The Objective Value of Strength or How I Discovered I Am Just Like Spock

So I had an interesting experience last week and I'm not entirely sure what to think of it so I'm going to post it here in the hopes that someone will have some sort of revelatory insight to offer me.

I don't know if I had mentioned that the reason I have been able to go see ye olde therapiste is because my ward was covering the cost.  But with the decision to officially emigrate out of the old ward it became necessary to broach the topic of continued subsidization with the new administration.  

So last Wednesday I stopped in to visit with my new bishop.  Aside from a brief handshake and hello my first Sunday, this was my first introduction to him.  After the obligatory "getting to know you" chitchat I broached the topic of Alan and my enigmatic therapy.  

It must here be noted that I have remained somewhat ambivalent about my therapy with Alan.  The man himself is perhaps the second sweetest and most earnest man I've ever met (the first being my Russian 101 professor Tony Brown).  But I have struggled to quite get a handle on his therapeutic style from the beginning.  And when I brought this up with him again during our last session we momentarily touched on the possibility that his laid-back style wasn't quite right for me.  But every time I've considered that idea I've left the thought with a vague feeling that I should give Alan's style a little more time.

Which brings us back to my meeting with the bishop.  When asked how I felt therapy was going for me I completely unsurprisingly struggled with my answer.  Which is why I was so surprised by the visceral reaction I had to my bishop's statement that he thought I should "give Alan the boot".  I immediately started feeling anxious and a little panicky.  When I finally made it out to my car I started crying.  Driving from church back home I proceeded to have a micro anxiety attack.

I must, however, again pause my narrative for another bit of background.  I had spent some time last Sunday considering my relationship with the divine and I had come to the conclusion that, while I have a somewhat unorthodox (for a Mormon) relationship with God, my personal system of applied belief rather skips over the idea of Christ.  When I pray I pray to God; in the idea of heavenly communication God is the one I am talking to and listening for.  It occurred to me, then, that perhaps I should look into cultivating some sort of direct relationship with Christ.  Mormon theology places him as the intermediary between God and man, after all.  

So, returning to last Wednesday night, as my anxiety persisted it seemed as good an opening as any to begin that cultivation.  So I sat down on my futon and said a quick prayer.  It consisted essentially of me telling him I was upset, I wasn't completely sure why, and I needed some help.  And in a true New Era moment, I can honestly say that I stopped crying almost instantly.  

I cannot say, however, that I necessarily felt comforted.

What I felt, for lack of any better way to explain it, was more like myself.  

See, the thing about me is that pretty much all of my adult life I've felt like I'm really two very different, almost opposite, people crammed together into one.  One half of me is the person who comes up with the topics for most of my blog posts--all about my insecurities and worries and struggles.  It is the part of me that is responsible for the infamous anxiety.  It is all sensitivity, passion, insecurity, and fear.  Fear of so very many things.  The other half of me is the one who takes all those whinging neurotic blog topics and writes them either with detached analysis, or makes them funny.  In simplest terms, it is the Vulcan part of me.  Because I just realized literally as I was writing that sentence that I'm basically Spock, divided between emotion and reason.  This second half of me is logical and reasonable and calm.  And most of all, it is strong, with a burdensome strength that never allows me a moment of cathartic emotional weakness because it sees no purpose in such indulgences.  At the end of our meeting the Bishop mentioned how surprised he was at the topic of our conversation; I was much too calm to suffer from anxiety.  He said this to me as I was in the initial stages of an anxiety attack.  

Which is what I mean when I say that, after I said my prayer, I felt more like myself.  I stopped crying.  I stopped panicking.  I stopped caring at all about what would happen if I stopped going to see Alan because I knew that I would be fine either way.  Because I'm always fine.  I felt, for a little while, like half of myself...wholly.  If that isn't too confusing.

It is important to note here that the motivation in many of my decisions lately has been a desire to better balance of these two halves of myself.  Not to be too dramatic about it, but I feel like the emotion and sensitivity of the one is being slowly smothered beneath the rigid stoicism of the other.  Only the most negative aspects of that part of me make it out at this point.  The insecurities, anxieties, and fears.  They are the only parts strong enough to break through.  So, as I said, I'm trying to find some way to relieve some of the pressure.  Because sensitivity and emotion aren't bad, are they?

And that is why I am confused.  Did I receive a true answer to my prayer?  To a person who can't say with surety that she's received an answer to her prayers since she was a teenager, that would be momentous.  But if I did, what does it mean that that answer was to be snapped back into my Vulcan self so hard the other self was practically gone (if just for a while)?  Have I been working toward the wrong goal?  Instead of trying to cultivate a balance between Vulcan and Human should I simply be striving to become pure Vulcan?  

I honestly don't know.  I'm hoping that one of you will have an idea that will help me to make some sense out of it all...

Therapeutical Musings

All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. ~ Leo Tolstoy

I mentioned in an earlier post that I've started going to a therapist.   I've now been to see Alan 3 times. Each time has been unique, and at any given moment my mind might have changed about how I feel about the endeavor overall.  But if you all would indulge me, I’d like to share some of my thoughts about it.

