To Therapy! Yes, go! Go back!

First off, I do think your experience in therapy is a common one. Though there seems to be a bit of a disconnect in that the emotions rise seemingly of their own accord and seemingly out of proportion to events (just sitting and talking with a trustworthy person is not congruous with feeling strong feelings of sadness, anger, despair, etc..), there is a connection. With the safety to be yourself in front of another, the safety to be seen, one can start to uncoil the defended anxieties within. In many ways I do think that this process is the sine qua non of the therapeutic experience.

There are hundreds of schools of psychology, and though most that I know about acknowledge this cornerstone there are still many ways to approach this.

I currently go through a very similar experience to yours with my therapist, whom I’m seeing twice a week. I too feel a mix of emotions as they come forward, and I too feel embarrassment and shame. There is a great ambivalence there about going ahead and pouring it all out.

As Niels says, it can depend on the other person. We can’t consciously make ourselves trust someone with our unconscious. We can give conscious trust, and try to remain open to full trust with all our being, but as has been alluded to by Zebra Foal, our current lack of trust is for a reason. Either the other person isn’t trustworthy and its time to find someone else, or its just going to take us awhile to relearn to trust someone we believe is worthy of our trust.

Thats one perspective in brief.

Another is the idea that ‘high emotionality’ itself can be causal in the generation of ineffective coping mechanisms (ie things like depression, anxiety, and all the way up to psychosis), and that this can in turn drive the formation of various coping mechanisms. This idea comes from a newer branch of Cognitive Behavior Therapy called Dialectical Behavior Therapy. I’ve been reading http://www.amazon.com/Dialectical-Behavior-Therapy-Private-Practice/dp/1572244208 by Thomas Marra recently. I’ve really enjoyed it. I’m new to the ideas behind the theory, but DBT, like CBT enjoys some of the most rigorous testing of effectiveness of all the various schools of psychology.

I haven’t fully assimilated the core ideas of DBT, so I won’t try to summarize other than to point to the book above and say that its been an unexpectedly refreshing way to reconceptualize what we do with our emotions, what they are all about, and how they can contribute to problems down the road.

Yet a third way to look at your experience would be from Attachment Theory, a venerable and also empirically verified branch of psychology. Attachment theory would have more to say directly about the why and how of the trust relationship that you were building with your therapist, and perhaps would give you some insights into the ambivalence you seem to be feeling about the situation. My first exploration into this theory was through this book, which I highly recommend : http://www.amazon.com/Dialectical-Behavior-Therapy-Private-Practice/dp/1572244208

Wow, I sound like I think bibliotherapy is the way to go. I don’t at all. Just some good books to bring fresh insights. From what you’ve described though, it sounds to me like you are totally on the right track. Those moments when your emotions come to the surface are the way forward (totally my opinion and experience).

You described recognizing this; that though it was possibly frightening, and certainly charged, that you wanted to push ahead. Then when you tried to let more out you shut yourself down (I’ll take it that this was somewhat reflexive and not what you had consciously intended?).

I
Am
Right
There
With
You!

This is still happening to me in therapy. Its a much slower process than I would wish. I described it like this just this week to my therapist:

“Its like I see a green pasture in sunlight and I long to be there. Its just across a little brook. All I have to do is jump over and I can be there.”. I was describing that although my affect was highly emotional: tears streaming, face flushed, tissue stock prices going up all over town, I was still ‘not there yet’. That although I did feel sad, frightened, embarrassed, and deeply ambivalent, I also felt great hope, and not insignificant relief.

Thats a whole lot to feel at once, let alone describe while one is feeling it. And I do know this for myself: I couldn’t even see the meadow and the brook without another person there to witness. The “Other” is important in many aspects of life. For better or worse a trustworthy other to be present with is central to emotional life, imo.

Relearning to trust someone else with my deepest vulnerability is hard work. And it absolutely does depend on their trust-worthiness. It is relational.

