“Time, in our experience, is linear, but in truth time is also looped. It is like a piece of yarn, in which each section of the strand twists and winds around every other–a complicated and complex knot, in which one part cannot be viewed out of context from the others. Everything touches everything else. Everything affects everything else. Each loop, each bend, each twist interacts with every other. It is all connected, and it is all one.”
When Women Were Dragons, by Kelly Barnhill, pg. 150
I had a co-counseling session today. I don’t keep up with them as regularly as I should, but I needed this one and someone was very kind with their time today. I needed it because things have been rough, gotten worse, and, freakishly, continued to get worse. Everyone in my family is honestly facing each new day with some trepidation. This is not normally how our lives flow. We normally have the normal ups and downs with normal intervals between them. So, Friday, when my eyes were tearing up at work and when I was having an anxiety attack near the end of the workday (because of the things at home, not work), I decided it was time to reach out. Luckily, I have multiple people to whom I can reach.
One thing I do like about co-counseling — it is well established that whoever is in the counselor role has no expectation or need to understand timelines or factors. The counselee gets to start talking (and continuing talking) at any point of their experience and even change tracks randomly. This is good because, not only had my recent experiences compounded upon themselves, but of course, none of them were in isolation from the others or from the contexts of my past experiences.
“Everything touches everything else. Everything affects everything else. Each loop, each bend, each twist interacts with every other. It is all connected, and it is all one.”
I was not telling a story for my listener, I was loosening the bites of the knot for me. Here a little, then there a little as the tension on the knot eased and exposed new surface areas. Her listening provided the workbench on which to rest the knot.
Roaming and Connecting 