Journey

In 1998 I went to a summer camp in Northern Michigan where I tried a rope course for the very first time. The camp counselors running the course asked me to think about one thing that I wanted to do in my life that would take courage. Once I chose that one thing, I was told to ride the zip line down to the bottom. I could not do it. At that point in my life, I did not do heights or drops. I had to climb down in defeat. It wasn't just embarrassment that I had to climb the ladder back down. It was that the zip line was a metaphor for doing the difficult things in my life, and I could not do it. If riding a zip line to the ground was impossible, how could anything in my life be possible? When I started Cognitive Processing Therapy, I used the analogy of one of my road runs. My run allows me to make 2 choices. I can run to the stop sign at the two-mile mark and turn around for the easy way out, or I can keep going past the stop sign and run up a long, steep hill. Turning aro...