some free therapy for myself

right. so i've been thinking for a long time that it is entirely possible that i have a fear of hills. particularly running up them. and as we always say in TA psychotherapy - they greatest learning comes from understanding and examining your resistances... so this fear of hills is something that i need to understand.

this weekend i have a 'therapy weekend' on with my course. which is where we don't do theory but have a 'guest lecturer/therapist' in (he is from NZ and is one of the most charismatic people i've met in my life!). essentially it is 2 days of him doing pieces of therapy on each of us, and obviously we get the unique opportunity to watch the therapy. just quietly i am really scared about doing some real therapy in front of a group as it is quite an emotional thing and you are frequently very vulnerable.

so maybe i'll take my fear of hills in. which isn't really a fear of hills. its a fear of failure. and its a scenario where i have to really be outside my comfort zone which is interesting as my whole life has been about getting outside my comfort zone. but not in a physical sense so it is a whole new ball game where i am confronted with the certainty that i am not very good at it and where i can't bluff it. so every single time i go for a run or in particular a hill run i am fighting that part of me that says - you're crap at this and you'll always be crap at it so you just shouldn't bother. which is exhausting and is why the "doona monster" (as I have heard it so quaintly put!) is successful on a number of occasions... plus there are a range of self sabotaging strategies that i see in lots of areas of my life and i reckon this could be one of those too.

anyway - so there is my therapy for the week until Saturday morning when it all begins... most likely i will take one of my bazillion other issues in with me - but hills are a darn good back stop :)

(oh - and no - i didn't get up for my sweat hills session this morning...)