Things I've learned from counselling #6

I have a parrot named Virginia.

She's invisible and she sits on my left shoulder, and she nips my ear when I start heading down unhealthy paths.

If I were less rubbish at...: nip. If I weren't so useless...: peck. I'll never be good enough...: full-on biting.

Virginia was also the name of the first counsellor I went to voluntarily, and for all her faults (and oh boy, did she have them): she gave me a parrot.

Virginia-the-parrot isn't just negative reinforcement, of course, but she reminds me that I don't have to frame things negatively.

In 2010, I didn't know how to frame desires and wants positively. It was all "if I were less crap at ... then ..."; the fantasy of being thin, applied to all my perfectionist-child self-hatred. When Virginia-the-counsellor suggested that I try framing things positively instead, and stopped me halfway through every sentence to rephrase, I mostly ended up staring blankly at her for thirty seconds at a time, trying to work out how on earth I was supposed to say something self-hating in a self-compassionate way.

And that's roughly when I learned that, actually, my life tends to go rather better - and I tend to be rather better - if I don't frame my goals in terms of current negative self-perception. It works rather better if I can say "Okay, I'd like [X good thing] to happen, and to do that I need to take [concrete actions Y and Z]" - even if [y] and [z] are tiny - than if I set up the goal as impossible from the get-go because of my perceived negative qualities.

Virginia-the-parrot's been quiet, lately, but every now and then I get an approving tug on my hair.

a note in passing

CP Snow, in The Two Cultures:

The number 2 is a very dangerous number: that is why the dialectic is a dangerous process. Attempts to divide anything into two ought to be regarded with much suspicion.

(&, yes, the reason I am pulling this out & making a note of it for later is indeed gender.)

more song lyrics

We've all got secrets that we hold inside
The worst little things that we never confide
The worst one of all that you never can hide
Is that you're never quite as strong as you sound

-- Frank Turner, If Ever I Stray

i smoke and i drink and
every time i blink i have a tiny dream
but as bad as i am, i'm proud of the fact
that i'm worse than i seem

-- Ani DiFranco, Grey

there's more than one answer to these questions
pointing me in a crooked line
and the less I seek my source for some definitive
the closer I am to fine

-- Indigo Girls, Closer to Fine

(because the first came up on shuffle; because I quoted the second at someone recently, and I'm thoughtful about the contrast; because I'm planning a fanvid to the third and thinking about it a lot and it's starting to set up home, as a philosophy, and I think I like that as resolution to the dichotomy of the first two)

with regards to the shores upon which you find yourself

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