BlueDaisy

Actual Depression: bloodshot eyes, no longer trust themselves with pencils, has not showered in five days

Quirky OCD: organized books, clean room, color coordinated outfits

Actual OCD: Intrusive thoughts, flipping the light switch 8 times so you don’t stab your brother, picking holes in your skin

Cute eating disorders: Slim trim and beautiful, shyly refusing a second helping, dancer aesthetic

Actual eating disorders: Puffy cheeks and eroded teeth from excessive vomiting, hair growing over your freezing body and refusing to eat carrots because they’re too high in carbs

Adorable anxiety: just a smol bean, soft, must be protected from the world

Actual anxiety: crying so hard you throw up, shaking, losing sleep over a period after the “okay”

RPG PTSD: flashbacks, vietnam, u don’t know what i’ve been through kiddo

Actual PTSD: Buying your first pregnancy test at twelve, flinching at high fives, i can’t feel my hands where am I what year is it

Cartoon ADHD: look a squirrel, something shiny, fidgety loveable bufoon

Actual ADHD: rereading the same page over and over because it doesn’t make sense, hasn’t done the laundry in four months, hyperfocusing on a mushroom knowing you have work to do

Thank you very much!

As well as with a lot of creative endeavors people set out on, you just have to push through it. You may not absolutely love it for a little while, but you’ve loved it before and you’ll love it again, and in this case, at least you know that it’s simply due to a rough patch in the writing process, which will never result in the end of the world, and should not result in the end of your story.

If you want to finish it badly enough, then you will. You cannot wait around, however, to fall back in love with it. If you simply feel overwhelmed by your story, like it is taking up the majority of your time, thoughts, and energy, it would be wise to put it down for a little while, a week or two, then come back to it. Ease into it, of course, or you’ll end up burnt out again and have to take another break.

I hope this helps you with your story. Happy writing!

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Writing a therapy session can often be daunting.  There are so many different approaches to therapy that it’s downright impossible to say “this is how all therapy looks.”

So I’m going to be writing brief guides to help y’all figure out what kind of therapist you should write depending on what purpose the therapy session serves within your story.

We’re gonna start with person-centered therapy, because it’s by far the easiest to write.

The whole idea behind person-centered therapy is that all that you need for a client to change is to really be nonjudgmental, understanding, and 100% there for the client. There’s no fancy techniques. The therapist just builds up a relationship with the client, and does their best to understand them.

What person-centered therapy is best for narratively:

The client character gets to express all the emotions they really feel inside, in a safe environment with no consequences to outside relationships. It’s a great way to show, not tell, your readers what your character is going through.

Advantages of using person-centered therapy:

You don’t have to worry about characterizing the therapist very deeply or learning fancy therapeutic techniques. Just make your therapist a good listener who never gives outright advice, and it’s hard to go wrong.

The client character is the driving force behind the session. You get to explore the client’s emotions in depth, without worrying about the therapist interfering or changing things.

It is especially effective in cases where your client character feels like no one listens to them, or that they can’t express their emotions to others in the outside world.

Disadvantages of using person-centered therapy:

The client character is carrying the weight of the scene. You have to already know exactly where your character is going before you start writing it.

Person-centered therapy is often inadequate for treating certain severe disorders on its own. 

If you need to have an outsider tell your character what they need to be doing, you can’t use person-centered therapy.

How to portray a person-centered therapist:

Kind, compassionate, caring, an amazing listener.  

Tends to nod & say “mmhmm” or “oh?” a lot.

Leans towards the client character; pays full attention to them at all times.

Speaks less frequently than the client character.

Tends to mirror what the client character is expressing to build their understanding of the client’s experience

“It seems like you’re saying…”

“You sound like…”

Really looks at how the client character is reacting emotionally during the session

Important: a person-centered therapist will NEVER tell the client character what to do or how to solve their problems. The client is completely capable of figuring it out themself if the therapist can provide a safe environment for them to explore the issue in.

So what does a person-centered therapy session actually look like? Let’s find out!

