Attempting therapy to tackle our personal issues could be likened to unknotting a tangled necklace. You make the decision that it’s now time to loosen up the necklace as it’s beginning to choke you.
You’ve probably been putting it off for some time until you finally brace yourself for the leap into therapy. And sometimes the issues feel insurmountable and so messy. The more you unknot one bit, another bit seems to get more tightly wound up. You could say it’s the traction of therapy.
Sometimes you get so far and then you want to give up when it either feels like there’s just too much to talk about or it’s all getting too close to the bone. The more you peel back the layers of yourself, the tighter the knots can feel. And the closer you get to finding the core of you, the tighter the knots you find – often the worst ones of all. But the sense of achievement and momentary liberation when you reach and unknot them is worth the sweat and tears.
As with therapy and unknotting a necklace, life take’s over again and sometimes through everyday ‘wear and tear’ our necklace becomes knotted again. We are like fine filigrees of emotions than need to be unbound over time.
Developing a deeper understanding of ourselves helps us start untangling our messy ‘knots’ more easily and then with practice we access the courage to face them. In doing so we achieve an outlook of greater patience with ourselves, giving ourselves more space and energy and no longer feeling choked.