SELF-THERAPY: WHAT I DO

 

So, this is Week 2 of therapizing myself.  I probably should just try to get an appointment with my real therapist, but I haven't seen her in 2 1/2 years and I don't feel that desperate. Besides, by the time I begged and cried and assumed my best "I'm a mess" voice to get the attention of the gal in the cubicle who schedules appointments, the first possible opening would still likely be 6 weeks out. I know a lot about therapy, psychology, personal growth and I have a GREAT stranger therapist I've never met, but who I follow by reading his books, listening to his podcast, and signing into his weekly meditation series.  I can do this.

It's snowboard season at my house.  Hub is gone a lot, "on tour".  He has a season pass this year that allows him access to like seven different resorts, and he's periodically traveling to most of them for multiple day stays. Last year he was away about 4 weeks, cumulatively, during snow season; almost as long this year.  Anyway, with him gone, I'm taking my own alone time to fix myself.

I've just come out of about a month-long depression.  I'm pissed about that.  I have not had serious depression in about, well,  2-1/2 years (per therapist reference above).  But the monster grabbed me after a couple of  unrelated to each other "trigger events" right around the holidays (not holiday related) and it sucked.  I was in a full-on self-loathing downward spiral that finally culminated in a week in mid-January with me declaring a "solo silent retreat" to hunker down alone, which I wrote about in a previous post (Connection Addict).  In the end, I felt rested and renewed and ready to move into Phase II: changing some ways of being that no longer serve me.

So this week, starting today, I'm on a quest to put to rest some old stories that are keeping me stuck.  You know what they say about modern day stress -- that our bodies respond to emotional threats in just the same way we responded to Saber Tooth Tiger threats back in the distant day.  We are hardwired for survival, constantly scanning for danger.  Often there really is no tiger, and it's all in our worrying minds. But sometimes, when you are just peacefully grazing on the savannah, a tiger does come sneaking out of the jungle and might even take a swipe at you, draw a little blood.  Yeah, so that happened about 3-1/2 years ago. 

Since then I've been scanning for danger and threat almost constantly, doing all I can think of to do to learn the tiger's ways to avoid any sneak attacks, to mitigate any surprises, to stay safe.  It's exhausting.  And unnecessary.  The origin event is now in the ever-increasingly distant past. The wound is no longer raw; even the scar is fading.  But, well, as a highly sensitive person (HSP, yes, it's a real thing) and a person for whom safety is Job One, the whole tiger thing is a scary "what if ?"every time I see something that even resembles a tiger.  But it's time....truly time to let go and get on with admitting these tiger attacks are rare and there is no reason to stay in fight or flight mode.

So my wonderful "he doesn't know me but I know him" therapist, Rick Hansen, PhD, has written a book called "Resilient: How to Grow an Unshakable Core of Calm, Strength, and Happiness" and  this week I am working my way through it. He's teaching me to rewire my brain from negative thoughts to positive ones -- from fear to strength and resilience.  It's not about "the power of positive thinking" where one denies what is real.  

It is about mindfully "letting be" -- fully accepting what is real and observing the attendant emotions dispassionately.  I wrote pages of sentences beginning with "this is real and how I feel..." Then moving into a time of "letting go" -- doing what must be done to express and purge the negative and troubling thoughts and emotions. This may involve talking to someone,  but also may mean screaming, yelling, crying, smashing things...safely of course.  Cathartic.  Finally there is "letting in" -- realizing that even when negative experiences come to us there are also positive ones we just gloss over and barely notice due to our brain's "negativity bias" of focusing instead on the threatening event (evolutionarily useful to keep us scanning for danger in order to survive, but not so great for long-term well being).  Yesterday I did "let be"  and "let go".  Today I did "let in".  All of this is in service to our most basic needs:  for safety, satisfaction, and connection.  I'll be focusing on those, and more, in coming days.

But today I went for a walk.  On the waterfront. In the sunshine. I focused as completely as I could on the experience -- the blue sky, the warm sunshine, the tide receding, the cool breeze, the gulls calling overhead, the boats sailing on the bay, the people and their dogs on the path with me, the construction work on new restaurants, the buds forming on spring azaleas. I took it all in, using my senses to really ground in the experience, stopping to gaze and breathe. I acknowledged that yes, life is hard, it can hurt.  And it's also beautiful. The tiger stood in the shadows as the sunshine flooded the clearing. The sunshine persisted long after the tiger slunk away.  

I can't trust that he won't return, but I can trust, with time and practice, that I can teach my mind to rest in the good until, if, and when... secure in the knowledge that I've stored the energy it will take to fight back if I need to.  But it's also likely I won't.  I'm robbing myself of joy while remaining on high alert for a battle I may have already waged.

Does any of this make sense? This is me. This is what I do. I am proud of my ability to face hard things, to fall apart and put myself back together again, to seek and find resources and wisdom teachings, to keep going with hope and persistence, to learn and to grow. This is me. This is what I do.

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

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...©