@Therapy discussion - It's useful to keep in mind therapy is incredibly broad and what one hopes to get out from it often depends on individual circumstances. For people who grew up in dysfunctional environments, they often never learned the skills required to have healthy connections with other people. Thus the therapeutic relationship can be the first actually supportive relationship someone ever has in their life, and with it, they can start to heal and learn the skills to make more healthy relationships.
Because negative experiences are a part of life, learning to grieve them and find closure is an important skill because that's how one moves on in the present. Again, if someone has had a dysfunctional background, they will have a lot to grieve, and grieving is not really fun, but there is a difference between completing the grieving process or doing enough self-reflection to realize one's own blind spots to then take action on them and endlessly rehashing every negative experience, which is called rumination.
You can also have very different goals with therapy. One reason I've enjoyed hanging out with the criminal justice system so much is it's a very clear example of "the bottom." Being a Kegan2 drug dealer with an extreme trauma history who's just been thrown in prison is a whole other beast than trying to go from Kegan3 to Kegan4 (aka becoming self-directing/Jung's process of differentiation). Being clear with one's goals is going to lead to far better outcomes because you don't want to treat the drug dealer with self-actualization training and the person who's trying to self-actualize doesn't need to go to rehab.
ERE is skewed toward high achieving people, which creates its own blind spot. If you're already operating at a self-directing level, it's easy to forget there are people who are
not, and there's a reason they're not, and if they're ever going to raise their condition, it's going to require addressing skill deficits. This may require being specific about missing skills and how to learn them in a way that a higher achieving person doesn't always grok because they're already there.
7Wannabe5 wrote: ↑Fri Oct 06, 2023 7:32 am
However, a personal trainer with a K.I.S.S. motivational poster on the wall of her cage might still prove helpful for short-term motivation.
This sounds like the kind of therapy I need.
@WFH discussion - I actually went to a WFH meetup at a coffee shop yesterday, which did indeed help with the monotony. I've also thought about renting a coworking space for the same reason, but they're a little pricey (few hundred a month) and the nearest one to me is a bit of a drive. That being said, there's a definite advantage to coworking spaces if you can get networking out of them. At least in tech, entrepreneurs are more prevalent in these spaces, which can lead to other opportunities.
I've considered going back into the office, but I'm also starting to think learning how to manage relationships without a script like work is an important skill if you want to go off and do unusual, adventurous things with your life. Getting a more social job, like bartender or similar, might also be an option. Software development requires a lot of heads down focus time, so it's not always a place to have a party, even if you work in an office.
Another option is to go start my own WFH meetup closer to me, which is also not a bad idea.
@Lemur - I haven't been able to find something on reddit, but I have found resources elsewhere. I've only found r/russian on reddit, which isn't comprehensible input focused unfortunately. But Russian is a major language, so there's a few YouTube channels I've been using, and RT has a free "learn Russian" website that's been really good.
Actually this is one reason I was considering volunteering to each ESL at the library. Russian is actually the 3rd most commonly spoken language in Denver, and this particular library has over 7k+ books written in Russian, and the librarians are all Russian-speakers. So I was hoping that I might be able to practice my Russian if I teach English. I also thought it might be a good test-run to see if I want to do this in another country eventually, as going to the library is low commitment. (I'm also waiting for the war to end before I go anywhere Russian-speaking, for obvious reasons).
I've also made some friends who speak Russian, but they also are fluent in English, so we end up mostly talking in English. Still, they will listen to me squeeze together sentences, and it's usually pretty funny due to my limited ability. It is fun trying to express myself when I all I can say is "я не люблю работать." ("I don't like working")
I'll scout around and see if I can find something on the internet (reddit or elsewhere) because practicing output is important, and feedback is also important. Conversations are naturally more engaging than just consuming input, so I think you learn faster that way.