I don't know what to do with Therapy...

WOH!  Found this in my drafts!  Intense!  It's been a few months since I wrote this.

I LOVE therapy... or at least the idea, purpose, and general outcome of therapy!  In fact, I was studying in my graduate and undergraduate classes toward a Masters in Marriage and Family Therapy.  And yet...

When it is my turn I almost don't know what to say.  My first private session as of late was awkward for me.  I was floundering around trying to figure out why I was there and what could I say that would be most beneficial.  I suppose I'm not the type of person that is comfortable sitting on the couch and telling you my life story from start to finish.  The truth is that I do a lot of intense purposed processing on my own.  If I'm coming to you for therapy then I desire to get to the seriousness... to the real point pretty quick and get the work started!  BUT... and this is a BIG but... I have to feel safe in a thousand ways on a thousand levels.  This HAS to be pretty common.

I am incredibly intuitive.  I balance my spirit with logic and knowledge, but I trust my spirit a thousand times more because I don't view it as my own spirit, but the Spirit of the Holy One with in me.  I have been able to clearly hear from God for a loooong time (as long as I'm in a spiritually healthy and engaged place).  When there is an intuitive connection its hard to deny.  When I build friendships, there is a certain level of the spiritual intuition that is reached and understood that will send the valued few into my deep friendship circle!

I'd love for my therapist to fall into that category, but we haven't found our way there.  I view her with amazement and respect!  She is incredible at what she does!  But she is an older woman and that alone is a bit of a wall I have to get past.  The kind of woman who certainly knows far more than me!  I'm inclined to just listen and ask for advice rather than do personal work and personal soul searching.  I LOVE her!  I sincerely do.  But I'm having trouble finding my way to my authentic self with her.  But then there is the idea that maybe I'm not sure where my authentic self ends and my polished self begins and what is so bad about the mixture anyway.

I have been challenged by my son's therapist to try harder and take a leap of faith with her.  Trust her with my fully disclosed self.  But I think I fear her reaction or difference of opinion or insight on faith and religion.  I actually LOVE a discussion on theology and differences BUT in therapy this is not ideal.  My understanding and relationship with my creator bleeds into every part of my life.  Hard for me to inspect most parts of myself without finding faith there.

So tonight, I find myself frustrated.  And therapy day can be like that.  I should come to expect it.  Here I sat for nearly 1.5 hours without saying much of anything with true depth.  Yes, I explored things!  I celebrated familial victories, I expressed some worries... but all in all I kept my inner child safe.  And let's talk about that inner child while we're here...

I always kind of thought that whole concept was kind of weird.  I'm good with weird... in fact it's usually a compliment, but in this case I suppose I simply mean that I don't comprehend it or it's reality.  I do get it's purpose to an extent... BUT THEN!  I am listening to Abba's Child by Brennan Manning and my brain gets it for the first time!  Christ says to come to him as a child!  I truly think that my son's therapist brought this up, but I suppose I wasn't in a place to hear it then!  Full faith, no inhibitions.  Like a child... gut wrenching honesty!  For me, this is the purpose of constantly being brought back to the inner child.  I have all but discarded her.  Truly.  I read those verses about growing up in the faith and leaving childish things behind and that was it.  I kissed that "baby" goodbye!  I constantly ridicule her, ignore her, roll my eyes at her.  She annoys me... gets in the way of my mature self.

This is a bigger problem than I realized BECAUSE this is exactly the way I deal with my own children if my anxiety is high or I'm pretty exhausted!  And as I see it, if I can change the way I treat mini-me, then it will spill over into my other relationships!  Love your neighbor as yourself right?!