.

The death of my dad destroyed the entire foundation of everything I’d built my life upon, and it made me look at my life. It made me realize that I had not been living life to its fullest. That involved developing the kinds of relationships, I NOW know, I deserve. So I set about changing my path, thanks to the help of the therapist, I have been able to make progress in a way that I would have never believed.

REFLECTIONS FROM WEEK 35:
Last week went beyond discussing the path for me to create some of the relationships I now believe I’m worthy of, moving forward. I’ve been talking about my goals to focus on building these relationships for the past few weeks. I recently moved toward making that happen in a very actionable way. That was all due to the prompting by my therapist.

So for me, thinking about building better relationships involved really stepping way out of my comfort zone more than I ever have in my entire life. My ability to do this started over a year ago, but I just now reached the point that I was willing to venture out. I was able to do this by having multiple sessions, with my therapist covering my concerns.

I think my ability to move through this with my therapist, was due to feeling grounded and safe. That’s something I don’t know that I’ve ever felt before in life, even though I was unaware of that before therapy. That’s because not feeling grounded or safe was my norm. So if something is your rule, you have no idea that it is really the exception. I was able to come to this conclusion due to work done inside and outside of the therapist’s office. That has been huge over the past few weeks and has made a big difference in my life and my happiness level.

WEEK 35 TAKEAWAY
I woke up today feeling very grateful, grounded, happy, and overall in a peaceful state of mind. That is primarily due to the amount of work done to get to this point. All of this was due to incremental changes in how I actually move through this world. There have been small shifts in actions, awareness, and integrations of those actions in my everyday life. Some of those things include becoming more aware of my needs, being purposeful about those needs, and consciously embracing them.

🔸Selfcare was a huge zero in my life before therapy. I believe, during my first session, I had to face the reality of this, and I came up short. Honestly, when pressed by my therapist, I had no answer about the last time I’d done something exclusively for myself.

So, soon after that session, I became purposeful in my goal to embrace self-care regularly. Now it’s something that I am very conscious of, and I indulge regularly. I’ve shed the thought process behind being busy, and I recognize that constantly being occupied is not beneficial or rewarding. Being busy, for the sake of being occupied, is NOT self-care.

🔸Relationships were a negative as well. At one time, I would have thought of that as, simply being busy, but honestly, I just was not interested. Yes, I was otherwise engaged but not to the degree that I could not have made time had I be interested or inclined. I just wasn’t.

After spending many weeks unraveling some of the things that built the foundation in which I had created relationships, I have been able to embrace a healthier perspective. Before therapy, I had kind of resigned myself to get getting old, with some virtual cats. [I don’t frig with real deal live, cats like that.] That was due to my not so healthy view of relationships. Now, I have a very different perspective.

Therapy allowed me to tap into a lot of underlying issues that I had with people. That family of origin work was some tough stuff. It made me question why I was doing this [therapy] to myself on a few occasions.

🔸Change, was the ultimate outcome of all of this. I was literally forced to change because the foundation of my world had blown up, and I had insight on how I could really embrace a different type of life. I could have tried to go back to how things were and tried to embrace what was comfortable. However, that would have been forcing what was no longer possible. So instead, I threw myself out there to go 100% in a different and unfamiliar path on this new journey in life.

I am now on an amazing path, and I feel like I have a lot of new experiences to embrace. Ultimately due to putting in all of the work for the past 35 sessions, I am better emotionally, mentally, and spiritually than I’ve ever been in life.

MOVING FORWARD TO WEEK 36
Next week’s session will involve some of the things that were my wins and/ or challenges:
🔸 Revaluation of my self-care routines, due to so many changes professionally and personally.
🔸 Chakra balancing and alignment, with the focus on the Sacral Chakra.
🔸 Continue to work on relationship building.

I would love to know your thoughts on putting therapy session lessons to work in everyday situations. How are you taking what you’ve learned in therapy and applying them to your life in real-time? Reach out, let’s chat on FB, IG, and Twitter. Until then, Happy Healing and Happy Unpacking.

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