Week 6: Importance of Homework

How many weeks has it been already? Six? Halfway through the program. It feels like it just crept up on me. So, what have we covered in weeks four through six in therapy? Answer: worry and depression. Honestly, I have been dragging my feet in week four with the assignment to review my beliefs about worry. I kept on postponing the work until I checked in after midnight that week because it seems that is when my mind finally allowed me to unwind.

Week five and six were not easier. Further reading. Further instructions. More of the workbook to fill. It’s amazing how simple questions prompt me to overanalyze, but the guide accompanying the workbook helps to keep my self-analysis on the right path. Otherwise, I would end up on the other side of the moon.

The nightmarish consistency of therapy is homework. But the homework is the plan that builds to the ultimate goal of recovery. But the recovery doesn’t stop with the end of the therapy program. Don’t get me started. It’s a lot of work. It’s homework every day and I have been doing this homework for three decades. Because when I relapse and forget to do the homework, everything turns upside down. That’s how important keeping up with homework is, with the work is. I can never go too long without it. There is different homework for different subjects. Well, what I mean is that there is a different coping mechanism for different triggers. If anything, multiple coping mechanisms may be applied for any given trigger. So it’s constant work. Constant check-in. Constant evaluations. And constant communication with my wife, with my therapist, with myself. I think that’s the key. The communication with self. When I disengage from myself and become robotic, like a machine simply moving through life, it is usually when the trouble begins.

So when I say I write to keep the noise at bay, it is my homework. It is not sly of words or humorous. It truly is work. It truly is to keep the noise out. Because when I forgot to do my homework; when I stop writing, the chaos unleashes. Unfolds. That is what happened in the last six months before my therapy. My chaos is always in the form of depression, disengagement from living, becoming still, and becoming dead. I would lie in bed just waiting to die because I saw no point in living. The noise was clear. The noise of telling myself to let go of life; my mind spiraling and unable to recognize what’s real. So I slept for hours unable to make sense of anything. I couldn’t grasp anything. I couldn’t organize anything. I couldn’t sense my body. I was gone.

So yes, keeping up with my homework is important. My plan is my homework. Doing homework is a plan. Writing is a plan. Working out is a plan. Any action is a plan because the ultimate goal is to keep my mind quiet, organized, and set in reality.