Member-only story
Can this change? (and can Nineveh be saved?)
It is a strange question to ask when you enter a therapist’s office. One assumes that the reason that you are there in the first place is because there is some difficult circumstance in your health or life that needs to be different.
Sometimes “the work” of therapy is to adjust to the new reality that has happened. And other times the work is to change something about ourselves or our situation so that whatever was expected to happen does not. (This last one is what most parents of children want to see, assuming that their children are more malleable than the adults who bring them to therapy.)
The hard truth is that some changes are very hard without the entire system changing. For a child, this may mean a parent or parents altering the way that they interact with that child to support any changes that the child is attempting to make. For we adults, we often need the help of the loved ones around us to support our change as well.
But all of this begins in the insight that change is needed, that it is necessary. Some door must be opened. At the very least it is the door to the office!
For me, for changes that I have made in my life, this insight has often come in moments of contemplation or meditation. It is a necessary step to stop, to become aware of where we are in this moment, in order to…
