A Layered Onion Guest Post from guest author Denisha Naidoo on the topic of cognitive behavioral therapy expressed through poetry
I have been writing since I was six years old and wanted to be “a writer,” although I’m not sure what I thought that was at the time. I was born in South Africa and immigrated with my family to Canada as a child. My parents hoped I would become a doctor, lawyer, or teacher. I took a circuitous route but eventually became a family doctor and practiced for over 25 years. During that time, I had the honour of being a part of my patients’ lives through births, marriages, and deaths. I also learned how often forces outside of a person’s control impact their physical and mental health and sense of well-being.
In 2021, I had a life-threatening accident that left me unable to return to my job as a family physician. After a long, slow recovery, I returned to work in the area of mental health. In the process of this career shift, I completed training in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT).
CBT is a form of psychotherapy based on a five-part model to understand life’s experiences. This is the interaction of our thoughts, moods, behaviours, and physical reactions on each other and the environment or situations in which they occur.
As part of the course I took, I used a workbook entitled Mind Over Mood 2nd edition by Denis Greenberger, PhD and Christine Padesky, PhD. Books like this are tools that you can use to work through a CBT program on your own if you don’t have access to a psychotherapist, although working with a mental health therapist is ideal. In that self-help workbook was a worksheet entitled “Understanding My Problems.” It made me think about the patients in my practice.
The poem “Understanding My Problems” uses a worksheet from the book to illustrate how these types of worksheets can help a person work through their problems and understand how they ended up in their current situation. My poem follows a story that I have heard from different patients over the years.
My hope is that this poem illustrates how complicated life can be and how we end up where we are as the result of many small events in life. This poem is just the start of understanding the complexity of that journey. The solution comes from working through CBT or other mental health programs to begin the journey of many small steps toward healing and recovery.
—
Understanding My Problems
Environment/life changes/situations:
Reaching over
Reaching over
Reaching over
to pick up a part
and another and another and another
over and over and over
quotas
cutbacks
bottom line, no time
for a rest
twenty years gone
still standing
in the same place
body worn out
husband laid off
mortgage defaulted
Physical Reactions:
back pain
can’t sleep
back pain
tired
back pain
can’t sleep
back pain
sleep in easy boy chair
Moods:
feeling down
so much pain
all the time
worried, scared
about money
have to work
angry
Behaviours:
tried friend’s pain pills
helped for a bit
need more
doctor tells me to get physio
no money
so I get them from somewhere else
to keep working
fighting
with hubby
fighting
with kids
fighting
with supervisor when he reports me
for working too slow
Thoughts:
Back is wrecked
pain forever
no one cares
call me an addict
work doesn’t care if I die
they only care about making money
off my back
—
Denisha offers us an insightful and productive way to integrate therapy and art. Something to talk about next in therapy!
