As part of my weekly therapy for my BPD, I'm currently working through a "Compassion" module. It ties in nicely with a lot of things I've been thinking about on my own, and working through on a one-to-one basis with my psychologist. However, todays session neatly fits in with my writing too!
With compassion training, we work our way through imagery exercises, building them up over time. We start with just breathing in a relaxed way, then we think about a compassionate colour (for me it's a pinky purple) and then we move onto imagining a safe place. Now we've reached the point where we have to picture our "compassionate other" - someone or something that we can talk to and they can talk to us, soothing us and being compassionate. If we can picture someone soothing us in our minds eye, the idea is that we will accept that a lot more than just telling ourselves to be compassionate....if we need the therapy then we can't manage that!
So I was sitting in the room, listening to the group leader describing the qualities this "other" person should have...and I realised that I have already created my "other". Her name is Miss Esme Smith.
The interesting part is that I already had a scene roughly worked out in my mind, where Esme will talk to Dr Blake, to get her to loosen up, enjoy life more etc.....so I am going to be able to combine my therapy and my writing! They say art mimics life....or is it life that mimics art?!
On a personal note - I had a lovely lunch with a friend today, and we're both hoping to sign up for the next round of creative writing classes at the local college. Unfortunately class size is very low because the ILA dropped their funding....we'll have to wait 3 weeks to see if it's going to go ahead. I think it's a crying shame if it gets cancelled all because the ILA don't think it's a valuable enough course.
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