I’m going back and researching a bit more today. It’s a bit difficult to find a therapist in suburbia when you haven’t got a car, and have very few means of purchasing a car.
Good news, however! The two nicer therapists I’ve already talked to are not within walking distance of any Metro-North stations… but I searched again, and it seems that there is one excellent-sounding psychologist who has an alternate office within walking distance (only 1 mile away, and Google Maps shows that there are sidewalks along the route) of my apartment. I’ve called and left her a voicemail – and am waiting quite eagerly for her call back. If she’s accepting new patients and does indeed practice in Milford (and, of course, if I get a good vibe), then it’s settled. Her specialty, as she says, is CBT, and she focuses on ” maintaining good rapport between therapist and client with unconditional positive regard, support, and empathy.”
I mean… I honestly became really emotional when I read that. Sort of… sad and eager at the same time. Tears were shed.
So… working on it. Getting closer. I hope to begin therapy this coming week.
Filed under: self-work | Tags: deFOO, hamlet, life story, self-work, shakespeare, therapy
That was actually the name of my first blog: “Unpack My Heart With Words.” I started it, aged 16.
It comes from a scene in – wait for it, wait for it… – Hamlet.
Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave,
That I, the son of a dear father murder’d,
Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,
Must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words,
And fall a-cursing, like a very drab,
A scullion!
Fie upon’t! foh!
This happens after a mid-length speech where he discovers that an actor of his acquaintance can show more emotion over a fictional queen than he, Hamlet, can show over a real dead father. He accuses himself – having not immediately killed his uncle for murdering his father – of being “pigeon-livered” (i.e. a coward) and other things. The bit above is him saying that since he doesn’t seem to be taking any action, he has to talk about it (and talk only, instead of acting).
I realized this evening while watching that soliloquy that the “like a whore” bit references confession. A woman – who in the middle ages had very little other recourse to make a living – prostitutes herself, and then goes to confess to the priest. She cannot stop what she is doing – or take actual action to repent – and so she goes to the confessional daily to be “forgiven” for that which she must do but cannot do.
Hamlet “must” kill his uncle, but cannot do it – and repents of it in this speech. The prostitute “must” stop prostituting herself but cannot do it – and repents of it in the confessional.
The reason behind my original blog title was a bit of a jab at myself. But really… I was in the same situation. Which is why I liked Hamlet so much, and why I think I revert back to thinking of my life in terms of that play during a reFOO, as I’ve been experiencing lately.
The situation I was in at 16 was this: I realized mother was corrupt. I read The Fountainhead at 11 and Atlas Shrugged at 13 (not a boast – just the facts) and was pretty heavily into philosophy and libertarianism at that time. Stef wasn’t around… but I realized that my mother was wholly irrational and just plumb fucking insane, but I couldn’t get out of her house. Legally, financially… you name it. I was trapped with the corrupt. What I felt I “must do” – i.e. get the fuck out – was also what I could not do. And so I wrote about my anger and frustration and hatred of her in that blog.
The tagline of my blog was “Fie upon’t!” – basically a nice Elizabethan way of saying “fuck it.” Which is, frankly, pretty much how I felt about life.
I haven’t been saying “fie upon’t” lately in regards to life… but it’s been mighty tempting. That old thought of “you’d best not try” is really tempting… but I think I’m soon going to overcome this latest round of reFOO and Hamlet-itis.
3 of 4 therapists have contacted me back. I got a bad instinctual feeling about one, so he’s out. Once I settle the transportation issue, I’ll schedule consultations with the other 2.
Going to see the estate agent tomorrow to look at apartments. There is a chance I will find one for January 1st move-in. If I can – and I get a good instinctual feeling about the situation (and actually take some time, as requested, to THINK about it) – I will try to get settled by 5 January, and make the first appointment for that week.
I am going to try to do 2 sessions a week – a mid-week session and a Saturday session.
So… frankly, no real progress yet, but there’s a hope of progress soon, and a path cleared to do so. Rand mentioned, through Ellis Wyatt, needing only an unobstructed right-of-way to move the world. That’s what I’m aiming at.
The soliloquy in question:
Filed under: FDR, self-work, therapy | Tags: FDR, philosophizing, self-work, therapy
I’ve been listening to this with not as much mental energy as I should. I think there’s a reason why I’m circling it. Let me tell you why.
Stef talks near the end about pain-avoidance and determinism. If you spend your whole life in stimulus-response reacting to your past and doing whatever you can to avoid pain… then determinism may as well be true. Because something – your past – really IS determining your actions. You really haven’t got any free will until you go down that road of going out to meet your pain, working through it, and processing things. Otherwise… what the hell are you? A machine. Wheels and gears to the purpose of avoiding pain.