The following are some excerpts of this video, which is a filmed session between a woman, Gloria, and Carl Rogers, who founded person-centered therapy. Highly recommend watching this; there’s other videos with Gloria seeing other famous therapists that I will be discussing in future parts.

Gloria: I don’t know if [my 9 year old daughter] can accept me the way I am. I think I paint a picture that I’m all sweet and motherly. And – I’m a little ashamed of my shady side too. 

Rogers: Mhm, mhm. I see. It really cuts a little deeper. If she really knew you, would she, could she accept you?  

Gloria: This is what I don’t know. Yeah. I don’t want her to turn away from me. 

Rogers: That relationship-

Gloria: And I don’t even know how I feel about it because there are times when I feel so guilty like when I have a man over, I even try to make a special set‑up so that if I were ever alone with him, the children would never catch me in that sort of thing. Because I’m real leery about it.

Rogers: Mhm.

Gloria: And yet I also know that I have these desires.

Rogers: And so it’s quite clear it isn’t only her problem or the relationship with her, it’s in you as well.  

Gloria: And my guilt. Yeah. Yeah. I feel guilty so often. `

And later on, Rogers is super aware of how Gloria is expressing her emotions, and looking at what that means:

Gloria: …I hate myself if I’m bad, but I also hate myself if I lie.

Rogers: I guess, judging from your tone of voice, you sound as though you hate yourself more when you lie than you do in terms of things you disapprove of in behavior.

Even later on, Rogers reflects what Gloria was saying, in a way that made Gloria feel understood:

Gloria: …This has really bothered me. This happened with Pammy about a month ago and it keeps coming to my mind. I don’t know whether to go back and talk to her about it or wait. She may have even forgotten what she asked me, but uh – it just-

Rogers: The point is, you haven’t forgotten.  

Gloria:  I haven… No, I haven’t.

So that’s kind of an overview of what person-centered therapy looks like! It’s not too bad, right? 

1. reflection of emotions:

Is when the therapist reflects (like a mirror) the emotion or feeling of the client back to the client. For example, the client talks about how much they cried after an event, and how nobody was there for them, so you say something like “I can see that you were so sad that you felt like you couldn’t stop being sad and you wanted someone there for you”. 

2. reflection of behaviour:

Is the same as before, but with behaviour. For example, a client is laughing as they tell you about how sad they were when their uncle died, and you say back “you say you were sad, but you’re laughing now.” Or a person balls up their hands and screams “I’m not angry!!” and you go “You are balling up your hands, and screaming, your face is red and you’re scowling, does that sound like “not angry” to you?”

3. paraphrasing:

Is when the therapist paraphrases what the client said to show you’re paying attention and to confirm whether you understand what the client is trying to convey. So they say: “I was stuck in traffic, changing the channels, and then it hit me, my father was dead, my sister hooked on drugs and there was nothing I could do about any of that.” So you say “you realised you were not in control of the actions of other people”.

You can also do a combination of two or all three at the same time, for example:

reflections: “you’re tearing up as you tell me this story, and you keep hugging yourself, I think this memory is sad or hurtful, more than it is happy as you said in the beginning, what do you think?”

reflections + paraphrasing: within the same context of the paraphrasing– “ you realised you were not in control of the actions of other people, perhaps you even felt powerless”

Other “techniques” are asking open questions and matching what you say to the way you behave, you must always be a “congruent” therapist.

Look at this link for further ideas: https://positivepsychologyprogram.com/client-centered-therapy/

Oh, there are a ton of bad coping mechanisms! 

- Never mentioning the loss, leaving conversations where it’s brought up or snapping at the people who talk about it

- Falling back on addictions like drinking, smoking, drugs, compulsive spending, overeating, etc.

- Avoiding people who want to help because that would force them to face not just their own grief but the others’

- Not eating. Focusing on that unmet need instead of the loss might be easier in the whumpee’s opinion

- Burying themself in work to keep their mind off of it and driving themself to the brink of exhaustion

- Sleeping all day, never leaving their bed. When they’re asleep, they don’t have to think – but that doesn’t mean they can’t have nightmares about it!

- Meaningless sexual encounters for brief moments of “pleasure” that don’t have any real heart in them