How I Lose My Self (Post #403)

My self is an onion. Concise layering but unevenly designed. Also stings the eyes when opened up. Sweet, sour, spicy, crunchy when bitten into (I am sure there are other flavors but this is what comes to mind). A confused pallet (or is it spelled palette?) but a continual desire to go back for more. My downfall or my uplift? Maybe my self is both. (What they hell am I talking about here?) (I have really gotten away from my point.) (Not a good way to start.)

Carl Jung asked Sigmund Freud, “What is the self anyways?” Freud did not supply Jung with an answer that pleased him so Jung went off on his own.

My self (I say this as if I own it) is complicated. It has always been complicated and I presume that until I find a way to chase it out or consistently distract it, it will always present me with complication.

It’s a continually boiling pot that rarely simmers down (my self I mean). Always some kind of judgement, craving, criticism or dissatisfaction boiling up (I realize that by using the boiling pot analogy I am using a ready-made rather than making my own). As much as I do like my self, it is a real pain in my ass (being honest here).

Here is the most agitating thing about my self: THERE IS ALWAYS SOMETHING THAT IT SEEMS TO THINK I SHOULD BE DOING. The thing will not let me rest. I need to be writing. I need to be making art. I need to be listening to music. I need to be writing. I need to meditate. I need to create a more interesting and engaged life for myself. I need to be writing. I need to exercise. I need to watch more films. I need to call back billing agents. I need to wash car. I need to become a happier person. I need to make my life more exciting than what it is. I need to be writing. On and on ad infinitum. (Is that how you spell that?) Ceaseless and never ending. Rarely will my self allow me to sit in my lawn chair and simply enjoy being showered by sun. (The sun has now been obscured by clouds.)

Fortunately, I have found a way to trick, manipulate and silence my self into submission. (I am a pleasant and non-violent person and realize this might make me sound sadomasochistic. I’m not.)

Inside a book. This is where I make my escape and hide. Not from the world but from my self. (Ok, maybe a bit from the world.)

A Freudian psychoanalyst once told me that this is the behavior I have developed in reaction to my unruly self. She called it escapeeism (not escapism). It is a strategy to lose. (I never understand what she meant by this. Did she mean a strategy to lose in life or a strategy to lose my self? Was this meant positively or negatively? This is now one of the great mysteries in my life.)

However, this strategy of hiding from my self in a book (being absorbed in books) is not reliable or sustainable. The moment I put the book down my self comes back with such vehemence and indignation that I am beyond being able to control it. It is obviously pissed for being tricked and suppressed. You son of a bitch. Your life is shit. There is so much that you should be doing and have not done. You are going to fail in life. It is all going to fall apart. You will get sick if you do not get up. People are mad at you. If you do not stay on top of things everything will fall apart. I pick the book back up. Gradually, as I read, I reach a point where my self is no longer there. This is the only strategy I have found that consistently works.

I realize that no one, not even my self, likes being silenced.

There always comes a point where I must put the book back down (even though I know I should not).

What are you doing with your life? You’re avoiding everything by losing yourself in a book. This is the highly educated way that you put everything off. All in the name of consuming culture. But you no longer create culture! You need to be writing and making art with severe dedication if you really want to turn your life into what you want it to be. But you can’t do this. You won’t do this. Instead you keep losing yourself in a book and telling yourself it is ok. This is good enough. You think you can really pacify me with such a lie? I know what you are doing. You are sacrificing your full potential in life just to get away from me! Loser! (Sometimes I can not help but wonder if my self is just my father immortalized in my head.)

My self goes on and on (and on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on,on ,on, on, on, on, on and on). My self is relentless. Reading is self inoculation.

“First and foremost, I think of myself as a reader,” is what Borges said. If I said this it would be very similar but slightly different (I realize that even if something is slightly different it changes everything). I would say, “First and foremost, I think of myself as a reader by necessity!”

I really can’t think of anything I find more pleasurable and rewarding than losing my self in a book. Not even eating my favorite food or seeing an attractive woman nude is better. What greater pleasure is there than when the sting of the onion has gone?

Time to go make myself (or my self?) a radish and humus sandwich. When it comes to food I never know who I am feeding. Am I feeding myself (body) or my self (head)?

What a wonderful space, to live and read in this place, when my self is gone. (I did not write this. Some forgotten poet whom I have unfortunately forgotten did.)

