Hello Meggle

Last night I had prepared most of this note to you, but, as I said, wanted to check it. My friend arrived at 9 am today. We completed the fence this afternoon. I am pleased to be sitting down. This project has certainly extended me physically. But, I want to get this note to you this evening. This note is a little “punchy”, but in essence, it is, I believe, a reflection of both our situations. Whatever I may say applies to me as much as I think that it may apply to you, and is really a product of my own experience and reality. I do hope that it carries meaning for you, either in ways that you may agree with and, or challenges, to the way you may think of your own situation, whether in agreement or difference.

Snap!!! I also spoke with my counsellor yesterday. To some degree, I felt that I was somehow skirting around the deeper issues. How do I do that? It is during the discussion, that I realise that the conversation is not really developing, or addressing the real issues. That I am talking, but the conversation has deviated from the key point that started that particular line of discussion. It is called avoidance. I become aware that I am probably not getting out of our discussion, what I am there for. Now to some degree, according to the way that I think about “therapy”, it is the counsellor/psychologist/therapist's responsibility to guide the discussion, But, I have a responsibility to myself, and I know that the person with whom I am speaking, needs to recognise and acknowledge what is my responsibility. In fact, it is our shared responsibility.

The person with whom I am speaking, and I, have to allow some margin, but also try to respect some boundaries to the swing in conversation. It seems to me that the psychologist may have acknowledged your request not to move too quickly. The discussion for you appears, from what you have said, was about friendships, and ways in which you may be able to engage with other people, in a way that is a genuine expression of you, as a person in your own right, in the quest for genuine companionship, as you would anticipate experiencing from a good friend. Your comment then was,

“We just talked about how I could work on making more friends, as I talked about how lonely I feel.”

Then, in your note, you talked about having decided to,

“....... try and go back to choir practice to see if I could possibly develop a friendship there.”

If therapy for you is just about sorting out how to make friends, and going back to choir practice is the step you've decided that you need to take to fulfil that wish. If that's all there is to therapy, isn't the problem solved? without going back over old, very unpleasant territory and events in your life. Why do you need all this Gestalt chair technique and imagery scripting stuff. {My counsellor has also introduced these techniques to our discussions. Not furtively or imposed, but as ways in which I could review and re-address the relationship between my father and me.}

Then the answer, regarding “Why?” comes back,

“I just feel paralysed by the fear.” That is a sign, in itself, about why. If there were no reason for the fear, why would you experience that fear?

And, assuming you allow the fear to be the dominant decider of what you do or don't do, anything else is a waste of time. Now, having preemptively decided that everything is going to be a waste of time for everybody, why proceed?

Then we get into the justification stage, that,

“Everyone else needs these discussions more than I do.”

So, since I don't want to waste my time, or that of the psychologist, and I don't want to deprive someone else, who surely needs that service more than I do, then by all accounts, that seems to be the end of the matter. Isn't it?

And all of that is classic avoidance, which is why I talked about me doing the same thing, during my counselling discussion, at the start of this note to you. I am very conscious of the ways that I can use to avoid dealing with the issues, that are inside myself. I also know that I need to address my hesitancy about facing these difficult issues. The primary issue being fear.

And, considering the fact that, in your own words,

“I gave my psychologist a call later in the afternoon and I was just a mess.”

“What if I do the therapy and my life is no better or no more meaningful?”

What if we do the therapy, on the basis that our lives may be significantly better than our negative beliefs have allowed them to be? A lot of people have supported us. I know, for my part, that there have been people, all through my life, who have wished better for me, than my adopted beliefs have allowed. I can see that in retrospect, and I truly wish that I could have seen that at the times that those wishes were thought and offered. Those thoughts and wishes were probably offered in your life as well as mine. You and I were simply not in the headspace to be able to acknowledge and accept the support that was offered. It is very likely that we were so busy trying to live our lives, in the best way that we possibly could, to have even been aware of, or acknowledged those offers of support. We were in a battle already, and battles are not the best place to figure out the important issues in our lives.

Unfortunately, it is very difficult to accept that we may not have realised that there were good opportunities that we have forgone. And, if we now accept that, in our lives, aren't we just turning the finger of “accusation” inwards, towards ourselves. That is something we may have to accept. But we also need to acknowledge the difficulty that we would have had, in dealing with those issues, without having been given the personal skills required for the purpose. In this I am not trying to ascribe blame to someone or anyone else. I am simply saying that we never had certain life skills that other people had.

But, the prospect that we can forgive ourselves, for the inability that we have had, in not being able to recognise the negative aspects of our lives, leads to our incapacity to respond to offers of assistance. The fact that we may have to forgive ourselves may be the foundation and reason for our fear. There is this issue, I think, that we have to forgive ourselves first, even in principle, before we can take more steps to a better life.

Avoidance, I believe, in some respects is an expression of our difficulty to forgive ourselves, in order for us to move forward in our lives. - My counsellor should be able to see what I am writing here, because it is truly a case of one finger forward in direction or guidance, but three fingers backward, pointing to the writer, me.

You and I have both been told repeatedly, by the most significant people in our lives, that we are no good, unworthy, and all the rest of the unpleasant things that we have been told, projected on to us, and expected to believe – and unfortunately, for most of our lives, we have. It is only fairly recently, that you and I have questioned those beliefs, that we have adopted from our respective significant parent. You, by now know enough about me, to appreciate that there are many similarities in our lives. So, in many ways, there are connections, apart from gender. As we've discussed also, there was a match in terms of your mother and my father. The gender connection. A lot of the emotional and verbal abuse, may have been, and is more likely to have been more damaging than any physical abuse that ever occurred.

The capacity to forgive ourselves also implies something that needs to be forgiven. And, if something needs to be forgiven, does that not imply fault on our part? Not necessarily. The forgiveness that I am talking about, is that aspect of our lives, where we need to forgive our incapacity, before we can move forward. If we cannot do that, then we are really going to have difficulty bridging the gap between where we are and where we want to be.

With My Best Wishes

@HenryX