Group Therapy Week 5

If you’re busy suppressing emotions what effect will it have?! This is something I have done my whole life, but I am trying to connect with myself more and understand why I may be feeling the way I am.

I also shared how I am struggling with procrastination badly at the moment, something which has never effected me so much before. I was told to try and attempt little things each day, rather than everything at once.

I also spoke about how I am trying 10 minutes of meditation each day,  but I do struggle to focus and find myself drifting in my thoughts a lot. The therapist said I can let the thoughts come, but also let them go again, and bring myself back to focus, and the idea is not trying to block and suppress them.

We are also starting to move into the inner child work. Often when we are little, medium size or older, we have another version of ourselves, a younger self that might have experienced some things that weren’t nice, or maybe heard things that weren’t nice, and from time to time the emotions we experienced at the time we revisit now as we get older. If someone wasn’t nice to you when you were little, or not so little, it doesn’t matter what age you are, these emotions keep popping up, the inner child keeps popping up and throwing emotions around, and they keep flying here there and everywhere.

Inner child work can take a while, and can be one of the most important pieces of therapeutic work a person does. In order to accept who we were, what we are, and what happened, we somehow need to comfort our younger self, showing compassion and kindness.

To begin this work, we have been asked to write a letter to our younger selves full of compassion, remembering we didn’t make mistakes, as we only knew what we knew. We reacted the way we reacted because of what we knew at the time. We can look back as adults thinking ‘I should have done this, or should have done that’, but we couldn’t, because we only know what we know now.

Until we give compassion to our inner self, emotionally we will be stuck, and stay on the same roller-coaster.

Group Therapy Week 4

This week has felt like a terrible week for various reasons, I’ve had a lot of triggers, and realised what small things send me absolutely spiralling’, that I’m never going to be good enough, or recover.

Every member of the group seemed to be very low this week for various reasons, and we could all relate to each other in how we were feeling.

We spoke about struggling to respond to friends because we do not want to be honest about how we feel or to feel like a burden. We were asked what we think would happen if we told people how we feel, or if they were the friend on the other side, what would we do? The answer is we would want to support and be there for them, so what is the difference the other way round?! We know what it is like to feel pain and we worry we will pass it on. However just because we are supporting someone in a tough situation does not mean their pain is our pain, we would feel empathy.

We don’t like to tell people things because we want them to think we are strong, but in order to answer people’s messages and take their calls you do have to let them know how you feel, and when you say how you are feeling, you can say ‘I am feeling crap’, but that is how it is right now, and reinforcing that, letting them know that you are not this broken, miserable desperate person who cannot exist without crying.

A member of the group remembered walking one day and seeing someone sitting with their head between their knees and crying, she sat down next to her and hugged her, which triggered her to cry harder for at least 20 minutes, after calming down she said thank you, and then she walked away. She said “to be able to do that was one of the most cherished moments in their life and that was with a stranger”, imagine how much more it would feel for a friend being able to sit there and do that for you. We all feel like burdens, but let people in, it releases something valuable.

We also spoke about intrusive thoughts which a number of people are struggling with, how we need to learn that we are not our thoughts. For example this is how suicidal ideation works, it is not just imagining stepping in front of a train, it’s imagining who will find you, which news article will be written about it, who will get the call. It’s a part of the imagination that is very active.

If we look at a picture and half is missing, our brains fill in the blanks. We do not like bits we don’t understand, so when you start with the thought, you have to finish the story, that is what the, mind does, and the devastation that goes with it. If could connect more with our emotions, there is possibility that the thoughts would reduce not only in intensity but in content.

We finished by being given an exercise to work on in the week called ‘the empty chair’ (also known as Gestalt Therapy), where we will be going back to our inner child and saying everything we would say to to the little us, a dialogue with our little selves, which helps us become aware of our thoughts and reactions from a young age.