18 May 2016
Plowing Through
It’s not unusual for someone to come into my office who, for a few or a great many years, was able to, as they say, keep their head down when it came to prevailing through hard times only to find themselves experiencing anxiety and/or depression later in life. Another phrase that is often used synonymously is plowing through: not letting the volume or difficulty of work — personal, professional, or both — deter someone from getting through to the next clearing in the proverbial jungle of ones life. What we don’t realize is that some of us aren’t prepared for that clearing.
What do I do with this extra free time? What do I do with all this space to be by myself? Why am I feeling so emotional even though I’ve accomplished all this stuff to get here?
We are remarkably resilient. We are capable of withstanding sustained mental and emotional hardship for long periods of time, and the more of that we’re able to see in our rear-view mirror the more we might be led to believe that we are machine-like: just feed us and give us space to move and we’ll get it done. All of it. Eventually.
And yet, when we reach a plateau where our efforts have rewarded us with a certain amount of comfort (physical, financial, or emotional freedom) we can begin to finally react to the things we had to go through to get this far. We find ourselves on the verge of tears for seemingly no reason. Somebody closes a door too loudly and we react to it as if a gun has gone off. Our patience with co-workers, friends, or loved ones isn’t as thick as it used to be.
Do this sound familiar to you? If so, you may want to sit down with someone so that you can unravel what’s going on. It’s possible you’ve compartmentalized your past into “stuff I needed to get through,” without acknowledging that there might be some things to explore about the hardships you might have experienced. It’s great to be accomplished, but sometimes it comes at a cost — other times, being accomplished means leaving people behind us (family included) who didn’t have a healthy influence.
Putting things into perspective can not only help to contextualize why you might be feeling the way you feel, but also to learn to accept yourself — the new and old you — before you continue on your journey.
If you are interested in learning more about my services, about me, or perhaps booking an appointment, please call me at 416-873-7828 or email me at info@downtowntherapy.ca for more information.
filed under: anxiety• change• depression• general info• perfectionism• psychotherapy• PTSD• resilience• strength• stress• success
4 May 2016
Scheduling
I’ve had more than one client ask over the last while whether I’ve contemplated switching from my current mode of scheduling — which is either person-to-person, over the phone, or via email — to an online model which would effectively cut out the interaction in favour of convenience. Now, beginning an argument with I’m no technophobe, but… might indicate that indeed I am such a thing. Rather, I have a couple of ways to answer this.
First, standing outside my practice, I can certainly see how online scheduling might provide advantages; aside from convenience it’s also fast. If I were booking time with an accountant or personal trainer, this would probably be a handy feature. That said, psychotherapy — particularly psychodynamic psychotherapy — is about the importance of interpersonal interaction: how its use or misuse affects us, in the present or accumulatively from the past. This isn’t to say that talking about whether next Thursday at 1pm is, technically, therapy. But how we negotiate that otherwise small detail with someone else — the interaction — potentially is. Life is, after all, a series of small interactions; how we process our amassed experiences, in how we see ourselves and our place in the world, is no small matter.
Psychotherapy is the last place where you want to experience the impersonal.
If you are interested in learning more about my services, about me, or perhaps booking an appointment, please call me at 416-873-7828 or email me at info@downtowntherapy.ca for more information.
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