New business idea

It's coming! The idea behind a concept I have been passionate about for quite some time. I always knew I didn't want to work out of an office, and as time passed, I couldn't take it anymore. I had to quit my office job in an agency and start doing in-home therapy. At least that was one step away from the office. Don't misunderstand: I think therapy in an office is productive. I did it for years. I am excited now to present "TheraRec", which is in the works to begin soon. I did not know how to combine mental health and recreation for people looking for talk therapy, but as 2018 began, ideas started to come together, and I began to create steps and treatment plans. I knew there was more to the idea than alleviating depression and anxiety through activity. I started to learn that activity can create space for observing how we respond to our environment as we interact in it, and for finding solutions. I saw it more this winter as I taught ski lessons. A couple, who were both in their second marriage, took a first time ski lesson together. A lot of dynamics can be revealed through learning a new activity; and for some reason, the wife apologized for every wrong move she made while learning to ski. I wanted to probe more: what makes you want to apologize for something you are not expected to show expertise in? Time on the chair lift also seems to make people "get to the point" and talk more openly as they are out in the open air. I started to see this idea take shape more tangibly and I held on. This next season brings kayaking to the picture and I look forward to the space that is created between air and water. My paddle dips in and I watch the ripples go out as the water changes forms and shades of blue with one simple stroke. There's a truth here waiting to be discovered. I breathe in the fresh breeze that is held by the warm air surrounding me. The trees start to sway and shake the leaves. The moment shares a metaphor that helps me move from an end to a beginning. 

Writing an allegory...

Enjoy chapter one of a creation!

These are tough days. These are the end days. It’s cold and dark. There’s shadows lurking in corners and, at any given moment, someone who you thought was a trusted friend or family member could turn on you. Then you’re left only to find out they‘re playing along with some kind of script just to get you to do what they want. Altruism is rare, and when it does occur, people are suspicious.

The only ones who were left from the house of Seth were Colin and I. We knew we could trust each other because we were one of the few who remained astonished at how humanity had turned. Remaining astonished was the key to survival. We weren’t trying to judge or anything; we needed a way to stay human. We needed not to give into evil. It was so easy to do. It wasn’t until one day when I met Justice. I couldn’t wait to tell Colin about it; but it took a bit of convincing…

“Can he be trusted?” Colin looked at me intently.

“ Yes, he can,” I said confidently. He’s on the inside. He knows all the information before anyone else does. 

How do you know this for sure?

Because he told me.

“And you believed him?” Colin’s voice trembled in bewilderment.

“Yeah, how could I not? He had done so much for me already. I could tell he really wanted to help me. And he did,” I said confidently and full of conviction.

“Well, what did he do? How do you know he wasn’t trying to trick you?” Colin’s green eyes looked startled yet alive. I worried he wouldn’t believe me; that he would think I had turned myself to Legion.

“He - saved my life”, I got out.

Colin drew in closer. Wait, that never happens. That’s an amazing act! We can’t speak of this in public- you must tell me the details in a place where it’s safe.

No, I want to tell everyone… But… you’re right; we need to be smart about this information. They could want to kill him and I don’t want anything to happen to him.

You mean he’s still in town?

I think so. He didn’t tell me much because he’s on a secret mission. Everything will be revealed, he assured me.

Revealed? Okay, this guy sounds like a whack job,” Colin said definitively.

I know what it looks like. No one talks like they know anything anymore. They just act in response to Legion.

Yeah, everyone is so scared of being captured they just do anything to please Legion, but they don’t realize they’re under Legion’s influence. They’re mistaking true freedom. Hmmm… (big pause) I just looked at Colin more intently now. His wide eyes revealed a thought process that I was grateful to be around. “ Justice could be up to something we could be a part of. But we must be sure. I need to be sure.  “ That’s the thing. He thinks a lot. Sometimes too much, but it helps him make up his mind. When his mind is made up, that’s it for him. He’s convinced and there’s no turning back. We agreed in that moment to prove Justice was genuine. The only problem was- where had he gone?

One phrase that kept ringing in my ear from my interaction with Justice was “I am coming back”. He kept saying it like an assurance of some kind. As if I would be worried that he wouldn’t come back. So he must be somewhere, I thought. Where did I begin to search?

