Session Two

This is another guest post from Dorothy Donald. 

We have a brief chat about what’s happened since the last session (a lot), how I’ve been doing lately (mixed), and what I hope to gain from therapy (I crack and tell him I just want to be more productive at work).

We sketch out a day in the life of Ideal Dorothy : When I’m on top form, at my best, what does my day look like? What do I want my day to look like? This isn’t very hard to fill out. The surprise comes when he asks me to rate, on a scale of one (achieving nothing at all) to ten (an Ideal Dorothy Day), where I am at the moment… and I’m not at zero. Or even three. I’m up around six or seven already. 

But what have you published lately? It’s all very well this warm fuzzy stuff about how you’re doing your best but where are you actually going to be in five years? Do you think you’re going to have any kind of career at this rate? Why aren’t you more like –

I am not doing badly. I could be doing more, but I’m working on that and it’s important to acknowledge the fact that I’ve been operating under a pretty heavy burden.

There are people who have it so much worse than you, you know. You don’t know anything about real hardship. You just crumple every time anything’s the slightest bit difficult. You’ll never –  

There are things that are working for me already, like breaking the day up into chunks that aren’t too big. Once I get going I tend to be ok – it’s the getting started that is challenging. We talk about some strategies that could help with that.

Sixty pounds an hour on making a list of nice things to say to yourself. You’re pathetic. Where is this going to get you in – 

We talk about the fact that the depressed mind is by its nature very critical. We talk about the fact that it’s hard to think about the long-term future when you’re depressed, but that I’m not bad at sketching out the next hour or two and there’s a lot that can be done that way.

Speaking of which, this hour is up and it’s time to go home. I take the scenic route – not entirely intentionally, I’ll admit, but it’s a beautiful evening.