Days of Wine, Roses...and Therapy. An Incredible Journey

"They are not long, the days of wine and roses."

Ernest Dowson 

Ella Fitzgerald & Joe Pass - "Days of Wine and Roses"  

Journeys are roads to awareness on many plains. Most have purposes. Some are for fun; some are for illicit acts, full of deceit; some are to catch up with family and friends; some are for business; while others may have a deep therapeutic purpose.

I undertake a special journey regularly, to a nice area of Austria to undertake an exploration into the influences that have shaped my development, my subsequent choices and life effecting decisions. These journeys, take me to a peaceful environment. The therapeutic journeys started a year ago, and were decades overdue.

Since March/April this year, after junketing the latest most negative influence, the therapy has been progressing leaps and bounds. I have also received lots of "homework". Professional therapy does not stop after each journey. It is a hell of a lot of continuing work. The March "homework" was to go away and research professional essays on narcissists, their influences and their modus operandi.

It was a watershed, placing me on exactly the path my therapist needed me to be on. I am now learning about narcissistic conditioning and the damage this has done to my early and continued development. Also on how it has led to my worst life choices and placing myself into the hands of subsequent narcissists.  

The other result has been to reinforce the most important advice you can ever receive, never ever read books or essays by self-appointed experts on subjects that they are not professionally trained to comment on. Anecdotal life accounts are interesting as biography, but can be very dangerous when packaged as facts and advice, without professional study and training behind that advice. These subjects will be explored and touch on, in-depth, in later essays.

Junketing the conditioning that lead me to accepting narcissists into my life is very difficult, but the growing understanding of this conditioning, is a positive step to avoiding narcissistic influences in future. When I now read correspondence and explore other forms of recorded contact, I see the signs and recognise the behaviour of the most recent narcissist for what it was. I also see how my conditioning led to my responses to this behaviour. 

Interlinking this most recent experience, which left me feeling broken, to the initial 14 years of narcissistic conditioning and previous experiences from other narcissists, has accelerated enlightenment and awareness. It has also spearheaded the intense cathartic healing, that is currently taking place within, and outside of, me.

Since the research, the therapy of the last 3 months has been more intense, at times traumatic and lastly most enlightening. For my therapist, it has been a breakthrough. My new homework is to write on any and everything. Whether the writing is externalising the issues explored in therapy or anything else, it will be part of this particular journey. It will also continue, once this type of journey ends.

The writing is continuation on what I commenced early this year. The only difference is that now it will be holds barred writing, should I choose to lay my soul bare and chat about my negative experiences and the people involved in. It is no longer just confined to mediocre poetry.

This last journey, via intense therapy, has provided me with the vision and knowledge to recognise the individuals that have influenced my development and the subsequent choices I made, for what they really are, whether narcissistic or not. Some choices and influences have been good. Others damaging to extreme, especially when involving the narcissistic type of individual.

That last weekend of therapy, a week ago now, was incredible, like days of wine and roses, hence visual and aural additions to this essay. While the last months have left me stunned,  the last weekend overwhelming so, in the most positive way. So here I am, after an intense week at work and a week of reflection on the previous session of therapy, doing my “homework”, just like LeAnn Rimes.

Decades overdue, I am more than ready to go SUPERNOVA.  

*****

"Part of my therapy is to write."

LeAnn Rimes