I could hear our feet crunching into the snow. We were silent as we walked with no particular destination. Somewhere to talk freely? Somewhere to find Justice? Colin couldn’t wait anymore. He nudged me with the tone of his voice, the painful urgency of knowing. His eyes grew big and the green in his eyes became deeper. He needed to know. Everything. He finally blurted out, “So you never told me…how…? You know!” I stared at him blankly. I knew what he meant, but why did he need to be so secretive about it? Well, I knew why. He didn’t want to draw attention on himself. People had started to disappear. They were people who professed a faith. The one I was beginning to discover. Colin was convinced the government of Legion was taking them because whoever didn’t agree with Legion was taken out. I didn’t care anymore. I just said it. “You mean when he saved my life?”

“Shhhh!!!” Colin said with desperation. Suddenly, I felt a presence. I can’t quite describe it except it was full of peace. So I said it again in a faint whisper, but this time as if Justice were there with me. “You saved my life.” Then I sensed Justice there even more and I felt him smile. It was like my heart could see it but my eyes knew it was not directly in front of me, live. Then, like a movie, I saw Justice’s face in front of me, but I knew he wasn’t really there. And I could see him tell me, “I am in your heart, but one day you will see me like this, face to face. Just endure a bit longer”. “But I’ve endured!” I said aloud. I could feel Colin’s eyes on me as I stared down at the snow. Tears started to stream down my face with no sobbing at all; just the release of pain from over the years. I finally received an answer, but not the one I wanted or expected. “I thought you would take away the pain,” I continued in dialogue with Justice in my heart. Colin just stood there, silent. I wasn’t looking at him, I couldn’t or I would lose this connection. But I knew his mouth gaped open and he was ready to write me off as a “whack job” as well. I felt so inadequate in front of Justice, even if he wasn’t physically in front of me. I picked up my eyes to the snow-covered, white hills. “Remember,” he said, “I did take the pain. The pain you feel is not my doing. Legion has some dominion but not all. He’s on the losing side and wants to make the winning side; my side, lose as many potential points as possible. But he doesn’t see the whole picture. He can’t.  You can. I chose you. I saw you before you were created, and I had a say in how you would come to be.” I knew what the white hills meant. I am pure. I could not believe it at first. I knew I had messed up too much in my life. Yes, I endured through difficulties, but I was just “paying my way”, my right to be on this earth. “That’s not how it is,” Justice clarified.” I am Justice. You cannot be right without me. You cannot be righteous without me. “

Colin knew I was experiencing a deep encounter. He broke up the dialogue, as he saw me frozen like a statue, only hearing my side of the conversation. He could sense it wasn’t meant to be a monologue and for a moment, he was open to the idea of someone being at the other end of my voice. He asked, “Jordan, what is happening?” I turned to look at him. His green eyes were wide in that moment. “Justice is here, but we can only see him through our hearts”. Colin opened his mouth to say something but couldn’t form the words, so I continued. “Justice is more powerful than Legion”. Colin’s face soured like a lemon. “Then where has he been all this time?” he said angrily. “He’s been here; he just hasn’t separated the bad from good yet”.

“Why? Doesn’t he see our pain and misery?” Colin’s voice began to crack and I could see his anger building up.

I know, I said in a calm tone in hopes to relax his. “We gotta trust he knows more than us. He knows what he’s doing. Can we trust him?”

Colin smirked. “Well, I guess that’s the whole point, isn’t it? Can he be trusted?”

CBT, basically

 “Summing it all up, friends, I’d say you’ll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious- the best; not the worst, the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not to curse…do that, and God, who makes everything work together, will wreck you into his most excellent harmonies.” Philippians 4:8-9

It IS possible to change your life by changing your thoughts. I see so many individuals in counseling who struggle with depression and anxiety due to have what Cognitive Behavioral Therapy calls, “cognitive distortions”.  These are exaggerated thoughts about yourself and how others interact with you. I like to use different ways to think of it.

Using animals, like in fables, it is clearer with which one can identify more when you have the animals exemplify a certain characteristic. Catastrophe Cat is always concerned about something- and it’s usually the end of the world. Brain-reading Bear thinks he knows what others are thinking, and it’s usually bad. Predicting Penguin Dividing Dog.

There is also an acronym, called BLUE. B stands for “blaming yourself”, L is for “looking for bad news”, U is for “unhappy guessing”, and E is for “exaggerating the facts”. These are easy to do, especially if you’ve experienced a trauma or suffer from low self esteem. The way to overcome unhelpful thoughts is to first identify it, look at it under the light of reality, understand the genesis of the thought, make sense of why it still gets to be there, and exterminate it by changing your thought to a more positive one. I created my own acronym: ILLUME: Identify, Look in Light, Understand, Make sense, and Exterminate. I will show you how in the following example.

