Decluttering and journaling

With the decluttering of my home, I'm also trying to put everything in its right place. Making the house work for me around the way I live my life. I've achieved quite a bit of that in the last week. It's been a very "moving forwards" kind of week and I'm very pleased with my progress.

However, it hasn't been without its hiccups. I hate change and I especially hate change if it happens suddenly and without me being able to control it. I'd ordered new Virgin Media equipment to upgrade my kit and I hadn't yet set it all up, mainly because my Tivo box still had loads on it that I'd know I'd lose. Anyway, on Sunday I woke up to no wifi or TV because Virgin had moved my contract / services over to the new equipment. Ahhhhhhhh I tried really hard not to get angry and instead set my mind to clearing down my old box making notes of the shows I wanted to re-record. It would've driven anyone living with me mad, but that's just me. I have to work through the problem step-by-step in my mind.

I've been working on a large multimedia canvas at home, which tells the story of my mental health struggles and is helping me to come to terms with stuff. I'd originally used the shattered glass from that incident in the autumn to depict the voices in my head, but my counselor said to me that it didn't sit right with her and she wanted to discuss it with me. At first, I got really defensive. I thought she didn't trust me not to use the glass again if I became unwell and I also had it in my mind that I wasn't getting it right, whatever it was. This is when I decided to journal my thought process from the conversation we had. I think this is where I find journaling really works for me. I was able to put down both of our thoughts in the order they occurred and then read it out in my next session. I don't always understand what people are saying to me in the moment. If I think it's important, I have to go away and ponder on the conversation to make sense of it.

This is an extract from my journal:

The art therapy I do in sessions has a holistic approach and the focus is on healing.

So if the voices are being depicted using the same glass I used to try and cut them out of my head, it's not healthy to have it on my canvas.

I need to let that go and use another medium to create the same effect - sea glass?

Sea glass was thrown onto beaches as waste glass and washed out to sea. It turns up on beaches years and years later rounded off and frosted, in essence, completely transformed into something beautiful.

Once I could understand what my counselor was trying to explain to me, I felt a lot happier.