November 29th, 2018
Barcelona. Autumn Gales.

        Yesterday I was with the young woman I told you about in the letter from November 5th, where I explained that she was scared of the two professional projects she was about to embark. We worked through the visualization of that fear and she finished the session feeling more confident, more courageous, and more willing to give that leap of faith.

Well, yesterday when we met to start the session, she was crying and, in her words, “with dizziness, nausea, and in a deep neurosis”. My first reaction was of surprise and confusion “what’s the matter now?” I asked myself and her.

She told me that the week before she had been visited by a really close friend who changed her life plans. I said: “The image that’s coming to my mind is that three weeks ago you were building your center (partner, residence, and especially career) and there’s been a gale (the visit of an intimate friend) that has messed up all you have been working for; where is the work you were talking to me about three weeks ago? Where is the relationship with your partner, the one you were happy with, the one that you two were working on to make it better? Where is that prospect of a life in Berlin?” She said she didn’t know.

In the therapeutic support sessions, and from my experience, there is a fundamental ingredient:
PATIENCE.

I took a deep breath and told myself: “Be patient, Rafa, just be patient.” 

We set ourselves a goal, and it only takes a few weeks to forget about ourselves, and confusion, neurosis, and wasting time and energy all come back. We have to be persistent and remember the goals that we set to ourselves so we don’t get surrounded by a cloud of confusion and nonsense, and that is mostly my role: To be a reminder of the way they took to move towards their wellbeing, having previously diagnosed their weaknesses and strengths within themselves.

It seemed to me that the conversation we had worked as a reminder, and with that she found her center again.

Turning your house upside down is legitimate, but it comes with a risk; it

can lead to running away from reality and going deeper in confusion. There’s nothing wrong with what you’re feeling and have gone through, but maybe the purpose of it all is to remind you what your actual place is, which are your commitments, and how to follow them to grow. By sticking to your commitments and remembering what they mean, you grow. Changing everything just because of a gale means to sacrifice the work you’ve done, and that comes with a price: Neurosis and confusion, which can be somatized by your body to the point of getting sick.

Lastly, we also reflected on how these emotions have their origins in the dynamics of acknowledgement and search for affection, which originate during childhood. The only way to

satisfy this lack is by accepting it and dealing with your life, with the awareness I get from the commitments I make. Staying, not running away, that’s the key, even though the postmodern climate doesn’t allow it, but rather invites to consume experiences and to deconstruct “everything”, producing what the saying states: The devil loves to fish in troubled waters.

The less I stay, the more volatile everything becomes, and in the long run, the more is the existential angst I feel because nothing is consistent, nothing is real, everything is ephemeral and liquid… sickness guaranteed, sales guaranteed and system guaranteed at the expense of the people. 

Well, I’m drifting too much
to the philosophy side of things.
Enough for today.