Pandora's Box...Is It Real?
For the last few weeks, we have talked about grief and the many ways it can manifest, especially for men. We have also encouraged you to reach out and ask for help. The next reasonable question you might have is, how could therapy help you? Many people do not see the point of opening old wounds and even though life today is hard and sometimes painful, it's better than the alternative of digging up the past.
Maybe you think that if you start unpacking YOUR past, it will be more like unlocking Pandora's box and you'll never be able to close it again. The thing is, you are LIVING in Pandora's box without even realizing it. In all honesty, we would be lying if we said that it's an easy process to face your demons. Sometime the demons you need to face aren't even yours; they might be those of your parents or grandparents. Maybe you grew up with alcoholism or drug addiction in your immediate family; or maybe you parents grew up with it and their dysfunctional family system carried forward even without the substances at hand to influence their behavior. Maybe you grew up with mental illness in a parent or sibling, and there was no space for you to just be a kid. Maybe there was yelling, fighting, misunderstanding, poor communication, etc. And maybe you tell yourself that everyone goes through this, that it's not a big deal, that you just need to keep moving forward and keep your head down. And yet it feels like you are running in place. You are TIRED.
The though of even looking at why things are the way they are sounds exhausting and overwhelming, not to mention scary. But you crave something else. You want a better connection with your wife yet you constantly find yourselves bickering with each other and fault-finding. You used to be such a team and now you find yourselves on auto-pilot, passing each other like two ships in the night with no real connection. You love her and always have, yet you don't know how to make her happy anymore. And if you carry on like this, you fear that you're either not going to make it or simply live together in a miserable co-existence. What if we told you that it doesn't have to be this way? What if you were able to gain tools to develop a deeper connection with your spouse, to learn to love each other in a new and more vulnerable way? What if you were able to communicate honestly and authentically, to find out how to get your needs met while also learning how to meet those of your spouse? What if you were able to get your best friend back? Sounds nice, right? Well there's a very real possibility that this can be your future. Your current reality does not have to be your set course for life.
At Harper Therapy, we can help you gain more awareness around the expectations you have for yourself and the people around you, along with where those expectations developed. We can also help you reckon with the disappointment of things not turning out the way you had hoped while at the same time helping you to define a more authentic and true version of what you hope for your life to look like. If any of this resonates, please don't hesitate to give us a call at (813) 434-3639.