Well, what have I been doing since June?
I don’t mean this in the way of beating myself up. Stating truth – or proving these thoughts to be true using reason and evidence – is not self-punishment. The truth cannot punish. In fact… it’s the prerequisite for healing. For dropping balm in the wounds of the past. The necessary but not sufficient first step on the road to healing is to state the truth.
So let me prove it to myself now using reason and evidence.
Starting in May, for a number of reasons which I’ve hashed out with Stef in a couple of podcasts, I completely went off the rails. There is no one cause, but a number of things contributed. Stef and I had words – or, to be frank, I lashed out at Stef from fear. He knew this. It took me months to see it. During this time I blamed Stef and thought him the problem. A couple of good things came from it, though. One of those being my entrance into therapy.
I was in therapy for almost 2 months, doing 2 sessions a week. It was painful… but at first I couldn’t feel anything. Not anything at all. My emotions were suppressed – I suppressed my emotions – so much that… it took me about 3 weeks before my therapist started hearing sadness in my voice whenever I spoke of sad topics, and another week before I was able to shed tears. But my progress was good.
The thing is… I didn’t work as hard as I could have. Good lord, that’s the understatement of the century. I went to the sessions, which I recorded. In the beginning, I listened to each session over again. This re-listening ceased after the first couple of weeks. I was pushing back – resenting, almost, going to therapy. Resenting the work, and – I think – sabotaging myself so that my resentment would be justified.
This had nothing to do with my excellent therapist. But, as I’m typing this… I see a similarity between this situation and the way I reacted to things in the past. For example, mother would try to make me clean my room, and I would put it off to the last possible second, when she would actually physically threaten me, and then do it with hatred in my heart. I would resent her and the cleaning and everything… even though I wanted to live in a clean room! I did not resent my room being clean. I resented (or so I told myself) doing it on her orders. I resented her fucking arbitrary power over me.
But my therapist had no power. He did not make me come. Nor, in fact, did Stef. He’s some bloke in Canada whom I’ve never met. He has nothing over me. He didn’t make me go to therapy. Yet it was the same situation as with cleaning my room. I wanted to go to therapy, but I resented someone “making me” – except no one actually made me.
Reaction formation. Having nothing to do with the actual therapy.
Then, at the end of July, I left New York. This just when I had settled into a trusting relationship with my therapist and was headed towards discussing the really big stuff. The stuff which partially precipitated my blow-up at Stef. The stuff…. that even though I’ve got a much healthier perspective on now than I did even in June… that I still don’t want to talk about. That is just so goddamn painful that I’ve walled it off even from myself. The stuff that is almost my entire reason for going to therapy – in order to break down that wall.
I ran off, half-heedless, through Europe. Though I’d had plans to go abroad long-term since age 17… why did I choose to do it right then? Machinalement – mechanically, as the French would say – I ran away from pain. Not consciously, but unconsciously. And look what a success that turned out to be. It caused a (totally deserved… god, how totally deserved) break with one of my friends – with the person whose good opinion, second only to Stef’s, I desire most. And much else of harm besides.
That’s not all. That’s not the half of it, but here’s a beginning.
All my life, really, I’ve been running from pain. This was understandable when I was a child (and oh, my dear MEs, thank you for helping me to flee like fucking blazes from that pain) because I simply could not have handled it and lived. It is impossible to come to the conclusion that your family is toxic, corrupt, evil, and other adjectives as well while you’re a child. But NOW, what served as a safety valve and protection in the past – i.e. running the hell away from pain – is actually serving to bring more pain into my life.
Fundamentally, though I want your good opinions, my friends… the only person whose good opinion I need is myself. And, to be honest, I can’t respect myself or sanction myself while I say one thing (“O, I am for truth and reason and evidence and processing things and therapy and being virtuous”) while doing another (staying the high holy hell out of the therapist’s office).
Again, not self-attack, but the truth. No bitterness and no recriminations.
My goal is to be well. My goal is to be virtuous. My goal is to be the kind of woman with whom all virtuous people want to have a relationship – of whatever sort. My goal is to attract a virtuous mate. My goal is to not pass on the horrors I’ve endured to my children, if any. My goal is to be a self-actualized human being, instead of a set of wheels and gears for the avoidance of pain.
My goal is to be well. And if that is really my goal – if I really mean that – then my actions have to be measured against that goal. And talking doesn’t help me to reach that goal. Posting on this blog or on the boards can inch me closer… but the only thing that’s going to really get me going is therapy.
