Well perhaps I should start by apologizing for last weeks blog. It was down beat, self indulgent, angry and full of sadness. Maybe apologizing isn’t good enough, I don’t now. So I won’t say sorry but will say that I am today, understanding how my clients feel whilst in therapy. This is the first time since I began Counselling, that I fully understand how each person who has been brave enough to come into therapy, can feel. Using CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) I work with my clients to enable them to make changes. If they are not functioning properly, changing may enable their lives to improve. If they are depressed, working with their thinking, being more positive and this can be hard for those feeling down or anxious.Looking at their thoughts, the way they think, because it is this that controls the emotions and that results in their behavior. You can’t go straight in and change the emotion or behavior without first looking at to how your thoughts are at the time. Some will say, ‘I can’t change, I have always been like this’ or ‘this always happens’. And that is often the issue.’ If you always do what you have always done, you will always get what you always got’, is something I was told during training. If you don’t like what is happening, only you can change it. This can be harder for clients than I think I had acknowledged in full.
Most times with collaboration, we can achieve the goal the client has been seeking and so they improve. Given strategies for survival and maintenance, they are often less likely to have the same problems in the future.
We go through, ‘nothing can change this’ ‘I can’t do this’, To ‘I feel more capable of doing it now’ Things get better. Their lives improve.
But sometimes you can’t make it better, you can’t make the nasty go away so you have to work on acceptance. Like in loss. The bereft can’t have the person they grieve back and so by working on their feelings, we can gently change the thought process and allow them to grieve properly. Grief will take as along as it takes but sometimes needs a little push, to enable the person left behind to accept the situation and ‘move on’. Always at their pace.
Here endeth the first lesson!
Well, none of this has been working for me. Physician heal thyself, as I have said before isn’t working. I know it will, but I am impatient and need it now. I don’t like the Carol Ann I have become. I don’t like feeling as I did as a child. Alone in my thoughts and pain and helpless .
So why am I feeling this way? The alone is because David is strong, pragmatic. He says whatever happens we can’t influence it. We can’t change the fact that he has Prostate cancer. We can’t un know what we know. And he his of course, right. So, I need to find away to stop thinking about it all of the time. Stop researching, reading everything sent to me and some I find myself.
The helpless is back to childhood. No love from my ‘mother’, a dysfunctional family and sexual abuse that I suffered all of my life until I was 22. No one helped me because no -one knew and I was helpless to stop the horrors. One of the reasons I support spreading facts about the devastating long term impact CSA can have on victims and work to help some of them become survivors, like me.
Today.
Things are moving forward,we now know David’s ‘case’ has been discussed with the ‘team’ and we are now waiting for the appointment to go and see the Oncologist/Surgeon to discuss options. Does that feel better that something is happening? You would think so but it only makes it more real. But it is real and that’s the problem.
So today I have been reading a journal that I kept while I was working and am reminded of clients who struggled as I am struggling. Sometimes, after weeks of work I would think nothing was actually helping them. Nothing was changing.But then one day, a client would come to session and say they suddenly had ‘ a light on’ moment. Something would suddenly look different, life would look different and become clearer. It didn’t mean their pain had stopped. It wouldn’t mean they were suddenly ‘cured’ of the bad thoughts or behavior or had stopped having the nightmares etc. But something had happened and they could see their way forward. A different approach to a situation, a way out of the grief and pain. And then there it would be; a smile. Every therapist’s ‘worth it’ time.
I am waiting for that light. I know I can’t counsel myself but I can listen to others who have been where I am. Other wives and partners of beloved husband s who are fighting this fight. I can gain strength from those who write about recovery and the future. I can stop feeling sorry for myself and find my inner strength that has been alluding me of late. Don’t know how but I will.
The future is where my thoughts need to be so I am house hunting. I know we can’t consider this yet but there is no harm in my looking. It may be back in Hampshire where I have family and friends. It may be in Pembrokeshire or Somerset where again I know people. We have no idea but looking forward is something I have always encouraged in clients and so that is what we will do.
When it is all over, I aim to try and raise awareness in younger men of this awful disease, promote testing and helping with fund raising. Not yet but after.
I think and hope that Carol Ann is coming back, so cancer, you had better watch your step!
Thank you for reading x
carolannwright 