Dancing Therapists
I had it in mind to make some sort of introductory presentation for my next therapist so we can skip the whole process of telling the same stories over again for the first few weeks. It’s quite a tedious thing yknow?
“Yes hello new therapist here’s the story of how I became this wretch, it’s my 5th time telling it!”
Then they listen till you run out of time. “Unfortunately that’s all the time we have for today! You only paid for me to pretend to care for about an hour!”
Can’t blame em though! I saw a post once where a girl talked about how she found out her therapist had ctrl alt deleted themselves. I mean the irony of it all eh? We really are all just pretending.
Anyway my roommate saw me writing this presentation and they said
“are you writing them a resume?!”
I then realized I had structured it as such.
Sin Rose
25, Any pronouns
Background
-blah blah
-wah wah
Education
-failure
-fail
-drop
-fail
-blah
Medical History (Non Psych)
-whoops
-oh boy
-jesus
So on and so forth like this. I almost never realize when I’m doing something strangely because in my mind it makes sense! It’s efficient, saves time, is organized, it’s math! Everything in my head is math and systems but in liquid form, does that make sense?
No? Ah I see!
We’d just gotten home from seeing the horribly vapid dungeons and dragons movie, I don’t quite remember what it was we were talking about as I was tipsy off of movie theatre canned sangria. I must have made some dark joke of some sort because suddenly my rooomate and their girlfriend were talking to me about emotions. I also don’t remember my response to this but then they said
“No! where do you *feeel* it in your body”
“I don’t.”
“Well there’s the problem!!”
“They need socratic therapy!”
their girlfriend chimed in.
“do you mean somatic therapy?!”
they responded.
They laugh.
I realized I’ve never actually heard of somatic therapy, so I looked it up.
Unlike standard mental health therapy, such as CBT which focuses prominently on the mind, somatic therapy incorporates body-oriented modalities such as dance, breathwork, and meditation to support mental healing. In addition, somatic experiencing therapy sessions include talk therapy and mind-body exercises.
Knee jerk reaction: “If a fucking therapist ever tried to make me dance, I may just return to the office with a machete!!”
This is funny to me because I apparently used to be quite the dancer. Back in the home country, I would dance a lot every time my mother and I went out to some sort of party or celebration. Then one day, (I remember this actually) father called from America to check up on us and mother told him I was just dancing again and people were giving me money. Apparently he didn’t approve of this! He told mother to make me stop dancing at parties, especially for money, and so she did!
These days I can’t dance decently to save my life.
If I wanted to become a good dancer now, I would have to learn rules, forms, and practices that I’m just so sure are inferior to the natural expression I was once capable of.
I was born a dancer and they took that from me.
The thing I’m angriest about is this sense that I was robbed. When I think about what I could have been in the right environment. With proper schooling, proper support, proper protection so I wouldn’t have been taken advantage of so thoroughly.
I was meant to be beautiful and they took that from me.
