Happy Daze

Let's cheer up a bit.  If you've been reading along here, you know that I often use this blog to let out my frustrations and exasperations that come with the role that I have chosen to take.  But I want to add a bit of balance.  It's not all that terrible.  The folks I see, and the hours I spend do not make me feel that life is always tragic and cruel.  I am not doing this for punishment, nor do I do it to gloat over other people's misery. Also, I can't say I do it for the money, as there are certainly easier ways to make lots more money, although none are more fascinating.

Really, doing this stuff is mostly rewarding, both mentally and emotionally.  Being a part of the process of someone making difficult, positive changes in their lives is very exciting and fulfilling.  Seeing people treat others better, insisting that they get treated better, and learning to take better care of themselves is exhilarating.  It's like watching someone grow-up in time-lapse photography.  They are shedding their old selves and grow new, more colorful, creative and successful new ones.

Yes, human life on earth is often unfair, capricious, and even absurd.  So, nu? It can also be whimsical, warm and sexy.

Each case is a puzzle that I have to help put together.

A woman came to see me and she was depressed.  The puzzle: why is she depressed and what can I do about it?  How can we, she and I, rearrange the pieces of her life so that the depression will disperse.  Or is it just brain chemistry?

I find out that her mother died when she was six, and two years later her father remarried.  He paid more attention to his new wife than he did to her.  To me, that is a big piece of the puzzle. 

Then we have to see how that affects her now.  How does she behave in other relationships?  How does she react to loss, or prospect of loss?  How much can she trust men? If her father didn't value her enough, how much value does she give herself?  Many more.

Then what can we do to change how she feels, reacts and behaves so that things will change?  That is the puzzle.  I believe that if she changes how she acts and thinks, she will change how she feels.  She will change her brain chemistry. I have done things like that.  It works. It's rewarding and fun.

Some puzzles I can't solve.  I can't get the pieces to fit.  Or I think I can get the pieces to fit, but the client doesn't like the way they fit, so it doesn't work.  Then I feel as if I didn't really find the right solution.

What do I do then?
I put it in my blog.