The Anxious Therapist

In a world where a nine-year-old girl accidentally shoots her instructor in the head with an uzi, one human being publicly beheads another and where the “terror” alert in the UK has been raised to severe- I suppose the problem of the anxious therapist is not such an important cultural issue. But the anxious therapist is a kind of conundrum that is a stark commentary upon the times in which we are living.

The psychotherapist is often perceived by the general public as being a professional person who is the pillar of mental health, wisdom and neutrality. A kind of modern-day Socrates. The therapist plays into this persona because it is a luxury (and for some a curse) that their profession affords them. The position they hold comes with a kind of enlightened status, even though most of us know deep down this is rarely ever the case. The therapist is symbolic of a wide-spread misrepresentation that puts into question all of  our perceptual abilities. If we perceive the therapist as someone or something they are not, what does that say about the state of our own minds? After all if we really were able to be accurate in our perception of the therapist, we may no longer elect to pay them for their time. And then who would objectively help us through the struggles that haunt our souls?

The anxious therapist is a threat to the entire sanctity and effectiveness of the healing potential of psychotherapy. I am not telling you anything that the anxious therapist does not already know deep within themselves. They represent everything which is false about the claims that they make. At least this is what we may think at first glance, but as we go deeper into the conundrum of the anxious therapist maybe we will find the opposite to be true.

During a session in the anxious therapist’s office, the client and the anxious therapist sit across from each other. The anxious therapist sits in a reclining chair and the client on a couch or in a chair. As the client talks to the anxious therapist about whatever issue they are dealing with, the anxious therapist is struggling to pay attention. To the client, the anxious therapist appears to be deeply listening, but what appears to be true to the client (even though the client may suspect that something is not quite right) is far from the truth.

The truth is that the anxious therapist is trapped in her chair. Her body is doing incredibly strange things to her, which causes her to be fearing that life could slip away from her at any moment. As the client talks, the therapist is stuck in a hypervigilant and panicked negative thought process. She is thinking about ways that she can excuse herself from the room without losing the client and all her credibility. She is using every fiber of her being to remain composed, despite the ominous feeling that within her body their is something terribly wrong and at any second she is going to lose all control. Without moving, the anxious therapist is enduring a kind of arduous inner work out, which causes her palms to sweat, staining her pants with a salty liquid in the areas where she plants her hands. In this very moment, the anxious therapist is working harder than 99% of human beings on earth to not only remain attentive but to also avoid a complete freak out. Even though there is an unlocked door and the anxious therapist is not confined to her chair, the client sitting just across from her causes her to feel painfully stuck.

The phenomena of the anxious therapist is hardly an isolated one. The anxious therapist has been around for as long as the practice of psychotherapy has. Sigmund Freud is the most well-known anxious therapist. He wrote a lot about the various terrors that he struggled with. Freud would often break out into fits of sweating during his psychotherapy sessions, due to the onset of the sudden fear of dying that would come upon him in his sessions. Freud used a plethora of drugs to try to control his anxiety, but besides having his dog besides him during psychotherapy sessions, was not able to find much relief. This resulted in Freud’s life long struggle with depression.

In the field of psychotherapy, a few researchers believe that the phenomena of the anxious therapist is much more wide-spread than is documented. It is only natural that most therapists would not come forward about their struggles with anxiety during sessions with clients. It is embarrassing to admit that during a session with a client the anxious therapist is often struggling with mental health issues much more than her client is. With all the education and training that the anxious therapist has had to go through in order to get to where they are at, publicly admitting their struggle with anxiety threatens to diminish the credibility that keeps them in practice. As a result, most anxious therapists struggle silently through a kind of inner hell from which they see no chance of rescue on the horizon. It is a miserable and unpredictable fate that they have to endure.

But is the anxious therapist really a discredit to the field of psychotherapy? Is the anxious therapist really presenting to his clients as a kind of fraud? Or is the anxious therapist a living example of how a person can struggle through the darkest and most frightening experiences, but still remain calm and composed (for the most part)? After all, in life shit happens and at some point all of us will find ourselves faced with absolute terror. Maybe the anxious therapist is like a shaman because they are silently and energetically imparting the most valuable lesson that a client can learn from psychotherapy: the ability to remain calm and composed in the face of absolute fear.

