The other day I was chopping onions for dinner and my 2 year old asked “mummy, will the onions turn into chickens?”
Later I was chopping potatoes and she asked “mummy, have the onions turned into potatoes?”
They seem ridiculous questions (and they are) but I realised that we’d been talking about how tadpoles turn into frogs and caterpillars into butterflies, so why not onions into chickens or onions into potatoes?! Seems just as plausible or implausible… These transformations happen all the time - we’re just not surprised by the ones that are widely accepted or that we’ve seen with our own eyes.
The next day I had a first session with a client who has been suffering from anxiety and the depression that often goes with it, for 10 years. As I asked how he wants to feel and how he’ll know when he gets there, like everyone else in his position, he was struggling to imagine how it could even be possible. It struck me that I have the privilege of seeing massive change with my own eyes all the time - a transformation from the hell of anxiety issues to a sense of clarity, space and happiness. Of course he hasn’t seen it yet, in fact, his experience is that whatever you try, it makes no difference.
I’m looking forward to helping him take back control and transform into the person that he really is, under all the stuff the anxiety has created over the years.
And, unlike us adults, who have been conditioned to believe things can’t change (well, not much…), my 2 year old thinks anything is possible - and she might be on to something.
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