Dreams

Therapists don’t know what your dreams mean.

This would have surprised me, if someone had told me it when I was a teenager. The field has moved a long way from Freud and laying on a sofa.

I can’t speak for all mental health professionals, but for myself I can say that these are things you could expect from me at work: to listen to you, to share books/articles/websites regarding relationships, parenting, and goal setting; to ask you questions about your relationships, parenting, connections to your community, your faith beliefs, your hopes for your future and the futures of your children and/or nieces and nephews, and to teach skills.

I don’t know if you should stay with your current romantic partner or not. It’s not within my scope to give law advice. Your primary care provider is the one to talk to about medications.

I can’t tell you who is lying and who is telling the truth.

I find it sad when parents abuse their children. Sometimes, part of my job is simply begging, begging people to be kind to those who are vulnerable: children, older adults, persons with cognitive disabilities.

Please, don’t hit people. Not with a belt, not with a stick, not with your hand, not in a box with a fox eating green eggs and ham. Do not listen to any person or book or person who wrote a book (anyone can write a book!) who says that aggression somehow leads to goodness.

So much of what ends in abuse starts out as an attempt to control. It starts with a larger or more powerful person telling themself a lie.

That lie is, “I am in control of other people.”

More on this topic to come 🙂 But I will leave this post with this adjustment to an old prayer that I recently read on a parenting skills blog:

“God, Grant me the Serenity to Accept the People I cannot change, the Courage to Change the People I can, and the Wisdom to know….It’s me.”

All the best to you and your loved ones!

Terra