I too get quite frustrated with the time it seems to take. I describe my experience like this: I want to jump into a pool of water, but instead climb in, so slowly that my muscles ache and strain. Months go by as I slowly submerge one toe, then another. Sometimes I pull a foot entirely back out and start all over. The time pressure is immense. In my anxious mind the time for me to get in the pool was many years ago. I feel totally silly just hanging here on the edge waving to passer-by: “Yep, I’m getting in, just you see!”.

But I am getting faster. The end, though not in sight, is clearly possible. Hell, its beyond likely at this point. Yeah, I wish I had learned these things a long time ago. Yeah I wish I was there already. But no, I don’t take these wishes as ultimatums anymore. I am who I am. This is my turtle-like process, and I will do anything to self-rescue. Right now, this is what it takes.

So, that being my experience after 60+ therapy sessions so far, with a guy I think merits my trust, you know what I will say about your experience so far Gabe: You can do it, and it might take more than 2 sessions!

It very likely will be awkward. Who can you be awkward around and feel fine about it? You will likely again shut yourself down. Who can you shutdown with and then rebuild with? Who will help you, when you want it, to face your fears?

Someone secure in themselves. Someone worthy of trust.

Good luck Gabe! I really enjoyed your honest and direct post about your experience. Courage is great to witness.

-S

Mental Masturbation and Creativity

From a post of mine at LiMi…..

I’ve had this question for awhile. How can one tell whether a line of thinking is just mental diddling about, or is going to produce fruits?

Just wrote 3 paragraphs and deleted them to cut to the chase: You know how some of us see FDR sheeple as repeating mantras and not doing any thinking for themselves? (btw, I think this happens in any group and says nothing about FDR per se). Well, how does one break out of one’s own habits of thought and really really venture out into the realm of the unknown?

Sometimes I feel more ready to realize a new thing than other times. Does this happen for you? How can I nurture this readiness?

Too much rolling around in the noggin

I’ve been nearly manic in these last few days, writing-wise. And it doesn’t seem to be slowing down. I keep coming up with things that I want to explore in words. Am I trying to realize something? Or could it be that I’m just keeping myself distracted from something else through writing in circles?

Damn those are hard questions. Well, how to discriminate between the two? I feel good. I feel more free to be myself. I feel less of the looming obligations, or as if they are less important. Yet I also feel some larger chunk of the terror of my life. How can it be that a small but growing sliver of me feels horror, while another sliver feels growing excitement? Is this just reaction formation / ambivalence, or is something else going on.

Its like looking for the unified field theory of oneself. I need a larger understanding to encompass both phenomena.

If its true that I ’should’ be horrified by my living situation, my frozen-ness in certain key areas of life: work, especially, then I really need to pay attention to that feeling and use it to propel me into some action. But I don’t think that is what is going on at all. There is some attempt of the false self to fuse its old tools of paralysis with my actual desires. I may be the only casualty in this war, but um, that’s certainly one too many!

I want to write about why I think things like “Lets have an anarchist constitution” are so fundamentally flawed. That’s from LiMi.

I want to write about one of the ‘Bob’s’ from ‘Ask a Therapist #3′ at FDR. How Christina’s reaction made me feel. I think she just felt obligated but unable to help. I didn’t think Bob was attempting to win her contempt.

I want to write about…….oh, well, now I forget. I do need a break from this. Time to go play.

What would it take for me to be really happy?

This is a query, and not something to be fully answered. Its not solvable. But this doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be asked!

My first reaction is to say: “I don’t know”, and then to feel sad about not knowing, or like I really do know, but have hidden the answer from myself. That is worth exploring in a bit.

I don’t pretend that I do know, which is I think a good thing. I don’t have an idea that “If I do this and that and the other thing, then I’ll be happy”. I don’t think it works like that. Either we are capable of happiness, or we aren’t yet. Fundamentally, doing things isn’t going to bring true happiness. Well, that’s not true. I agree with Nathaniel Brandon about Self Esteem. We build it. But self esteem is what allows us the capacity for happiness. It isn’t happiness itself.

