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GUIDELINES FOR ACTIVE
EXPLORATION
“THE PAIN DOESN’T HAVE TO
LAST FOREVER”
You have come to Active Exploration for a
reason – to reclaim your life again, possibly after a lifetime of
suffering and frustration as nothing you have tried has worked out.
It’s an awful feeling to feel out of control, like you don’t even
know yourself at times. The goal at Active Exploration is to help
you get to know yourself, through building a relationship with
another person who wants to get to know you, and whom, hopefully,
you can learn to trust. Since you have been traumatized, don’t
expect to trust the therapist right away. One of the smartest things
about you may be your tendency to be suspicious of other people. You
have good reason to be guarded and suspicious. You have probably
been hurt badly. Please don’t hesitate to speak about your fears of
trusting. Why should you trust anybody, until you feel you know
something about the other person? Let’s talk about your doubts and
fears, and not expect you to participate openly in any discussion
about yourself until you are good and ready.
If there is one
rule at Active Exploration, it’s this: Let there be room for every
feeling you have ever felt, and every feeling you feel now and in
the future. Allow yourself to experience your feelings. They are the
source of your life energy. Even when you feel hurt or angry, it’s a
sign you are alive and triumphing over deadness, numbness and
dissociation –frequent problems for trauma survivors. Let yourself
feel, and let yourself talk about your feelings openly, in the
session, when you are ready. The better you get a putting your
feelings into words, in your therapy sessions and in your life, the
sooner you will be able to develop a stronger and clearer sense of
yourself. The more openly you are able to talk about the awful
experiences you have suffered through, yet survived, in the past,
the sooner there will be a chance for you to build a future that you
want, instead of repeating a past that you never asked for in the
first place. Let’s discuss your past together so you can finally get
to feel it, to understand it, and to move beyond it into a world
that feels more to your liking.
At Active
Exploration the therapy sessions last 50 minutes, and during the
sessions many people have found answering the following questions
with the therapist, aloud, very helpful:
1. How has the previous week gone for
you? What went well, what needs improvement?
2. What have you been dreaming
about? Are you having nightmares? What are they about?
3. Are you having any ‘flashbacks’(very
vivid and frightening images, sounds, or feelings from the past)
that you would like to discuss?
4. Are you feeling in control with
regard to exercise, diet , your job performance, and your
involvement in projects that mean something to you?
5. Have you been drinking or taking
drugs more that you would like? When was it and what was
happening at the time?
6. Have you been having any temper
tantrums (flying into rages) towards anybody? When was it and
what was happening that might have triggered these feelings?
7. Have you been experiencing any
periods of numbness or ‘spacing out?’ Do you know what you might
have been avoiding by spacing out?
8. Have you remembered anything from
the past that you would like to discuss?
9. Are your relationships with friends,
family or partners going the way you would like them to? What is
feeling right, and what would you like to see change?
10. Are you working on developing new
activities and habits for your life? What are they? Do you need
suggestions about new things to try?
11. How are the new behaviors working
out? How are they making you feel? Do you feel like you are
growing in a way that makes you feel happier or a greater sense
of wholeness within yourself?
Most importantly,
at Active Exploration we want to know if you feel your therapy is
helping you, if it seems worth it for you to come in and talk, and
if you look forward to your sessions, or dread them, or both? Don’t
worry about telling the truth at Active Exploration. You deserve the
right to be truthful. It makes no sense to put yourself second
anymore. If therapy isn’t what you had hoped it would be, let’s
discuss it and maybe we can improve the situation, or search with
you for an alternative. Active Exploration is not the only place in
New York City where you can be helped. We will keep working until we
help you find the right place for you. The goal here is to help you
overcome the problems from your past, any way we possibly can. Let’s
try together even though it might be frightening and painful at
times. The pain doesn’t have to last forever.
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