The DB - Cycle 15 - Judging + Break

[Yutora]

The calendar did.

mad

[the beautiful gelreesh]

Prompt: Empty Chair/Hallucinations

The old velvet chair sits in front of me in my play room all day. Mama tells me it’s empty, that there’s nobody there, but it’s not. My friend sits and talks to me and we have fun together. Mama says don’t talk to her. Mama says she’s not real. Mama says she’ll throw away the chair if I don’t stop being her friend. She says it will go to the dump. But I know it will come back. It always comes back when Mama moves it, right to the corner. Mama doesn’t understand. And Mama can’t hear the voices.

[The Love Mutt]

Ivydoll

And, we're live. 14 is up, so go check out the front page. This theme has a LOT of explorable paths, so PLEASE don't hesitate to mull it all over. A knee-jerk reaction may not be as profitable as what comes to you unbidden. This was a problem many entrants had from the last cycle, so please consider my advice,

And, again, prizes have gone up, so tell your friends and we'll see about getting enough entrants (entrants, not entries!) to bump the bracket up to 12000 for our grand winner. Plus, even though it's un-offish, I usually toss the runner-up or HM with some extra.

Okay, so you may have to look up Soter, Soteria, Maniae, but it would be worth your time.

And MOST IMPORTANTLY, you need to give some props to The Love Mutt for inspiring this theme set (from her Psychotherapy set) and contributing many wonderful titles (Catatonia, Hallucination, Empty Chair).

CONFETTI

D'awwwwww, thank you!

Cannot WAIT to get writing!

I also wanna encourage people to look up the Empty Chair method, versus just assuming it's an empty chair. It has SO much more meaning, and will hopefully result in entries that are more than just some reminder of loss.

<3 CATCHING THE CONFETTI

[Navean]

Catatonia

Here there is darkness. There is silence and there is stillness. There is a calm that is ever seeking itself to bring about more calm. This peace is my inner temple. Sanctum sanctorum. Here lies my own Ark of Covenant that hides away the rules that govern my soul.

There are people around me. They cannot unlock my Ark and so they try to pry it open with words or movements or drugs. These will never work and yet they persist. I would find it amusing were I not so dedicated to myself.

Abyssus abyssum invocat. And I answer wordlessly.

[Navean]

The Love Mutt

Ivydoll

So I wrote a second entry using the Empty Chair prompt, but I want to get a bit more info on whether what I've written would make sense and I figured you two might be able to help.

From what I read about Gestalt therapy, it focuses on the here and now, not what was, could be, will be, etc. However it's also about removing blocks caused by unfinished business, which is part of the "was". My reconciliation of these two ideas is that if said unfinished business is something that bothers a person in the present and is thus keeping them from moving forward, it would be addressed because the patient is experiencing dissatisfaction in the present.

So what I've written is about a man addressing something in his distant past that has been on his mind lately. Does this properly conform to the field of therapy from which this method is derived?

[The Love Mutt]

Quick lowdown on the empty chair method:

Client speaks to the empty chair as though their audience is actually sitting there. When they're done, they switch over to the formerly empty chair and speak from the audience's voice. And so on and so forth. Therapist serves as facilitator.

[phantomkitsune]

Oh, Ivy, I've been noticing you reblogging lots of Supernatural things. I'm just watching it all the way through and we're on Season 5 and I'm just heartbroken all the time for them.

Isn't it a great show?