Kim Beck

I cannot even count the number of clients who have come in complaining of the winter blues! We here in NE Ohio have received very little snow; however our rainy days are more than I’ve ever seen in the rainy month of April. Rain, even thunderstorms, and lots of gray days. My clients report feeling more depressed and hard to get started to doing anything. I have tried to put together a “rainy day kit” of stuff to do. Different activities both inside and outside, how to take advantage of this weather and believe it or not, with encouragement and support my clients are outside walking, getting those feel good hormones going. They report feeling a little bit better, I’ll take it !!!!!!!!!! A little bit is better than nothing.

I wanted to share an experience with you and thoughts I have about it. About a half hour ago I got a call from my aunt that a very dear cousin of mine was found dead in her home. I was very close to this cousin and talked to her almost daily on the computer. I am sitting here at work with red soaked eyes. It took me off guard, I wasn’t ready for any news like that. I have a client coming in at 12, that’s an hour from now.

I’ve been seeing Tessa for approximately 5 months and each session was structured for her, something I didn’t realize I was doing, was it comfortable for her or me? Her mom told me she has been lying and manipulating and I wanted to talk about these issues with her before we did any play. I was way off my mark because she came into the office and sat on the couch and I told her what her mom said she had been doing. She looked at me with fear in her eyes and said emphatically “NO, I come in and sit on the couch and you bring the table over and put paper on it, then you get the markers and then you ask me to draw something and I do and THEN we talk. Wow, I was taken aback with this coming out of a 5 year old’s mouth. I didn’t realize how my routine affected her. I replied to her, “is that what you want me to do” and she said “YES”.

I was sitting here and wondering what to blog about and I thought about my week and my clients and how I enjoy so much when they make even the tiniest bit of progress…it keeps me going. I have an adult who loves to paint, he was having a really bad week and was feeling depressed. I had him take all of his feelings and paint them out, however he wanted to. He painted a country scene, used a lot of orange paint for the clouds and golden yellow for the sky… he is a great painter and looking at the picture you really wouldn’t know he was so depressed, it could almost be a autumn scene. I left the picture out and a few days later my 11 year old client was looking at the picture and she said out of the blue, “I get it, that’s a picture of feelings and whoever painted it must have been sad” I said yes, you are right. She immediately said she wanted to paint her feelings… she painted a beautiful scene but added lightning bolts and two tornados and cut out a hole in the middle of them.

I wanted to share the story about my client. He is suffering from PTSD. He is a safety director and has seen an extensive amount of horrific deaths. Well he came to me because he was experiencing flashbacks of a time when a 9 year old boy was pushed in a lake by a 12 yr old boy and the 12 year old didn't tell anyone until after he came back from the fair. The 9 year old couldn't swim and died and my client keep seeing the mom having to identify her child. It has been haunting him and interfering in work.