I’m feeling sad, now. Low. I’ve lost a lot of time. I’ve done a lot to lower your opinion of me. These things can be made up or repaired in time… but every second I delay and every second I windbag on the subject instead of picking up the fucking sword and marching into battle, the more time it’s going to take me to get back to where I left off 6 months ago.
But if it’s not now… when?
So I wanted to talk about something that I discussed with my therapist today. I hope that this might be of some use to other people.
As you all know I’ve been accepted on a language teacher training program in London. The program starts on August 4, and so I have approximately two weeks to move overseas. While I’m incredibly excited about the transition, my new life, the prospect of travel… I find that I haven’t been preparing for the trip. Or, no. I have been making preparations, but the only preparations that I’ve been making are ones that don’t require my getting out of my chair. So I brought this to my therapist, hoping to find an answer as to why I haven’t been preparing and why I’ve been procrastinating as much as I have.
One of the things that came out almost immediately was a story that I have already posted on the on the board about an experience that I had when I was 12. Or, I should say, I talked about this with Stef on the Sunday show about two weeks ago. To make a long story short, I was all set to go on a mountaineering trip when I was 12. I was extremely excited about the trip, and did all the research I could, but I was unwilling to make the physical preparations. Mother later used this as an excuse to cancel my trip.
I can see the obvious parallels between the situations, as mother canceled my mountaineering trip two weeks before I was due to leave. I am now two weeks before I’m due to leave for London. This, however, is not necessarily the parallel. What the therapist said to me, and I quite agree with him, was that I seemed (and seem) to be waiting for someone to give me outside motivation, whether positive or negative. I did this with Stef on the Sunday call and show, in a much less egregious way.
I keep waiting for someone to burst into my bedroom and tell me that I’m not going to go to London. I keep waiting for someone to e-mail me and tell me that my acceptance on the course was a mistake and that I won’t be going after all. I keep waiting for someone to come into my bedroom and clean it and set up all of my stuff to pack and to finance the expedition. Or… that’s what I’ve been acting like. I’ve been acting as though someone is going to come along and take all of this out of my hands, and make the preparations for me.
That is, I keep waiting for someone to take care of me. I keep waiting for someone to come to me, as one would do with a child, and to aid me. I keep waiting for someone to take me by the hand and walk me through the scary bits of moving overseas. I want this. I want someone to help me. I want to help that I didn’t get when I actually was a child. I want someone to have walked me through the scary bits then.
I’m reading, on and off, a book by Nathaniel Branden. It’s called “The Art of Living Consciously.” In it he repeats a much-used anecdote of his. This anecdote, which I’m sure you’ve heard already, consists of his telling a patient in session that there is no one coming. That there is no one on a white horse who is going to come into her life and sweep away all of the ills and make things magically better. There is no one coming. But yet, I have been waiting for someone to come.
Though of course I appreciate the numerous friends that I’ve made here, and though I appreciate the lucidity of Stef’s arguments, and though I’m in greater debt than I can fathom for all of the advice and care that he’s given me, if the truth be known, I’ve had to do the heavy lifting in my own life. Nor is this something that is peculiar to me. This is true for everyone in the FDR community. It is true of anyone who is ever changed their life or rethought their principles based on something that they’ve heard or read – or changed based on reason and evidence. It is they who take the arguments and apply them in their own lives. No one can apply reason for them.
So there’s no one coming from the outside. But what if someone comes from the inside? What if instead of sitting waiting for someone to come and take charge of my preparations, or indeed of my life… Well, what if I come? What if I am there for myself in the way that no one was there for me as a child? What if I take my life in hand, and what if I am kind and gentle with myself, but still firm and still fierce about protecting the things that bring me joy or that will bring me joy, in the ways that no one was when I needed it the most?
So Stef and my therapist have come specifically to tell me that no one is coming. This is not a bad thing. Because they’ve also come to tell me that I should come for myself.
So tonight what I started doing is cleaning my room. I booked a plane ticket to London. I listed some of my stuff on Ebay. I’ve been making piles of things to sell, things to give away, and things to take. I’ve written this post. And it feels good. The only times that I felt tension tonight are times when I haven’t been on task. When I haven’t been working towards my own happiness. When I haven’t been working towards my own goals.
So I’m posting this both to see if my dear friends have any advice or questions for me, or if you have any more insights, or to see if this helps if any of you who are struggling with procrastination. I’m not saying that this is the magic bullet, because certainly I haven’t spent all of tonight doing nothing but working towards my goals, but I have gotten more done tonight than I have in the past week. I definitely needed a kick in the pants… and I have a feeling like another thing or 3 is going to come down the pipe and knock me for a loop, but… cross that bridge as it appears, eh?