A young lady has been involved in an abusive relationship, so she gathered a thought in that time with the man who did not honor her thoughts or body. This thought is “I am worthless”. She is blaming herself because she feels she got herself into the relationship (forgetting she got herself out of it). So, we identified the thought through a situation that occurred where she was constantly getting angry at co workers in her job because everything they did she saw it from the lens of “I am worthless”. A co worker’s suggestion to improve an area of need caused this young lady to resent it and blame herself. Then we looked at it in the light by asking herself a few questions: How true is this thought? Can everyone really agree that I am worthless? If that is true, then I need to make myself worthy. Wait, that’s impossible, we are infallible human beings. So, what choices do I have now? Accept I am worthless? This is absurd because it is bringing strife in relationships. This thought started because of her  abusive relationship, which took away time and focus from self growth onto what his needs were because she did not want to be caught in a tense moment where he would put her down or hit her. So, we made sense of this thought and changed it to what God says. God says she is “fearfully and wonderfully made”, and “I am made perfect in his sight”, so she can hold onto that truth whenever she tries to think “I am worthless”.

ASSuming

Assuming, again. Assuming that we know the person in front of whom we face. Thinking just because they did (fill in the blank) one year ago means they will do it forever. If they were once well-meaning they care to change and grow to be a better person than yesterday to one day strive to become the best person they can. We think we know each other’s experiences but we don’t bother to really know. In my experience of counseling couples, I have found one assumes he or she knows what his or her spouse is thinking or feeling. I use my sessions for them to check it out. “Ask her, “   I say.  She sheepishly looks at him, expecting an answer without having asked him. He heard her ask me, the therapist, but now she’s embarrassed to ask. I did the asking already, so now she gets the answer she avoided confronting.

Assuming we know what other people’s grief feels like. Something I have learned in my healing processes is that it is a rare few that care about what you’re actually going through. Others will avoid you. Well, it depends on how you go about it. I remember breaking my hip and my wrist in the span of 6 years, and I can tell you that only 3 people stood by me on the different occasions. In the first, was a good friend, in the second, were my parents. I realized something: people don’t really know how to respond to need. I experienced this myself, in real time, while I lived in Beirut, Lebanon; I saw the deep needs and I shrunk back, feeling overwhelmed, better off and helpless all at the same time.

Are you complaining about your life situation? Chances are, others don’t know how to help you. When you charge them with an impossible job, they didn’t sign up for, but sense it in your tone towards them as you tell your “problems”. When they give you advice, but you shoot it down because “you tried it” or “it won’t work”. I want to ask you: What are you looking for here? “I can’t be your everything” he tells her, overwhelmed.

I remember the moment, at 18 years old, when I went to my mom in tears, telling her, “I thought you were supposed to be everything to me.” I caught myself as I said it and it left my lips. “Well, I’m not,” she said plainly. I realized in that moment I needed to let go of putting pressure on my mother to meet my needs. I was entering young adulthood, and she could not support me as she used to. Perhaps this is why our culture goes away for college. It was time for me to find myself. Here it goes…

Seasons of Singleness

Lately I’ve been listening a lot to marriage podcasts. It helps me to understand marriage as a single. I recently listened to “Love and Respect” podcast, episodes #118 and 119. Emmerson describes, with his son (using theological and psychological lens), the 4 seasons of marriage: summer, the joyous time; fall and winter: the less exciting times, and spring: the renewing time. I am here to describe seasons of singleness. Summer: where we, as singles, realize being single has so much freedom and joy to it. I begin to think in this season: “Wait, I can come home at whatever time I want? I can work as much or as little as I want without being judged?” Yes, we can listen to our choice of music and be as self serving as possible. Then there’s fall: we notice the colors on the leaves, which remind us there’s good things about singleness, but we know there’s going to bare trees soon. So we “bear” it. This season of loneliness that goes into winter. And not to mention the holidays where everyone seems to be getting engaged and we are reminded of the importance of family. If you’re in your 20’s, you can enjoy your family of origin, but if you’re over 34, you realize you want to begin your own traditions with a potential spouse. Ah, yes, then comes spring. A new perspective! Maybe being single isn’t so bad after all- Maybe you’ve been on too many bad dates and you’ve seen too many marriages falling apart. The moral here? Enjoy where you're at! It's only temporary...singleness does have an end ;)