unplugged

The other day I was going to a Hollywood theme party. My family and I all dressed up as different famous people. The TV was on and as we were running around snapping pictures it turned off all of a sudden on its own. My friend tried to turn it back on but it wouldn't turn on. I tried and I checked everything I could visibly see and all appeared to be in working order and plugged in. The TV was broken. After our party I came home and tried to tinker around with it but I'm not to electronically savvy. I came to the conclusion that it was broke and needed to be fixed. I called a repair man and he said it would probably cost around $300 to fix it if it was what he thought it was. I said never mind and bought a new TV. My brother came over and took the old TV because he wanted to see if he could fix it. I got a phone call an hour later telling me "I'm special" because the only problem with the TV was that it wasn't plugged in the back all the way. When I checked previously it seemed like it was plugged in all the way and everything was fine. I mean I'm not a complete idiot.
This made me start thinking about my life or the lives of my clients. Sometimes we go through life not feeling completely connected or we pretend like everything is fine and we tell everyone that we are doing great. But in reality we feel a little unplugged. You see the TV would work and turn off and then on again and as annoying as it was, we still watched it. Just like when something is not going wrong with us we still move forward or try to act like nothing is wrong and cover it by our ability to function. When my friends and family were running around we must have jarred the plug just enough to become completely disconnected but still appear like it was connected. I am guilty of acting like this. There has been times in my life when I've been in a crisis mode and all I can do is the mandatory tasks that make it appear like I am connected and working just fine, but on the inside knowing that if anyone were to look further or ask me more questions or give me more tasks to do, that I would not be able to handle it and would probably have a melt down right in front of them. At times we need a professional or someone with new insight and experience to come in to help fix the problem or at least help get thing reconnected better.

My new TV purchase was an $800 dollar mistake that could have been avoided if I would have asked for help or had the professional come out and look at it before I gave up on the old TV. Using the repair man he could have told me it just needed to be plugged in better and would have only cost me his $85 service fee to come out and check it out. When we don't take care of our problems or emotions it starts to wear on our entire body. We start getting physical symptoms like ulcers, chronic pain, tension in our muscles, chronic diseases etc. Most physical illness is a result of unresolved emotional pain or stress. If you get help to resolve the issues you can prevent yourself from having to spend thousands on medical bills and years of suffering later. While counseling can be expensive how much are you willing to invest in yourself to get plugged in or rewired so you feel you are functioning on your best possible level? How much are you worth to take preventative measures to take care of issues before they get bigger and possibly more serious and painful? You are worth it and so is your health!!! It's OK to talk to a therapist, we are not that scary and we don't bite too hard. We do not judge, we listen and teach you ways to cope and ways to overcome the parts of yourself that you feel are broken or unplugged.

Hopeless

I have a client who is 16 years old. She had been sexually abused by her father for years. She came into counseling with a bad attitude. Her mom was making her come. She had been through five therapists and no one was able to help her through her traumas and so she really thought therapy was a waste of time. She had dropped out of school, would sleep all day, had no desire or motivation to change. She was depressed.

Our second session I had her do a sand tray. I gave her some time to herself to explore the sand tray room and get into the process. I felt she was very smart and needed some private self exploration. When I came back she had created a master piece. She was so excited to tell me about her creation that within minutes she had opened up and was letting me in. We processed her scene and her feelings and she was excited to come back to therapy. She was now filled with hope.

The third session she came back, her affect was now bright, she was happy and excited to start talking. She said that all the therapists who she had been to were older and that they always asked her how things made her feel and she felt they couldn't relate. She then said for the first time in years i felt hope, hope that finally someone understands me. She reported that she applied and got a scholarship to go to a private school so she can graduate from high school on time. She had set some new goals for herself and she has a desire to speak and tell her story to other youth to let them know they are not alone. This was a huge change from where she was at when she first came in and where she had been for the past 6 years. It taught me that the best way to instill hope is to be with the client, show them you care and try to relate with them on their level. I use different techniques when I work with teenagers because they are usually resistant to treatment when they feel they are being forced to go. She still has some trauma work to be done but a few more sessions and she will be back to a good level of functioning without her past traumas haunting her and keeping her down.