Thank you all, so incredibly much, for being there for me.
Had a therapy appointment this morning at 8:45. I showed up at the office at 9:08, after a series of train delays and getting slightly lost in the West Village. (Fortunately he didn’t have a client after me, so I stayed until 10:15.)
It was wonderful.
So I sat down with him, and I didn’t feel any tension. He asked me a few general questions to prompt discussion, and I gave an outline of my story. Throughout, he was enormously empathetic, understanding – and seemed to appreciate the thoughts and insights I’d already come to. Afterwards, he expressed admiration at – given my experiences – I’m as sane as I am. He asked me throughout how I was feeling, and seemed to understand that a lot of times I have to work to be able to feel anything. This, he said, we could work on. He was curious about my perceptions of him – and I found it a good sign that after some of the initial skittishness had worn off, I felt no (or – let’s be real – very little) apprehension about how he was perceiving me, and no pressing need to manage his experience of me. I told him this, and we spoke about it for a bit.
So, I will be going to see him twice a week for the foreseeable future. He reduced his normal rates for me ($190 a session seems to be the going rate in Manhattan – but I won’t be paying that) and I was grateful for it. His office space, thank goodness, is also very pleasant and relaxing – and despite the statue of Ganesh in his office, he is in fact about a 60-year-old Jewish fellow. (But he made no comment on the fact that I’m an atheist when it came up, and he likewise understood perfectly well why I’ve deFOOed – both of which made me feel happy and at ease.)
I left his office feeling quite elated indeed. I’d asked him for a homework assignment, which he gave me. Can’t wait to go back. :)
Then I went to a job interview. Louis, the fellow I interviewed with, reminded me of my old boss Bob. This is a Good Thing. The interview was quick and workmanlike, and mostly consisted of his asking me if I could do X, Y, and Z – and he gave me a server room tour. Said I’d be hearing from him soon, and he can’t make me an offer just at this very second, but expect to hear from him or his proxy early next week with an offer.
Now mind you, the job is only 1 day a week to start. But the hourly rate is pretty good, and I’ll still be doing some consulting work for Christian, so I should be able to pay for therapy at least. Yay.
So now… it’s taken me 2 hours to type this far. Am at the Department. It’s Commencement Day, so all of the academics are swanning around in large baby blue robes with hoods and lappets of various colored velvets and satins. The school song was, in fact, sung. And now there is a large party for the graduates. It’s nice to see the students who have been very nice to me this semester become Dr. Post, Dr. Bettendorf, and Dr. Hodge. They’ve each got good positions in academia now – though Drs Post and Bettendorf are returning to their home countries. Writing that sentence makes me sad. Because it’s denying two things. First off is that I am… I can’t call it jealous. But there’s a twinge there of… I’m not sure. Not jealousy. Not even regret, really. Something I can’t figure out.
Dinner with Karl soon. Am stuffed – couldn’t eat another bite. But I haven’t seen him in a while, so I’ll just go have a drink (non-alcoholic) and talk with him.
Me: “My mother beat me.”
Her: “Excessively, or just as punishment?”
Me: [my memory of mother and her boyfriend and me on the beach]
Her: “Hm, that’s interesting. Well you know sometimes children are told stories so often that they become memory, right? But it doesn’t actually memory whether the memory was real or not – just that you remember. So what do you think the significance of that memory is?”
Me: [story of deFOO convo] “…and so I thought to myself… ‘She beat me, she starved me, she neglected me, she didn’t give a good goddamn when I got involved with a pedophile… and she hasn’t gone to therapy or done anything to change a bit.’ So I haven’t seen her since.”
Her: “So, do you think that you want to change to the point where you can have a relationship with her?”
I was extremely tense during the entire convo. And after she asked if mother had beaten me “excessively” I… started deploying defenses. Minimizing things, laughing about things. She didn’t notice – or if she did, she didn’t call me on them. After I’d told her there were my defenses. I mean… just no empathy there from her.
So they were both modelling my defenses. And… I’m not going to type too much more about this without ruminating on the convo I had with J, in which I realized that my defenses were STILL high after coming home from speaking with this woman. Maybe more tomorrow. But by the end of the convo with J I was actually feeling incredulity and… hm, not contempt. Something else.
More tomorrow. It’s actually going to be interesting to pick it apart. I recorded the session, so will be able to go back and analyze it.
