Would you save someone who was drowning – flailing about, choking down water? What if you knew you’d likely go under with them in the process?
Change the lake to a therapy session and the water to emotions, and you can understand my dilemma.
So what I did was I decided not a save the client.
As they cried, “Poor me,” in a nothing new kind of way, I decided to try something different than normal. Instead of empathizing and validating them, I shrugged my shoulders and said, “Yeah, poor you.” (And then adopted that attitude for the remainder of the session).
Even though it felt disingenuous to respond this way, nothing I’d done when they were in that state prior had much of an impact. So, I felt it was necessary to throw them in the deep end (keeping with my swimming analogy).
I matched their helpless, doldrum energy.
And you know what? I learned something about myself. I have a propensity to save people from themselves. I step on their toes and by doing that I communicate a lack of trust in them.
And now that I know, I get to change my response. Pretty cool huh?
I took a kayak ride today. I floated and paddled around aimlessly with my best friend Kristen who was on speakerphone, and it was lovely.
Kristen’s my touchstone, and I’m fairly certain I’m hers too. It’s the type of friendship I yearned for for a long time. And now that I have it, it just amazes me that it’s real, and I can’t say enough about it. I wish for everyone to have a Kristen.
In other news, I played virtual poker and am excited to tell you I tried out my new bluffing strategy. The results? I won twice and lost zero! Now that I am far less anxious about bluffing, I should brush up on the basic of the game; hand selection, betting strategy, and probability.
I recovered Strunk and White’s book “The Elements of Style” from the basement to help my writing game. It’ll do me some good to know what a preposition is, how to use it correctly, and not to have Grammarly constantly breathing down my neck about my incorrect use of them.
Alrighty, time to start the book, “The House in the Cerulean Sea.” I don’t know much about it, so it should be a fun discovery.
That’s all for tonight. I hope you’re doing well. And thanks for coming back; it means a lot that you do.
Love always,
Jaclynn
Going On 40 