Self Help Book... could I write one?

So, I visited the counsellor/psychologists office at my university the other day for a brief session on the recommendation of my Honours program coordinator due to the fact that I was having difficulty finding the momentum and motivation to write my thesis. I was being clouded by a hundred thoughts about all kinds of things every time I tried to concentrate. Thankfully, since the session I have begun writing again and am feeling positive. For the time being anyway!!

But anyway, I came home afterward thinking that I really had a lot to learn about controlling my own chaotic thoughts,or rather, just being okay with them and letting them go. And I got to thinking that if I mastered this control, maybe I could tell my own story in a self help book. I love self help books after all haha. And so I started to write... and this is the excerpt that found itself in my page. Tell me what you think...


Leaves on a Stream
Paddling your way through life’s challenging thoughts...


I’d never seen a counsellor or psychologist before. I saw myself as invincible and strong enough to get by on my own terms, and I wasn’t convinced that a perfect stranger would have anything really useful to offer me. Or maybe I just felt I didn’t deserve help. What reason did I really have to feel the way I did about myself? My poor self concept was a reflection of my own weakness as a human being, right? My life was okay, and I should have been okay too. Yet I felt somehow out of balance. Like something had become distorted inside. My view of the world didn’t seem as clear as it once was.

I sat in the consultation room at my university and tried to breathe deeply as the counsellor carried out a meditation exercise called Leaves on a Stream. I had to imagine I was sitting by a stream listening to the water trickle peacefully and concentrate entirely on my breathing and feel every part of my body. My toes, my fingertips, the backs of my legs, my nostrils, my lips... everything. I had to think about that stream and the water bubbling over the rocks and imagine leaves and any other debris I could visualise, floating by. Those leaves would be the vessels which would carry away my negative thoughts. I put all my thoughts, both negative and positive onto those leaves and flowers and twigs and bits of algae and watched them float away downstream. They looked so graceful, swirling and moving along effortlessly. And then they all backed up against a large fallen over tree and got stuck. I watched them in my mind’s eye turn into a gluggy mass of pulp against that tree trunk like a clogged up pool filter. I didn’t tell the counsellor. I just told her they floated away.

Then I was to focus on my body. Feel every part. Did any part feel different to the rest? Did it feel tense? Was it tingling? Did it feel warm or cold? My mind was still at that stream and I was busy listening to the birds and watching a blue tongue lizard crawl across the rock I was perched on. I was wriggling around thinking my bottom was itchy because I’d been sitting in one place for too long. And then I felt a bite. On my right bottom cheek, in the bit where it meets your leg. I stood up, and wiped it over, dislodging a green ant. Great, I thought, still in the moment at my imaginary oasis, green ants. Glancing down at the rock I’d been sitting on, I saw about twenty other green ants all marching their way up the slippery moss coated side to the now vacant spot I’d been sitting. Suddenly there were green ants crawling up my leg inside my shorts, and I was impatiently trying to brush them away, cursing and jumping around on the spot...

Here I was, sitting in a chair listening to a psychologist talk me through a relaxation technique, apparently becoming acutely aware of my thoughts and my body and everything in my present space... but deep in my imaginary world I was doing a green ant dance and scratching my butt til I just about tore the skin off, all the while distracted by birds, a lizard and a fascination with floating debris sticking like papier mache to a rotten old log. That was when I realised. I definitely had ADD. But more importantly, my head was a jungle and my thoughts were like a wild stampede, constantly threatening to knock me down and steam roll me into oblivion. I had to somehow learn to tame those thoughts. I had to learn to focus on one task at a time, right here and right now in the present. It may have been all well and good to blame it on having a high tendency toward inattentive ADD, or my mother for giving me that genetic tendency, but I couldn’t live that way forever. I had to rein that stampede of thoughts in. And the time to make that change was now.