COMPASSION IS SWEET

It is June 21st, and I know I haven't posted anything to the blog this month.  I seem to find myself in a time warp where the days speed by and I can barely recall what I did on any given day, but it is past nonetheless and time marches on, etc etc.  Plus, I'm tired and a little depressed, but not too depressed, so that's good.  But the tired thing is getting old.  I just feel like I could nap all the time, but there is no time for that, so I push on and whine about it like I'm doing now.  I'll stop.  Moving on....

Let's sit on the therapist's couch, shall we?  A few months ago I mentioned in the blog that I was having a championship wrestling match with my old foes, Anxiety and Depression.   It got so bad that I didn't really know if I'd get out alive.  (Oh, don't panic, I knew I'd never really do the bad thing with the new season of Outlander about to debut).  But it was really awful, such that for the first time in 20 years I went back into therapy, even though I have a ton of smart, intuitive friends to listen to me and a good deal of my own insight after a couple of decades of personal growth work of a fairly significant nature.  Turns out sometimes ya gotta call in the pros anyway.

I spent a couple weeks researching the type of therapy I wanted and then finding a therapist I thought would work.  I've done the bad therapist/bad fit dance before and I don't feel I have any time to waste at this stage in my life.  I found someone and so far I love my gal, "Stevie". (Not her real name, obviously, but because she dresses like Stevie Nicks, I'm going with that here.)  I'm terrible with ages -- she's early 40's maybe, wears long flowing skirts, lacy shirts, vests, little fingerless gloves, silver bangles, headbands holding back her long wavy brown hair, dangly earrings.  She is me when I was in my 20's.   I just love looking at her.  She's funny and compassionate and insightful and calls me on my bullshit.  What's not to love?

Right away she got that I already know a lot of stuff.  I thought I'd be in her DBT (dialectical behavioral therapy) group along with my individual therapy with her.  She said I don't need the group -- I already know about the things they work on...Identifying and regulating emotions, curbing impulsive behaviors, trying not to commit suicide, or act out in a totally antisocial, crazy-ass way. (This is technical psychotherapy talk which I use because I am advanced.)  Individual therapy with her is the plan.

At the first session she acknowledged my storehouse of groovy psychological tools and agreed with me that perhaps I should stop bludgeoning myself with them.  She ordered me to shut the toolbox, lock it tight, and stop rummaging around in there searching for yet another tool to "fix" me.  (Am I acting out of shadow? Should I do a Shadow-work session? Is this PTSD?  Should I do a Gestalt session with an empty chair?  Or maybe some voice dialog?  How about primal scream therapy? Or family constellation therapy?)  She gave me one tool, the only tool I'm allowed to use -- Mindfulness.  Just be mindful, aware, in the present moment.  It's the way out.  It's not easy.  It's a tricky tool to learn to use, which is why it is the only one I can work with right now.

Next session, sort of more of the same...plus she refuted my claim that my depression "comes out of nowhere".  No, actually, it doesn't.  There is always a trigger.  I'm just not paying attention, or I ignore the early warning signs, or I debate, deny, and denigrate myself until there is no turning back and I absolutely have no choice but to take to the sofa and cry for a week or a month or three.  Mindfulness again.  Pay attention.  I will see it coming and can take action to thwart it.  Like an Aikido master, I can turn the aggressor away with my energy flow.  Or something like that. Or, even better, according to Stevie would be to just accept that I'm feeling depressed.  Look for insight and meaning there; know it will pass.

Next couple of sessions, she hit me with the admonition that I must practice radical self-acceptance.  What????  If I could accept myself I wouldn't be sitting on her cute little teal loveseat grabbing tissue after tissue from the flowered box on the end table as I cry my way through another "I'm a shitty person" hour.  (I told her I plan to cry every session because I'm paying her good money to sit and watch me do it.  She agreed.)

Radical self-acceptance means I have to shut The Judge up.  Stevie has narrowed my issues down to the fact that I'm constantly judging myself and saying mean things to me.  I told her I have a self-deprecating, ironic sense of humor.  She said she knows that and I'm funny, but that's different.  Right now, for practice sake, I have to silence the wise-cracking girl and say nice things to myself all the time.  I have to reframe.  I have to find compassion for the me that deserves to be accepted unconditionally.  I have to keep a 'compassion journal' and write down all the times I want to judge myself and what I did instead to show myself some compassion.   Yesterday, when I started to criticize myself for my messy house,  I had vanilla ice cream with raspberry sauce for breakfast instead.  I'm not sure that's what she had in mind, but it's a start.

At least, that's the view from here...©