You did WHAT?

Hello internet people!

After many years, I have decided to start a blog *insert choir music*

A blog, you say? In this day and age? Yep. The thought of a YouTube channel is a bit daunting. 

Borreguitta is not my name, of course; it's a pseudonym. It's actually a nickname, but it has served me well through the years. For all non-Spanish speakers, it means "little lamb", and it was given to me by my friends when I bleated during Lit class. My real name is Mary.

I'm a psychotherapist - one of those that came in looking for help and decided to stay and pay it forward. Partly because I was indoctrinated into the Girl Scouts and one of the rules is that we leave the world a better place than we found it. The other deciding factor was the notion that by overcoming issues we can help others do the same, and this is meant to give meaning to all the crap that most of us go through. 

The nearest institute offered Gestalt therapy, so that's what I studied. I ended up specializing in a couple of subjects: children and teenagers, couples, and trauma.

The first 2 (3?) were a logical step in my mind; if you want to help, you need to start early, so children and teenagers are the way to go. But if you start receiving children and teenagers in therapy, you very quickly learn that most of their issues come straight from home. So not only individual therapy is a must, but couples' therapy helps a lot in dealing with issues inside the parents' relationship.

Trauma is a bit sadder. Unfortunately, a lot of the people I assist have experienced some kind of trauma at some point in their lives. Being a traumatized person myself, psychotherapy - not only as a therapist but as a patient as well - has helped a lot. 

As a disclaimer, I should point out that everything posted here should be taken with a pound of salt. Although I have studied and practiced, I am by no means an expert on anything, and that is not how psychotherapy works. Yes, there is scientific research being done in a lot of fields and not taking that into account would be unethical. Gestalt psychotherapy is not a proven science though. It's mainly talk-based, experimental therapy.

The outcome of this is that most of the results I track are anecdotal, thus the pound of salt. That being said, cliches are there for a reason - not just because they're funny. Everyone is different but, in the end, we're all existing now and that's an issue in and of itself. Walt Whitman has an epic poem on this subject, and every word is true.

So... I guess this blog will be about the perils of existence, and if any of the information posted here helps in any way, then at least that lesson will have had meaning.

Thank you for reading :)

Mary xx