Therapy

I had a great therapy session today. After two sessions, I'm really liking my new therapist. I feel a little sorry for her, though. English is not her first language, and when I'm worked up about something, I talk very quickly. Even my friends and family have a hard time understanding me when I am particularly excited about something. So she had to ask me to slow down. I could tell she felt bad having to ask, so I said, "Don't worry, even my family can't understand me sometimes."

We talked about my family for the first 30 minutes so that she could get to know me and my family history. Then, given the choice of what I wanted to discuss, I chose to talk about my issues with my brother. It felt good to vent to somebody who doesn't know him; for obvious reasons, it's hard to talk to my family about these issues. Anyway, right at the closing bell, so to speak, she made this great analogy: "So, you're on a diet, right? And you decide you shouldn't eat certain things because they aren't good for you? What if you think about your brother like a bad food and just realize that he isn't good for you?"

This was sort of brilliant. Well, more than sort of. I've always said that I'm like a sponge: I suck up everybody's issues as if they were my own. So I need to learn to coat my emotional sponge with Teflon and let everybody else's emotions slide off of me rather than soaking it all up. I hope I can really take that lesson to heart. It is so easy for me to let everybody's else's mood affect my own, and I just don't need that in my life.

Guess that's it for now. Thanks for listening!