(Day 22/122 of the experiment)
Maybe I shouldn’t have pulled Svetlana’s leg? Now she will find out what a strange friend she has. And I think this will destroy our friendship. We won’t be able to talk about everything under the sun because now she will know my history and during every one of my remarks she will think, “don’t be scared, she’s just crazy.” But if I think optimistically, maybe this experiment with therapy sessions will actually help me?
After all, it’s not usual for us to go to a therapist; it’s even shameful! It's not shameful to hide behind your fears and complexes your whole life! It's shameful to seek help from a professional. It’s not shameful to live with a man who doesn’t love you and hits you, it’s not shameful to think about suicide because there’s no purpose in life, it’s not shameful to cry into your pillow every night and curse the world – that’s not shameful. But asking for help is shameful. But I’m not ashamed! And I will definitely become happy!
While drinking my morning coffee, I decided to finish writing my list.
I’m ashamed of my smile.
I’ve dreamt of going dancing my whole life, but I’m ashamed of my shoe size. I feel that next to my partner’s foot, my size 42 will look like a monkey’s paw.
I don’t like my name. It’s strange and childish.
I’m afraid to meet new people because I think they will consider me abnormal.
I’m uninteresting to other people.
I don’t feel joy in life.
I’m just a lazy bum.
At the seventeenth point, when the tears were streaming down my face and I could no longer bear this torment, I put a fat period and decided to finish the list. My body was starting to twitch a little, like a person with a nervous tick.
Throughout the entire workout, I was not thinking about how to stretch my muscles and step one step closer to the split, but about the suffering I would endure in the therapist’s office.
(Day 23/122 of the experiment)
Yesterday wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. The conversation with Sveta didn’t feel like a doctor’s examination, where you’re told that everything is so bad and there’s no chance for a normal life. It felt like something in between a chat with friends and a conversation with a woman who is much smarter than you. In short, I liked it.
The method Sveta uses is unique and based on a combination of her two interests – psychology and journalism. The patient – that is, me – receives a list of topics from the psychologist based on my inquiries, which I need to write about every day. All these texts are submitted to the specialist, and further work is built upon the information from the texts. The main advantage of this method is that a person helps themselves – during the “free writing” moment – when you don’t think about what to write, but give your brain a topic, the subconscious is freed, and things you hadn’t even considered come out onto the paper. It releases all childhood traumas, all fears, everything that’s hidden deep in the subconscious.
So I received 17 topics to write about. To avoid overwhelming myself – one topic per day. Immediately after writing my masterpiece, I will send it to Sveta, and she will provide guidance – either some psychological exercises or a mini-meeting during which we will discuss everything.
Text #1. My Childhood
I can say my childhood was happy. I had a complete family – a mom and dad, a grandmother, a sister. However, when I was five years old, my parents were forced to go abroad for work so that we could live well.
And that’s when I felt like a burden. I thought a lot about whether my parents would have gone if I hadn’t existed. My sister – Sofia (it’s important – not Sofia and not Sonya) – suffered from our mom’s love for the French actress Sophia Loren. So, my sister is four years older than me. And when my parents decided to go abroad, she was already nine. So I thought the main reason for my parents’ departure was me.
Grandma moved into our apartment because her house was small and located far from our school. And we started living together as a trio. It should be noted that Grandma Paraska made our life happy. We went for many walks, visited the park, went to the library, and spent a lot of time together. So I was definitely a happy child.
Of course, I missed my parents a lot. They called rarely, and visited even less often. I understood in my head that it was all for our well-being, but my heart stubbornly screamed, “You are not needed by your parents.”
When my sister and I grew up, we still couldn’t become any closer to either mom or dad. Because the parents stayed in the Czech Republic and took Grandma Paraska with them. They called me and my sister many times, but she already had a boyfriend, and I had no desire to start a new life from scratch. The end of the story.
After I wrote my first text as part of the psychological consultations, Sveta called me, and we discovered a deep resentment towards our parents. I had buried it so deep in my soul that I hadn't admitted it even to myself.