BUT – I am not discouraged! GM gave me a great site which has a directory of therapists. I shall be calling more places forthwith.
I’m a little tense about going to the therapy appointment I made tonight. There are a couple of reasons for that – and I think I shall cancel. Here’s what happened:
I called place #1 on my list at 9am, as soon as they opened, and was told that I could come for an intake screening appointment as early as 11am. So I showed up at 10:50, and was kept in the waiting room till 11:10, at which time the doctor finally showed up at the office. I sit down with this fellow, the director of the practice. He asks me what brings me there. (Interesting that I switched to present tense!)
So I sat down with this guy (WOW – like neck tension through the roof as I’m writing this). He asked me what brought me there. I say that (there’s the present tense again) I’d been thinking about going to therapy for a long time, but what finally precipitated it was a conversation that I had with a philosopher friend of mine. That we talked about something really horrible that happened in my childhood, and by the end of the convo I was 10,000,000 miles away – after having displayed every defense mechanism known to god or man. He nods.
We continue seemingly at random (though I’m trying to structure this around mother) – actually, not true. I forgot the order. I mentioned that the conversation was about a pedophile (yes, folks, you heard it here first. I’ve given Stef permission to release the convo – so you’ll hear it all soon enough). Ok, says he, how did you get involved with this fellow. So I tell a pared-down version of the story. As I tell it, he’s closing his eyes and nodding. At the end of the story he asks me how this relates to… something or other. And I tell him mother knew all this. He asked me how. I said that I told her, right? He asks me how she reacted. I said, when I told her (and I obviously told her to get her to stop me from being exploited by this asshole) she found it funny. He looked shocked. I modified. Part contempt, part incredulity, and part laughter on her part, said I. Which is closer to the truth. The only response she gave me was “What do you two find to talk about?” says I, not “Oh my god, that’s awful!” or “How did you meet this rat bastard? I’ll kill him!” or “You are NEVER seeing him again” – but… just contempt.
He looks at me. Says “So your mother… she must have been practicing this response. Thinking ’so… what is the one response I could give to my daughter that will cause her the most pain?’ and… my god she was skilled at that, wasn’t she.”
My response: “Well, she learned from the best.”
So we continue in that vein and I mention a couple of things about grandmother and THEN (though we’d so far been talking – or… no. I’d been defensive and trying to present the story in a neutral tone, and he had been snorting, eyes-closed, when I described mother’s actions – and then he had laughed with me when I mentioned feelings of loneliness) he did something that… um… well, you’ll see.
I rounded those stories off with “So… as you can see… there wasn’t… exactly… um… or, there was a distinct lack of caring on their part.”
And he chuckles.
And he says “Well, that’s the understatement of the century. Wouldn’t you say instead that there was an overt attempt to hurt you?”
Which sentiment I agree with entirely, except he was laughing as he said it.
Thought ran through my head: “I’m fucked up enough as it is, mate. Don’t reinforce the defenses.”
So, it fell out that he’d assign a therapist to me and have her call me. So this afternoon she did. A woman, chewing gum, with a thick Queens accent. She sounded bored. She had a cancellation tonight, she said, and could I come at 7, or is that too soon. So I said yes, I’d go at 7.
I mean, all I have to go on is like 5 seconds of conversation with this woman, and 20 minutes in the office with the director of the practice. I think that my tension is saying NO! RUN THE FUCK AWAY! but… am I just making an excuse here? I mean, this practice is by no means the only one on my list. In fact, I’ve left a msg at another practice and will be calling them back shortly. If they can schedule an appointment for this week, I think I’m going to cancel the one for tonight with Associate of Laughing Boy. What do y’all think?
[meta-note: I'm not going to give a blow-by-blow of my therapy sessions in future. I can't think of something that would be less helpful. I just wanted your opinion on this guy (thought in my head: "this ass") before I go back to see his associate... or not.]
So… Columbia is one of the 3 top schools in the world for behavioral psychology research, so it stands to reason that they’d offer low-cost therapy, right? Well… yes! They have this program where patients sign up for ongoing therapy sessions with advanced grad students (supervised by an instructor, mind you) and the fees are really reasonable – a $5 to $45 sliding scale. Hey, I could afford that now!
I’m not so sure about the whole therapy-with-a-grad-student thing… but since the initial consultation is only $40, I might as well apply and see if they take me. I’ll be in the area tomorrow and can drop my application off in-person and hopefully schedule an appointment right there. It’s worth a shot.
$150 a session I can’t swing. $40, I can.
So, there it is! Yours truly might be finally, finally headed for therapy. Yay!
