Conversations Across Time

Not more information-gathering

CAT doesn’t ask you to keep listing what’s wrong. It already has what became visible in IAP. Its work is to sit with that and help you see it more clearly — understanding more, not gathering more.

The weight you’re carrying

Some of what you’re carrying belongs to the original loss or disruption itself. Some of it belongs to what that loss quietly took along with it — a Secondary Loss. CAT helps you start to sort out which is which, and what to make of it, without deciding any of that in advance.

Same thing, different intent

Two things can look almost identical on the surface and come from completely different places underneath. In AVAIA’s Defying Grief program, for example, this is where the idea of Audacity enters — not one of AVAIA’s virtues, but, as the program itself describes it, “the force that makes a person insist on their own aliveness in the face of loss.” The same force can look different from person to person, and CAT stays curious about how it’s actually showing up for someone rather than assuming the answer in advance.

(This is specific to Defying Grief, not something every CAT conversation explores — it’s an example of what “same thing, different intent” can look like.)

CAT doesn’t decide what it means

CAT doesn’t tell you what any of this means. It creates the conditions for you to understand it — recognition, not a conclusion handed to you.