Maybe I’m confusing happiness with something else. Because on the one hand there is this element of achieving values that does bring happiness, while on the other hand it seems that happiness is related to seeing the truth, or something. Happiness is a sense of well-being? Man, that seems really really weak to me. Its like the distinction between Self Worth, and Self Esteem. These really do seem to have a fundamental difference.

Self Esteem is in the realm of action.

Self Worth is in the realm of being.

But these are the same place: reality.

Let me get back to me, personally, and see where I go. I would be truly happy if I felt good all the way down to the core of my being. Head to toes. If I felt freedom and great capacity for action. If I could look at the world and myself and know that all was as it should be. Hmm, something horseshit about this. Ideals and wishes are mixing with emotions and other things.

I would be happy if I felt great love and deep connection, with myself, and with other conscious beings. Perfect acceptance is part of it too. To be in the arms of someone I loved openly and deeply and to feel held and accepted. Felt the love returned. To understand that someone really thinks and feels that I am the most wonderful person they can even imagine, and to know that their conclusion was valid. To feel the same way about them and be able to tell them and have them really agree with me. To see them able to love themselves as deeply as they do me. So a kind of perfect reciprocity and impression of great virtue between two equals. I would be orgiastically happy in that scenario! (let the lovemaking begin. close the curtains now……).

O.k., I’m back. One more immediate thing that would bring me happiness would be to feel that I was taking good care of all my responsibilities. Hmm. Responsibilities is the wrong word, though still accurate enough.

Here is the happy-making week: Get a wonderful job, take care of all bills and expenses, reconnect with old friends, make new connections. Take appropriate risks and build my sense of strength. Find and move into a really good apartment with great neighbors that want to get to know me, and vice-versa. Discover some integrated base of my writing, with the concommitent sense of starting out on a long and rich path of discovery.

Its funny though because some of what I feel obliged to do is mixed in with these wishes. My wishes are not too strong. They feel ethereal and not just a little unrealistic, considering where I am now. It would be like saying: “What would make me happy is to win the lottery”. Well, that would suck, because you have a better chance of getting struck by lightening, and more importantly, you can’t do anything to improve the odds. There is no action to take to ‘make it happen’.

So that is a big part of trying to figure out what would make a person happy: Finding things that actually are achievable, and in which you have a central role.

For another thing a person could say would be: “I would be happy if so-and-so did this for me”. This may happen, but you are not the central character in the action. You are the recipient. As such, there is nothing morally decent that you can do to make it happen. Its a fundamentally manipulative wish.

Sure, I can wish that this girl, or that girl calls me up and asks for a date. But if I think I’ll be happy only if we go on a date, and she says no, then I am unhappy despite taking all appropriate actions on my part to make it happen. Nobody calls someone up and says: “Unless you date me I’ll come beat you up!”. Well, unfortunately people do think like that when we really look at their actions.

Is it narcissistic to base one’s happiness goals only on one’s own actions?

No. Why not though? It seems isolationist or something. This needs more exploration…..

What is Going On?

Ooh, an uncomfortable question.

Still have to figure out what sorts of things to journal about. Ideas? My daily activities? My hopes and dreams?

I’m working on a theory about the collapse of my life – living. It is very exciting to me. It boils down to this: My true self is smothered by my false self (of course). My true self feels horrible at being so dominated. The false self attempts to suppress these feelings, to which the true self is like: “Go ahead. Go ahead and take more power. Lets see where this goes…”. Because the true self, all along, has real wisdom. It knows that the false self can’t bring happiness, only more pain. So as my ’self’ gets taken over more fully by false ideas, irrationalities, external positive obligations, I of course lose more and more self respect, to which the false self responds with more ineffective coping.

Its a long slow spiral of ever increasing constriction. Long as in 20 years long. Slow as in its only a general trend. Sometimes it gets reversed and the true self gains more centrality for awhile. But the trend is towards constriction. The true self is letting the false self ‘win’, in order to collapse the false self through implosion.

But this isn’t quite it really. There is a good bit more for me to realize before I can see the picture clearly.

A central question for me is: Why do some people go along with the false self all their lives and attempt to live up to its images, while others foment internal rebellions to slough off the false self?

