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...
I had an experience with my therapist similar to yours with with your bishop. He was like, "You say you're such an emotional person, but you're talking about all these painful things very calmly. You're not even crying." Which made me angry. All I could think was, "You spent HOW many years studying human psychology and you're getting paid HOW much an hour, to not understand how human emotions work?" People think if you're emotional or anxious by nature, you must be that way all the time.
ReplyDeleteI too have realized that I have these two parts to myself. I didn't think of it in terms of human and vulcan (although that's actually a brilliant way to describe it) but rather adult and child. The child part of me is the one that is scared, selfish, insecure, nervous, anxious, impatient, and just generally unruly. The adult part of myself is often working to calm the child part, to talk her down and calm her. In a spiritual sense, maybe those two parts are the result of an old soul living in a relatively young body (with a still-learning human mind). I've watched that child improve over time, although she still has a long way to go. And maybe it isn't so much about trying to become one of those parts and dissolve the other, or to embrace them both and just deal with them, but rather to play both roles as efficiently as possible. As your adult part, be patient with your child part; don't get too upset at her, try to understand her fears, and let her cry if she needs to, all the while nurturing a learning environment (asking her what she can learn from each experience, etc., and less of that "why are you being so ridiculous?" attitude that I tend to give myself). As your child part, try to heed the wisdom of the logic presented by your adult part, even if it doesn't necessarily make you feel better. I'm not great at doing this in my own life; I really don't enjoy babysitting myself, but I have hope that one day she will grow into a reasonable young woman at some point, and then be less trouble. :)
Tori, I like your interpretation a lot. I don't know if I'm quite to the point where I can even try to play both rolls at once, but it seems like a good goal to strive for. :)
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