My first visit I had no idea what to expect.  The Bishop told me to go so that we could determine whether or not I have anxiety and, if so, get me some medication to fix the problem.  I was pretty sure I didn't have clinical anxiety, but why not check.  I then proceeded to have one of the worst, most anxious and stressed out weeks of my entire life just a little while before going in for my appointment.  It was really superlatively awful, but it sort of primed me to think that maybe I DO have prescription-level anxiety issues.  So I went in incredibly nervous about so many things.  Alan was very nice, but nevertheless, I left feeling absolutely emotionally disheveled.  I felt as though I'd just spent an hour having someone poke and pick at me and try to break me down into my constituent bits and I absolutely hated it.  Full disclosure: I sat in my car and cried for several minutes afterward, and spent the entire drive down to work fighting to regain my composure.

I tried to figure out what made that first visit so stressful and unpleasant and I came up with a few ideas.  I kept fixating on this one moment as I was leaving when Alan patted me on the shoulder and said “you did great”.  The sort of thing you say to someone who is clearly on the verge of melting down (which, annoyingly, was basically what I did as soon as I left his office).  He had said it because he could tell I was barely holding it together.  But why was I barely holding it together?  Why had I been so nervous?  I decided that I shouldn’t be nervous.  I decided that I should take charge on my next visit.  I wasn’t a person who struggles to hold it together.  I’m not a person who cries in my car.  He hadn’t really seen the real me.  So next time I was going to go in there and make it very very clear who the real me is, and let him know that I’m really a normal, well-adjusted human.  And that is exactly what I did.  I told him I was fine, things were fine, the world was fine, and his time would probably be much better used helping people with actual real problems.  And at the end of the visit he basically told me “If you actually want to work on anything then I’m more than willing.  But if you don’t then why come in again?” 

That was a very good question and I thought about it for the two weeks till my next appointment.  And the more I thought the less I knew.  On the one hand, I am by no means so arrogant as to think that I am the one person on earth who wouldn’t benefit from going to therapy.  And I certainly do have my fair share of issues I’d like to figure out.  On the other hand, I was having a really hard time understanding how talking to a random guy I’d met twice before in my life was going to help me.  What was he going to tell me that I hadn’t already thought of?  In spite of these doubts, I decided to go back for my third visit.  And in deciding I also decided to commit to opening myself up more like my first visit.  I just saw an episode of Blue Bloods where Frank goes to see a therapist and after several attempts the therapist says “Frank, you’re a very intelligent man and I have no doubt you’d be able to successfully evade my questions all day.”  In my case, it proved nothing to sidestep questions, and refusing to be at all vulnerable would shut me out from any kind of growth.  So I committed to letting myself be at least a little vulnerable. 

And I did.  I went back for my third visit this week.  I talked through many of my concerns and doubts about continuing to come.  Alan was able to explain to me more clearly the format he adopts in his sessions.  He believes that there is value in simply experiencing emotions with someone, and then understanding the whys and hows of those emotions and growing from them.  Very very foreign approach to me.  But I figured that if I was going to try then I had to trust him.  And perhaps his style, so very very different from mine, will be good for me. 

Alan’s format is, rather than to ask specific questions or address “assignments” from before, to have me simply tell him about my life and my concerns and what has been bothering me.  I was kind of shocked by how hard that ended up being for me.  Some of my friends, like Matt or Kara or Caleb, know that I can definitely vent when someone or something is annoying.  But to simply start talking to a relative stranger about all the negative things that I had thought and felt for the previous two weeks?  It was unexpectedly formidable.  And even though I’m trying to trust Alan and his system, I am still having a hard time reconciling myself to the idea.  To me, it feels like I am indulging in the worst aspects of my nature.  The parts of me that I should be working to change.  If I give voice to them then that is giving them that much more legitimacy. 

When I brought this up to Alan he had some explanation, but he also said that I don’t have to worry because he knows I’m a good person and nothing I say is going to make him think differently.  When he said it I had one of those uncomfortable moments of realization that yes, in fact, I am exactly like every single other human out there.  Everyone worries about making themselves look bad.  You don’t share your secrets with strangers because you don’t trust that stranger to judge you rightly.  So Alan was giving me the assurance that I didn’t need to have that worry; that he was going to judge me rightly.

But on the other hand, that didn’t feel like the whole problem.  I understand that this is Alan’s job and that he knows how to listen to people without judgment. 

But what about me?

If I start telling someone else all my struggles and all my emotions then how can I continue believing that I am a good person?

You know that feeling that they say we all get, that we are pretending in a world full of people who actually have it together?  That voice, telling you that you are a pretender, it is the voice I am so afraid of.  It is the constant conscience who will not be silenced.  The one who evaluates everything you are and finds it wanting.  The one that hears other people praising you and whispers “but they don’t really know…” 

All of the things that Alan wants me to share, they are the fodder for that voice.  If I keep them locked up and never allow them the life of another person’s hearing then I can keep the voice quiet enough to ignore most of the time.  I can go on believing myself to be strong and intelligent and sensible and together.  Yes, I have this endless litany in my head of all the ways that is not true, but I never speak them, I never let them out.  I never dignify them with acknowledgement.  I am terrified that if I do I won’t be able to ignore them anymore. 

