Do You Ever Feel "Stuck"?

“Incy wincy spider climbed up the water spout.
Down came the rain and washed the spider out.
Out came the sunshine and dried up all the rain
So Incy wincy spider climbed up the spout again”

We all spend our lives experiencing trials and tribulations of varying degrees, some seemingly insignificant, whilst others traumatic and life changing.

The last time I was actively attending psychology sessions was quite a few years ago now, but I had quite the combination of issues to deal with – left my abusive partner after 2 years, less than 3 month later I had a car accident that left me with a permanentback injury, and before the year was out I had also lost 2 jobs. So….wasn’t feeling too great about things!....

During one of my sessions I had been discussing how sometimes I felt like I was not moving forward, that even though I kept trying I never seemed able to reach my goals.

I was given a homework task which was to write my own second verse to the poem/nursery rhyme “Incy Wincy Spider”.

This was an exercise my psychologist asked a lot of her patients to do and is was useful in providing her insight from the patient’s perspective.

For me, the hope was that the exercise would provide some clarity, help me to feel ok about not succeeding the first time round, or perhaps inspire some idea on how to approach things differently.

Here is the verse I wrote:

“Again and again Incy climbed up that spout.
Again and again the rain washed her back out.
So she sat and she thought about what she should do
To get to the top like other spiders do.”

So what Incy has decided to do in the second verse here is take a step back, have some ‘thinking’ or ‘reflection’ time and also to observe others around her who seem to be having more success and try to identify what it is that makes them different, is thereanything she can do similar?
(Plus, I am a firm believer in balance – any time you spend inside your head is time you also need to spend outside your head, time spent analysing one’s self vs those around you etc.)

Back then I used to write quite a bit - journals, poetry, writing down my dreams or whatever else came into my head that I thought I should note down before it left again. So for me, self reflection has always been a simple matter of dragging out old diaries, notebooks etc and reading over them.

Not everyone’s big on writing though, I do get that. But if you have some way of recording what you want to express, whether writing, drawing, sculpting…and of course these days with the wonder of technology at our fingertips, voice recording, video blogging, and so much more I can’t even begin to think of…..

So if you ever feel like you’re stuck in life, maybe try to write your own second verse to “Incy Wincy Spider” and see if you can make your own sunshine come out and dry up all the rain.

Thanks for reading.

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