My Therapy Analogy.

So bear with me, I’m going to try and explain my thoughts on therapy and how it can help us become who we want to be, whilst using a ball of wool to explain.

We are all born as a ball of wool. All different colours but made the same.

We are all just balls of wool ready to be knitted into a pattern. Each string is made of numerous thinner threads. These represent what we came into life with our genes, ancestral patterns, past lives and such. 

Each experience from the first breath, the first stitch, makes us into who we find ourselves as being today. 

We will all have a different pattern, following different stitches, knitted differently, in different order to create a different shape.

Our patterns grow at different paces.  

We will often get to a stage in life, when we choose to think about the pattern we find ourselves in.

You may have begun to realise the shape you are in, isn't you, that it doesn’t fit, feels ill fitted. Too tight, too narrow could be scrunched up on one side or too long on the other.

You begin to realise that along the way stitches were dropped. There are holes within the pattern or stitches in the wrong order. Some stitches are out of flow with the others, leaving a different look to it in places.

This realisation can trigger a sense of urgency, we begin to tuck and pull at the shape we’ve created, trying to change how it feels, how it looks and hope that if we pull hard enough things will just change. 

We as humans can find change hard, we work in predictable patterns. We want certainty and comfort. We try to rush past the hard parts, seeking familiarity or hiding from pain. We stitch over and over the same stitch, hoping to create a different pattern yet all we are doing is making the wool tighter and tighter. 

When we approach therapy, we have often been in this stage of wanting change but being afraid to approach it for a while. We’ve all been there, when we think things will change, if we are busier, have a holiday, change our hair style, attend a couple of yoga classes. But the reality is, if we don't make time to meet the knots, the missed stitches or the out or order patterns, we won’t really find the change we want. 

We often believe that therapy fixes us, that we are broken and need fixing. I would like to view therapy as an unraveling. 

I see therapy as the process that guides us to safely unwind our ball of wool. To carefully unravel and unknot our stitches, disrupting the patterns and then with kindness, compassion and forgiveness restitch us into the patterns and shapes we are guided to be now. 

I guide my clients through this process, allowing the ball of wool to be seen in its beauty. The greatness we are born as, and the power we do have to change. 

The re-knitting of the wool into the stitches and patterns we choose to be. We keep hold of the stitches we want, we make sure they are kept and we reprocess the space that’s been created with new styles of stitches, ones that are from our true soul and not the worn out old ones, that didn’t fit us to start with. 

Our shape grows, we have comfort to stretch and flow with ease. Tightness is replaced with spaciousness. 

We were never broken, we didn’t need fixing. We were only stitched into the wrong pattern. 

Therapy can give us a new perspective on who we are, who we are becoming, and who we want to move towards being. We have control in the speed of the knitting. We can even choose who sits in the knitting circle with us. 

Surrounding ourselves with those that enthuse over the pattern we are knitting, guiding us where we're needing it, holding our needles if we need to pause. We remain to be the same ball of wool that we came into life as. 

We can just now get to be a well fitted jumper rather than a four fingered glove.

Are you ready for change? Is there a new pattern ready to be knitted?

I can offer the guidance and support to become this. Let’s chat? 

hello@juliannealexander.co.uk