I’m not worried that Alan will think I’m a bad person, I’m worried that I’ll finally believe that I am. 

No one wants to think that there is something wrong with them.  We all want to be well-adjusted, fully functioning human adults.  But ultimately I don’t think there is any person so normal and so happy and so sensible that if you look closely enough you won’t find that they are a little bit broken somewhere.  I know this.  So I guess talking to a therapist is supposed to reconcile me to it in myself.  They say the first step is admitting you have a problem…

Therapy session: Residence Upheaval Edition

According to my therapist (cause I have one of those now) I need to work on forming connections with people that involve more trust so that I can go to those people when I'm having all the anxiety because that is how you're supposed to deal with anxiety.

I respectfully disagree with my therapist.

See, I agree that I don't really talk to people when I'm in the midst of an anxiety-induced meltdown.  But that is because there is no point.  I mean, sure, talking to people about issues is probably a good thing, but only if you're in a state to use their added perspective and insight.  And mid-panic?  I'm not in a state to do or use anything.  Hence, as I told ye olde therapist, I will talk to people before a freak out, and after a freak out, and even when there are no freakouts in sight fore or aft, but not during.  During I just lay facedown on the bedroom floor and breathe deeply.

But because there's no point going to see a therapist if you just dismiss what he tells you, I am writing this blog post as an initial foray into the sharing my feelings mid (or rather, on the tail end of) a major stress out.  That said, this is likely to be superlatively boring, so feel free to move along.

Today's stress is brought to you by the letter M, for Moving.

Tomorrow I sign a contract on a new apartment.  A faux studio apartment (technically there is a separate kitchen and bedroom/livingroom).

First, let us establish the advantages of this decision.  The apartment is very cool, located in a historic building, with oodles of personality.  And it would be mine exclusively.  I would, for the first time ever, have a home that belonged to no one besides me.  My own bathroom.  My own fridge.  My own sink with no dishes in it but the ones I put there.  And speaking of dishes, the only person to break or lose them would be me.  Indeed, there would be no one to break, ruin, or damage ANY of my stuff besides myself.  I literally cannot express to you how amazing that sounds...

But now for other side of things.

This place is small.  I mean, seriously tiny.  My current bedroom might very well be bigger than the main room.  And there is no other additional storage space.  When I try and think about condensing all of my stuff down into one very tiny room my brain just blanks out.  I have a few vague ideas but ultimately I'm not actually sure it will be possible.  And while I can probably get rid of a lot of stuff, there is a lot of stuff I can't get rid of.  Like the boxes of stuff from my grandma.  Like my books.  I don't know what I'll do...

The rent, while incredibly reasonable for a one-person place, is still a significant increase from what I'm paying now.  My disposable income is basically going to be decimated.  This includes my food budget.  I'm going to have to make a major adjustment in my lifestyle...though honestly that isn't necessarily a bad thing.  Just difficult.

The apartment will be available at the beginning of March, which means that I have less than a month to figure everything out and get all packed up and ready to go.  Which leads to to the final and most stressful of all the problems.  Thusfar, all my issues are things that ultimately I can figure out.  It might take some work, but I have the power to manage them.  The last problem is somewhat less under my control, and that is the problem of my current contract.  Just after I put in my application for the apartment I found out that my old roommate Callie was moving back to Provo through August and we both got really excited about her buying my contract.  But as it turns out, it probably will make a lot more sense for her not to buy it.  Which is awesome for her, but rather drops the floor out from under me.  I now have only 24 days to find someone to buy my contract and I am seriously stressed.

Everyone keeps telling me that it won't be a problem.  I'll be able to sell it so so easily.  But the fact is the one time I ever tried to sell a housing contract I ended up paying double rent for three or four months before I managed it.  I was fortunate to be able to manage it then, but there is literally no way I can do that this time.  And I have a lot less cushion before that becomes an issue this time, too.

In addition to all that general stress, I had the particular stress of trying to figure out how, by tomorrow, I was going to pay $360 of rent for my current place plus $450 of deposit for the new one, and I only had $273 in my checking account.  This problem swerved into a detour of hunting desperately for the checks I ordered last year that truly seem to have dissolved into their constituent atoms because I have literally searched every single place they could possibly exist.  Luckily, during my 2nd or 11th hour of searching, Blair informed me that I can go to the bank and pay them $1 per check to print them out for me right there.  I am not exaggerating when I say that this information brought tears to my eyes.  And with it, I am able to MacGyver my way through to Friday when, mercifully, I get paid.  Timing has not worked out for me this week...

And there you have it.  I am sharing my anxiety with others in the hope that doing so will somehow alleviate it.  And, score one for the therapist, I'll admit that on most of the points I do feel marginally better for laying them all out.  Selling my contract remains the aggressive gorrilla in the room, but the rest has diminished to conceivable proportions.

Or perhaps I've simply run out of energy to continue stressing tonight and will begin afresh tomorrow.  Only time will tell...