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Preston, K., 2024. Finding New Pathways Reformulation, Winter, p.35-36.
Kim Preston began therapy in Spring 2023 and completed a 24 session Cognitive Analytic Therapy course with Emma Chorlton. Kim had a beautifully creative mind in reflecting upon the therapy process for her, and she wanted to share her thoughts with others, in the hope that they would inspire and encourage others to begin and stick with therapy.
Your brain is like a map, full of pathways.
Dark and scary paths, comfortable paths, paths that have no end but are so long you can't see where they started or exciting paths yet to be discovered. Every thought process you've ever had has become a pathway in your brain, the negative paths are so well trodden that they feel impossible to change, brighten, grow.
Imagine yourself stood on top of a mountain, behind you is all the paths you've ever walked and known, just a webbed map of pain, trauma and uncertainty. But in front of you is a wide open grassy area, with the sun shining bright, birds tweeting in the distance. The mountain is therapy, the fresh new field you see ahead is your future. Do you take old habits and bad directions with you? Or do you use the tools and equipment that therapy will give you to build better, healthier and more solid pathways?
Pathways built by compassion, empathy and understanding rather than fear, trauma and pain. It's not going to be easy, the bricks will be heavy and the mortar might not set straight away so you may have to be more patient and attentive to that path.
It's easy to want to go back to the old ways of building paths, the ways that were easy, comfortable and well versed, but if you truly think about it, were those paths good for you? Did they help? Change is always scary but it doesn't make it bad. Therapy is building pathways made from kindness and self comfort whilst learning what you need to keep building and nurturing yourself along the way.
Consider therapy your apprenticeship, your therapist is your mentor. Providing you with tools to build and showing you how to utilise them. You may have never seen or heard of these tools before but with the expert knowledge and guidance from your mentor, you will develop skills you never realised you had. You may feel apprehensive about these new tools because as much as your current tools hurt your hands, they're all you know. These new tools may seem scary at first but the more you use them, the more they help with setting a solid path for yourself. Your mentor will support you, answer questions you have and make the transition easier. You may feel the urge to throw these new tools away, they're hard to use at first but with practise it will become second nature.
I like to think of my past experiences as whack-a-mole. I know that sadness, fear, anger and all the other emotions that are triggered in trying times, are underneath, waiting to pop up and challenge me, I just don't know when they're coming. Therapy has shown me that I can handle whatever life throws at me, so long as the path under me is solid. I went into therapy thinking that I'd do my sessions and be miraculously cured. It's only whilst coming towards the end that I've realised therapy doesn't stop when the sessions end, it's a life long commitment, diverting away from old pathways and to continue building new ones, every day and for the rest of my life. Making sure to show myself kindness, compassion, patience and love because I deserve it.