how is spacewalking like therapy?

A question I’m sure has been on all of your minds for a long time now. Finally, answered here on TME. 

What is the riskiest thing you have ever done?

Some things are just thrilling, exciting, awesome/awe inspiring, exhilarating and just plain upper case FUN! (like TME). And, at the same time, terrifying (like TME).

Excitement versus Fear / Risk versus Reward

How do we reconcile the two. Can we? Should we even try? Maybe the fun lies in between these polarities? Maybe that’s how we know we are alive?

Anyways, enough diversion… back to serious.

Beauty, fulfilled dreams, expansion, new perspective, letting go, effortless floating – versus – GIVING UP CONTROL (aaaahh!!!); that’s how spacewalking is like therapy. Should I have saved that until the end of my post… did I just blow my ‘big reveal’ ending? Oh well.

That’s why I love therapy (and would probably love spacewalking too given the chance). And, bonus — the risk versus reward ratio is much more in favour (yes, I live in Canada and speak the Queen’s English) of the therapy client than it is the astronaut (or cosmonaut). Odds of something going wrong with all that technology is so much greater than things disastrously falling apart while feeling something and expressing it in therapy.

There are times certainly when it “felt like”! taking the next step in therapy would lead to irreparable disaster for me. I would lose myself, my identity, become unhinged and be left facing the vast unknown. Alone.

Key words … “felt like”!

 Many of us are more terrified of our feelings and emotions and expressing them in a safe/confidential/private environment than we are of being in a tiny self-contained spacesuit floating in an endless, cold, lonely, desolate, bitter, soul-sucking, bleak, black, formless, relentless, never ending (oh, I said that one already – guess it’s time to wrap this up) unforgiving, void.

In space no one can hear you scream.
                                – Alien

I know I often feel terrified {and, on occasion, have been known to scream}.  Is that too much personal revelation for a therapist – have I just violated Therapy 101 and disillusioned my clients ? Am I no longer the blank slate, passive, benign, imperturbable, hoped for healer of all pain and torment? Oh well. 

 FEAR NOT
– Chris Hadfield

Tweeting (and covering *Bowie) from the International Space Station last year, Colonel Chris Hadfield reminded the world how much we love space

…and therapy:)

*Bowie – same era as the Bee Gees…I knew there was a connection and reason I linked that video