Page 104 of In This Iron Ground
“How about we table that discussion for now?” Mandy suggested softly. “I’ve pushed you hard today, huh?”
Damien just smiled slightly.
“Damien, I want you to know that we don’t have to do everything at once. A deep excavation of the past is not only unnecessary in each session, it’s not necessary at all. Even if it would be helpful and it would inform the work we do together, we live in the now. And though that’s informed by the past, we can learn lessons from the past without having to lay out every detail.
“For example, today we learnt your core beliefs on what makes a person good or bad. We have seen that your behaviours mirror what you classify as ‘good’, and we could logically postulate that, according to that definition, you fall under the category of good. However, we have also learnt that how youfeelabout whether you are good or bad doesn’t actually align with this analysis. And—correct me if I’m wrong—we’ve suggested that this misalignment was caused by some part of you adapting and internalising messages from people that were not at all a reliable source of your worth.
“With that information, we can look at the present a little differently. Now, when you get that feeling, the ‘I’m not good enough’ feeling, you can ask yourself, gently: Where is it coming from? Me? Or someone else? And is that person worth listening to? Are they worth keeping in your life?”
“No.” He could voice that much at least.
“Good. Then we can be more understanding now. When you feel like that, you can gently say, ‘I understand where this feeling is coming from, but it doesn’t align with reality. This is not a belief I wish to hold.’ By that I mean, although those feelings and perspectives exist insubjectivereality, they don’t reflectobjectivereality. Each person lives in their subjective reality—the reality of the subject—and sees objective reality—where all the objects exist—through the lens of subjective reality.
“Your lens is clouded by those past messages. However, we can slowly but surely start refocusing that lens so that it is yours. So that it fits with how you want to see the world.”
“It’s not that easy, though,” Damien couldn’t help but burst out. “They—I can’t just say, ‘No that isn’t true’ and move on.”
“That’s an incredibly valuable point that we should keep in mind. This road is hard. In fact, it can be so difficult at times that you may feel like you aren’t moving forwards at all. But just the fact that you are on this road, Damien, is so amazing. You may not be able to see that now, and you don’t have to. But, God, it is.
“We have to remember, difficult roads lead to places too. It’s not easy to say ‘No, actually, negative thought, that isn’t true’, but it’s worth it. And it’s not about getting into fights with yourself. And it definitely isn’t about expecting the emotion that negative thought causes to go away the moment you challenge it. That’s the rather cruel secret of mental health—a lot of the strategies to improve it are building blocks. But, right now, that voice—the Other Voice, the disparaging one, is very loud.
“There’s an old, Native American parable. It explains how everybody has two wolves constantly fighting inside each of us. The negative wolf—the wolf that tells you that you’re bad, you can’t do it, you’re a failure. And the positive wolf, which tells you, you can do it. You are worthy. You are loved.
“The wolf that wins is, very simply, the one you feed. When you indulge one of the wolves, leave it to go unchallenged, agree with it, don’t seek out evidence to oppose it, you feed it, and it grows stronger.
“Right now, the positive wolf, your own voice which aligns with your own morals and how you want to see the world and yourself, is weak and malnourished, whilst the other one is huge. So, of course giving the malnourished voice a piece of meat may not make a noticeable difference in that one fight. But every scrap of meat you give to the positive wolf is a piece of meat you have denied the negative wolf, and down the line that is going to make a huge difference. Everybody has those negative thoughts. Having them isn’t the issue. We just want to get to a point where your own voice is louder than the rest, some—hopefully most—of the time. Does that sound like something we could do?”
Damien thought about it. He wanted to say yes just to please her but felt safe enough to tell the truth.
“I don’t know.”
“Damien, that’s a great answer,” Mandy said.
Damien looked at her sceptically.
“It is! It’s truthful and makes sense. You have your own experiences helping you predict the future. You can put some faith in me if you can, and in yourself, too. Most of all, we can simply do, and observe. We have a hypothesis. Feeding the positive wolf will cause slow changes. All we can do is employ tactics, which is what therapy is basically for, to feed the wolf we want to grow, and see if it works. How does that sound?”
“That sounds…” Exhausting. Lengthy. But, also, “…doable.”
Mandy smiled at him.
“Okay, then. We have a plan.”
Walking home after the session, Damien let himself feel it. For the first time in a long time, he let the feeling flow without the fear of getting hooked on something that would kill him.
Hope.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Damien left the bar alone. He enjoyed hanging out with the friends he had made at Eketon, but they didn’t have the depth of feeling his friendships back home had. He knew it was perhaps unusual to think that his high school relationships would be the longest-lasting of his life, but they had been bonds forged at war. It was hard to untangle yourself from people you had gone through so much with.
Damien’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He took it out to see a text notification.
Hakan
U up?
Damien rolled his eyes. He knew Hakan was using text-speak in an attempt at humour.
