Adulthood is about learning to become a parent to yourself. If you’re single long enough, it’s also about learning to become your own life partner. And if you can’t afford to see a Therapist, you might need to become one of those for yourself, too.

All three apply to me: I’m not close to my parents, I’ve been single most of my life, and I’ve rarely been able to afford therapy longer than brief spurts of a few months.

Luckily, I’ve been able to employ my creativity to essentially manufacture a reasonable facsimile of the things missing from my life. The tool I use is my Writing, and the most useful Writing Exercise I’ve stumbled upon is having an imaginary conversation with my inner therapist (which is essentially the same thing as conversing with my intuition, but more on that later).

The 5 stages of the writing exercise

If you want to try this exercise for yourself, here are the five steps to follow:

• Take out a notebook and pen and set aside about 45 minutes to write. Put the date at the top of the page. Decide what name you want to call your inner therapist. I typically just call mine “Therapist.” Recently, I used the initials “LT”: “Life Therapist.”
• Write the name or initials you’ve chosen on the left side of the top row of the page followed by a colon, and write something along the lines of “So, what’s been going on for you lately?” or “What’s on your mind today?” Use whatever line you can imagine a real therapist starting a session with.
• On the left side of the next row, write one of the following: your first name, your initials or simply “Me.” Then, begin writing out your worries as you would express them in a therapist’s office. You might write “I can’t stop worrying about money” or “I’m feeling so overwhelmed right now.”
• Continue writing back and forth between yourself and your inner therapist, as though you were writing a dialogue in a script. Focus on encouraging yourself and validating your experience, needs and feelings. Try to give yourself advice and suggestions from an objective point of view, which is ultimately the benefit of this writing exercise. Seeing things from another perspective can open our eyes to avenues of possibility we may have been blind to.
• Wrap up the conversation with a bit of an action plan, even if it’s just one thing you commit to doing. Maybe your inner therapist suggests you get up an hour earlier to get a few things done before you go to work. Maybe they suggest you do this writing exercise again in a few days to continue to vent and work through things. Maybe the only advice they have for you is to stop being so hard on yourself—something every therapist I’ve ever had has told me. There’s no reason I shouldn’t tell myself that, too!

A sample convo with my inner therapist

Typically, my conversations with my inner therapist are much longer than the following example, but here’s a brief look at how I approach this writing exercise:

Therapist: How are you doing today, Melissa?
Me: I’m OK. I’m just feeling so exhausted, and I’m worried that I’m never going to have enough money.
Therapist: It’s understandable that you’re feeling exhausted—you’ve been working a lot, and you haven’t been sleeping well lately, right?
Me: Yeah, that’s true.
Therapist: Hopefully you can sleep better tonight. What’s helped you to sleep better in the past?
Me: Doing Yoga before bed and getting to bed before midnight both seem to help a lot.
Therapist: Yes, definitely try to get to bed before midnight! Even that seems late. Is before 11 p.m. a reasonable goal?
Me: No, I don’t think so.
Therapist: OK, fair enough. Start with getting to bed before midnight then. Do you think you can make time to do some Yoga before bed, too?
Me: I think so.
Therapist: Great! Sleep is really important, as you know.
Me: I know.
Therapist: OK then, and what about your concern about money? You said you’re worried you’re never going to have enough, is that right?
Me: Yes.
Therapist: Tell me more about that.
Me: It’s just impossible for me to make more than I am now, because I can’t work more hours than I already am, and I feel like I can’t afford anything anymore.
Therapist: I see. Well, pretty much everyone gets stressed out about money, so there’s nothing unusual about that. I agree that you’re probably already working as many hours as you can handle, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible for you to make more money. You could work the same number of hours at another job and make more money, right?
Me: That’s true.
Therapist: You also said that you feel like you can’t afford anything anymore. What do you mean by that? What are some things you wish you could afford?
Me: Well, everything!
Therapist: I don’t think that’s true. You bought food today, didn’t you?
Me: Yes.
Therapist: You had money to take the streetcar, too?
Me: Yes.
Therapist: So, it’s not that you can’t afford anything, right? You are working and making money, and that is allowing you to buy things you need.
Me: Yes, but it’s not enough. I need a haircut and really need some winter boots.
Therapist: I see. The hair salon you usually go to is pretty expensive. Have you thought about finding a less expensive one? And what about getting secondhand winter boots?
Me: I guess those are both good ideas. I could be spending less on food, too.
Therapist: I was going to suggest that. I think if you spend less on food, it’ll be more feasible to get a haircut and some boots.
Me: I should have thought of that.
Therapist: Well, that’s what I’m here for!

My inner therapist=my intuition personified

In these written conversations I have with myself, I’m able to face my intuition by giving it a name: my inner therapist. I know there’s hidden wisdom in me that runs deep, but it’s so hard to hear it through the static of anxiety in my brain and body. Thankfully, I’ve discovered that an imaginary conversation with my intuition in therapist’s clothing allows me to slow down and give myself the advice and comfort I need.

Through the ups and downs of life, I’m my own parent, partner and therapist. I know that these roles I play in my imagination are the Universe speaking to me in three different voices, and I’m grateful for the guidance I’m given from all loving sources.

«RELATED READ» THE JOKE’S ON YOU: Seeing the funny side of your inner critic»

image 1 photosforyou from Pixabay 2 image by Лариса Мозговая from Pixabay 3 photo by Callum Skelton on Unsplash

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