Dear Shipp:

You wrote that you had years of therapy. Not all therapy is created equal, of course. I had one competent therapist, only one therapist who put the time and thought into helping me, not only during sessions (often way longer than the customary fifty minutes) but in between sessions giving me homework for the next session, and preparing for the next. He was also available online and on the phone in between sessions (without extra cost). He listed objectives for therapy for me and strategies to meet those objectives and evaluated those over time. What a professional!

I thought earlier about your thread and the movie Awakening. The movie tells the true story of catatonic patients awakened after decades of catatonia. Awakening included great despair over youth lost in catatonia (similar to mindless living), lost time, youth, opportunities, experiences not lived. They preferred, it seemed to me, to go back to catatonia than to FEEL what needed to be felt in the process of awakening.

I was wondering if you experience something like that, as you awakened to your “second chance in life”?

anita