Logotherapy studies & Tucking away the pain

With every fibre of my being, I became totally and utterly absorbed in each of the Logotherapy learning courses. 

Due to my shattered trust in the world, it was just what I needed.  I loved the work so very much and spent my hours at home reading, researching and thinking about how to answer the questions.  During that time, as my supervisor explained to me, I was ‘unloading’... and I was!  I produced copious amounts of written “stuff” that had been locked up inside of me for years.  

For the first time in my life, I felt as though I really had a voice to speak (in writing) about whatever I wanted to speak about as I answered the deeply thought provoking study questions.  I wrote and wrote and wrote... far more than the task requirements, yet my supervisor remained very patient with me and read every word of my portfolios, commenting on every page, which made me feel heard, understood and acknowledged... something I was sorely in need of at the time.

When I poured out my heart to my supervisor about how I still struggled greatly with what happened in therapy, she insisted that I did not need further therapy than what I’d already experienced throughout my life... that there was nothing more that any therapist could do for me.  She instead, gave the example of the Holocaust survivors and how many had to learn how to just get on with their lives after their release from their horrendous concentration camp experiences—tucking away the horrors whilst going on with their lives as courageously and normally as they possibly could.  They would not have survived otherwise.  

In defiant rebellion over the idea of “letting go” of any hope of being rescued by “somebody else”, yet knowing deep down that my supervisor was right, I wrote the following poem:


TUCKING AWAY THE FEAR, THE PAIN AND THE ANGER!
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Do NOT express it!  Go on!  Go on
Hold it all in!  Quieten that sad song
Do NOT express it!  Do NOT cry out
Do NOT argue!  Do NOT shout

Tuck it away!  Go on!  Go on
Who can hear your mournful song
Alone you must find a way out of ‘that place’
To discover your true self!  To see your own face

Who can help you, or dry those tears
Alone you must conquer your own bitter fears
Find your own strength!  YOU MUST!  YOU MUST!
Search your own light, for ‘IN YOU’, you must trust

Move forward!  Climb high! Never give in
Hold tightly God’s hand!  ‘Life’s’ between you and Him
Grasp your ‘life’s meaning’ – ‘life’s purpose’ for you
It’s all that is left!  It’s what you MUST DO

Try to believe ‘it’ and never let go
If it’s meant to be, then it WILL be so
When you defiantly stand for ‘YOUR GOOD AND YOUR TRUE’
Then nothing can stop ‘that course’ meant for you

You are unique and so is your work
So do not abandon it and do not shirk
The world is waiting for what you can give
Sharing your purpose is the true way to ‘LIVE’

Keep moving forward
Life’s blessings will come
Emerge from the darkness
Enter the sun

(Tuesday, 26 October 2010)
 

“Something meaningful draws us out of ourselves – it enlarges our vision, enriches us and causes us to grow: to become bigger and better than we are.  Frankl quoted Goethe as saying:  “If we take a man as he is, we make him worse; but if we take him as he ought to be, we help him become it”” (Shantall 2002:19) ~ Life’s Meaning in the Face of Suffering
 

At first I thought my supervisor was being cruel and heartless to suggest that I no longer needed therapy, but today I know without a doubt that she was right.  She saw potential and strength in me that I had never yet dared to see in myself in all those years I had been going to therapy, expecting the therapist to have the answers for my healing and my life... and all that time, the answers were already there... in me... they always had been.

A simple prayer, buried in one of the most boring (to me) chapters of the bible, became the prayer of my soul from that day forth...

1 Chronicles 4:9-10King James Version (KJV)
9 And Jabez was more honourable than his brethren: and his mother called his name Jabez, saying, Because I bare him with sorrow.

10 And Jabez called on the God of Israel, saying, Oh that thou wouldest bless me indeed, and enlarge my coast, and that thine hand might be with me, and that thou wouldest keep me from evil, that it may not grieve me! And God granted him that which he requested.

Eternal gratitude
~ Pana