So if I think: “I’m a good person if I am wealthy, have a beautiful girlfriend, am always right about financial decisions, am invited to lots of events, am surrounded by sycophants, etc..”, or “I’m a good person if I’m as patriotic as my father” or “If I spend lots of time with my family” or “If my children get good grades”.

I set up an internal choice: Either I follow these ‘wishes’ (though they certainly are not wishes in the Freudian sense. These are superficial interjects masquerading as superego), or I don’t.

Because the ‘morality’ of the false self is inflicted, and not grown (see the relevance to my blog name?), it has several qualities: It uses fear-based motivation. It is fundamentally just opinion and not rational. It does not lead to true happiness if achieved, but only relief from self-loathing. It is not chosen by the whole person, but instead assumed.

Huh. So it seems that the two choices lead in different directions, but that the same thing may occur: If we follow the false self ‘rules’ for happiness, we don’t find happiness, but we instead keep up a stressful dance of attempting to satisfy its demands by accomplishing them. We attempt to live up to the image we have of ourselves that is riddled with positive obligation, dark corners, and things like “I’m good because I’m better than them at this”. But if we do satisfy these impulses we still can’t relax. It is a form of feeding the demons within. So they grow larger? I don’t know. Maybe its like this for the false self:

“Well, that was easy. I just put a little fear out there and he/she goes ahead and takes action to live up to some arbitrary standard. I don’t have to increase the fear level, only repeat it. I’ll try going a little softer next time……’Hey you! Your neighbors have better shrubberies than you! Shouldn’t you take better care of your garden?’.

The consciousness experiences this as: “Hmm. My garden looks a little messy. I should really take care of that this weekend. Let me enter that into my PDA. I’m so organized. I’m so good. Oh, damn, Marsha wants me to go away this weekend. All these people and their demands! I’ll get new shrubberies on Friday, and plant them when I get back. How’s that? Yeah, that’ll work. Look at those Smith’s! Their yard is a real mess. Can’t even bring in the newspaper? Oh the shame!”.

“emmmm. yummy….pride!…….um…..superiority!…….oooh…….more please!…….”.

So maybe the false self doesn’t expand when it’s control is obeyed. That would explain why it doesn’t ever come to mortal combat between the false and true selves. Its like a parasite instead, taking only what nourishment it needs from the host, without killing it. That is victory. All the people that maintain this state through death, are they all zombies? I mean figuratively asleep to their fundamental tyranny over themselves?. Is it so black and white between false and true self? Is it possible that with a relatively quiet false self that the two take turns at the helm? What would that look like?

I keep thinking about what the true self would look like with more ‘control’. I remember my old Japanese Flute teacher, and how I felt that he was an enlightened person out to draw my true-self (and everyone he met) into expression. I remember a few very strong people that I’ve had the good fortune to know. Strong is the wrong word. Its more like: true-seeing and utterly compassionate. Courageous and stupefyingly brilliant people who nearly seem another species. Charisma just pours out of them like an overflowing artesian well. It looks, in my mind’s eye, like a brilliant warm radience. I feel teary with love just thinking about that.

I say ‘control’ with tongue in cheek, because control is a word that really only means something to the false self. Why do I know that? Is that true, or just my wish?

What is going on? Well, I’m waking up. I’m slowly waking up. I feel that the positive momentum of my self-rescue is finally taking hold.

Which means the false-self attacks will get worse. Its a real war. I don’t honestly believe there has to be a full collapse of the false-self in order to grow the true self. Not at all. The true self is always there, doesn’t grow, is infinite. Y’know, like a soul in religion. Only this time, its personal! Well, only this time, its psychological is more accurate.

I listened to a podcast last night which was so parallel to my own experience, it was funny. These ‘coincidences’. I try not to notice them. But something is going on to bring them about. My unconscious is shaking me up. My true self is finding allies. Oh yeah, lets go! The podcast was FDR # 504 “The Good Wife”

I think I’ll review it next post or so…..

For now,

Alex