Process of enquiry. Session 2.

I continued with my therapist into the MIECAT (creative arts therapy) process of enquiry into exploring my unconscious memory around commitment.

We continued on with the words I had written last week, starting with “confusion”:

Commitment is… confusion

I moved into a position to represent confusion.

Movement stance to represent the theme of confusion.

My therapist observed that it was very static, and still. That’s when I wrote the keywords, ‘frozen’ and ‘trapped’ and ‘blank’. She suggested I try and represent the confusion moving in some way. I decided to draw. This is what I drew:

Drawing the internal representation of confusion. Does confusion move? Why does it hurt so?

Then she got me to describe the drawing. I said “there’s a figure in a box and they are on a table and there is squiggly lines connected to it’s arms and legs.” She said, if you had a question for the inner system what would it be? I asked, “what are the squiggly lines?” That’s when I wrote the word electricity. Immediately the disbelief came up, so my therapist encouraged me to acknowledge the system and to say “I believe you.”

Then we moved on to “Dying”.

Commitment is… dying

I performed a representational movement.

Movement to represent dying

Then I added the keywords ‘peace’ and ‘empty’. We identified that these feelings relate to both past and present (I live with suicidal ideation and often struggle to make or find meaning in life. Although I have a good life and much to look forward to, I often long for death, as a sweet reprieve).

Then I looked at the rest of the keywords and added them to some of the themes I wrote down last week.

I only added ‘’nice things” to laughter.

I added murder and terror to getting killed.

I added master, bound and torture to pain.

Then I wrote ‘teamwork’, ‘practice’ and ‘profound’ on one sheet of paper and I performed a movement for all three. I added keywords after each movement.

Commitment is… teamwork, practice, profound.

Movement for teamwork.

Interestingly teamwork brought up a lot of negative keywords, like ‘ganging up’, ‘getting hurt’ etc. The inner parts acknowledged there is some good stuff that goes with teamwork but overall it wasn’t positive. I wonder if that’s why I like solitary sports more than group ones. “Practice” brought up the word “gross”, and I can’t remember if profound brought up the other keywords or if they were related to teamwork and practice. Either way, I felt pretty down by the end of it all.

It just felt like everything was so negative and I guess I felt a bit hopeless. Like underneath all my relationships is this deep seated toxicity that I am potentially acting out or it’s waiting to go off. Like a ticking time bomb. In my therapists PhD, she talks about moving away from being a victim. When I read it I found it a bit triggering as I judged myself for being a victim. I told her this and she said, that she too had to sit with similar things that I am sitting with and that she got to that point after 16 years of therapy! That made me feel a bit better – meaning that I was where I was meant to be I guess. I am coming up 8 years with her. I am astounded it has been so long. Time has gone so slowly yet not.

So after this work, which was a day ago, I felt better today. More centred, which is a good thing. I am in and out of a depression overall, but I have much to do as always and grateful that work and projects keep me busy and engaged with life. It’s not that I don’t enjoy life. I do, I just forget that I do. I guess I dissociate and lose touch with the good things. It is a process. A long and windy process.