Mind Maintenance

Why every writer, artist, or other creative person needs a therapist, and why there should be no stigma attached to it.  You know the trope or stereotype of the actor who is absolutely helpless without hir therapist.  I’m not suggesting you get overly dependent upon your therapist.  A therapist is not a replacement for a parent.  A therapist is simply a professional who can help you do needed mind maintenance.  The mind needs maintenance, just like your car or your computer, so I don’t understand why there is such a stigma attached  to having a therapist, when it is the mind that makes having either a car and/or a personal computer.  

There are several different directions your therapy can take.  It can be classical Freaudian psychoanalysis, which I frankly do not recommend, because it takes too long, and real time problems cannot be addressed in real time at the time they occur to you.  There is CBT, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, which addresses real problems and enables you the client to work on solving these problems through iCognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a form of psychological treatment that has been demonstrated to be effective for a range of problems including depression, anxiety disorders, alcohol and drug use problems, marital problems, eating disorders and severe mental illness.It can also address problems such as negative thought patterns and dysfunctional thought patterns and other problems.  

What I do is between sessions is  make a list of psychological questions or immediate problems I may have, and we work on those.  If there is a person outside who can help me, she puts me in touch with that person or office.  For example, for some years, I have been wanting a memory clinic refresher to help with my failing memory.  She gave me a phone number to call to get a referral to the memory clinic.  I’ve been in therapy for decades, so we don’t delve too deeply into my mind or history.  But when you first begin it can seem rather intimidating because the therapist will want to know everything about you.  S/he also will point out any mind games you might be playing with yourself or hir in order to conceal parts of yourself you may not want to look at yourself, or may not want others to see.  In psychology, these are called defence mechanisms, and we all have them. Over time, you learn to accept yourself for who you are, warts and all.

.In the religion I follow, we look at those parts of ourselves we do not accept, or want others to see and learn to accept and even embrace those  parts.  This is called shadow work, and it can be quite intense.  But it is necessary, because otherwise the spells we do can go awry and have unforeseen consequences.  The stories you hear about someone who does a money spell, and hir grandfather dies and leaves hir a lot of money probably had not done hir shadow work.  I bring this up because in the beginning, therapy can seem like shadow work, where your soul is stripped bare, and long buried resentments towards loved ones are exposed to the light of day.  Don’t worry.  Your therapist won’t tell anybody about your longing to murder your father.  They can’t even if you did murder someone.  It’s called confidentiality.  A therapist or psychiatrist may not reveal what is said in sessions.But I wouldn’t recommend you murder someone, then tell your therapist.

Well, that’s all for this week.  Next week I hope to have some news on when my latest book is coming out.