Personally, as a therapist myself, I believe that the anxious therapist is a kind of hero. In a situation where most people would run to an emergency room or doctor and need to take a Valium or something stronger in order to feel some sense of safety and relief, the anxious therapist silently wrestles with immense fear and physical discomfort while remaining calm enough to continue to engage with her clients without giving much notice (other than the sweat spots on his pants) that something is terribly wrong. This is a skill or ability that even some of the most disciplined meditators struggle to posses.

Most of us are way behind on the current scientific and psychological research into the neurological explanations for anxiety. The scientifically validated explanation for the development of anxiety disorder is that it goes back to the individual’s parents (or primary care-givers) and the psychological and emotional environment that their parents raised them in. It is well documented that a person is not created with a mental illness (mental illness is not genetically pre-determined). Mental illness is created by the environment that the child grows up in (environment begins to have its effect in the fetal stage of development). From a nuerobiological perspective the root of the crippling anxiety that shows up in the anxious therapist’s life can be directly traced back to how she was parented, but knowing this does not make the anxious therapist’s struggle with anxiety during her sessions (and outside his sessions) any easier. All the anxious therapist can do is take full responsibility for her current situation and practice various techniques that can help her navigate her way through the terrifyingly uncomfortable terrain of anxiety. You can not change the roots of a tree, but you can give a tree water, which will hopefully help its leaves to hang on.

It is well documented that Freud’s anxiety often drove him to the edge of isolation and despair. The isolation and despair that he experienced (which he described as a “disappearance of hope”) caused him to often contemplate suicide as a solution. After the potentially life threatening bout of anxiety, which always leaves the anxious therapist thoroughly exhausted, depleted and depressed for days, the anxious therapist finds herself feeling what some could describe as suicidal. The anxious therapist does not necessarily think about ways to kill herself, but feels hopeless up against the anxiety which she knows will soon reappear. Once the anxiety has run its course, the anxious therapist knows that it is only a matter of time before she has to go through it all over again. She knows this because it has been this way for her entire life.

In the end, the most difficult hurdle for the anxious therapist to get beyond, is to accept that no matter how hard they work on themselves, they are not the model of mental health that their clients and profession raises them up to be. The anxious therapist is surviving with a mental illness, that effects their life just as much (if not more) as whatever issues their clients are struggling through. In a profession that demands that the anxious therapist not publicly admit their personal struggles for fear of losing credibility and the luxury of appearing better off than they really are, the fate of the anxious therapist is to feel terribly alone. They live with an inner contradiction that can not be fully expressed in the work they do in the world. If it is expressed, chances are they will lose a lot of the luxuries their profession affords. What pains the anxious therapist most, is that as much as they are able to help their clients to get well, they seem unable to help themselves. Every time the terrifying anxiety returns during a therapy session, they are reminded of just how ill they still are.

For the anxious therapist there is no greater relief in the world than when they look up at the clock and notice that it is time for the session to end. They have made it through the session without freaking or passing out. What a great relief to have not been exposed! But like all temporary rewards, the price to pay for this feeling of great relief is the terrifying and imprisoning feelings that rise back up when the anxious therapist realizes that her next client is sitting in the waiting room. For fifty minutes she must endure all over again the exhausting fight to remain alive.

 

 

 

Talk Therapy For Sale, Part 1

“Would you like to save the world from the degradation and destruction it seems destined for? Then step away from shallow mass movements and quietly go to work on your own self-awareness. If you want to awaken all of humanity, then awaken all of yourself. If you want to eliminate the suffering in the world, then eliminate all that is dark and negative in yourself. Truly, the greatest gift you have to give is that of your own self-transformation.”

— Lao Tzu

I have always believed that it is through helping others that I can transform myself. I suppose this is why I decided to set up a therapy practice in my driveway. If the world is going to be saved this is one way to do it. I set out two comfortable chairs facing each other. I bought them at a thrift store for under ten bucks a piece. One is yellow, the other brown and they have a strange, therapeutic musty smell coming from them. I imagine that in the seventies they must of been nice. In front of the chairs I put a small table with an empty coffee can and a sign that reads, “Talk Therapy by Donation.” I would be lying if I did not admit to a bit of greed- it was my hope that the coffee can would be filled with one, five and ten dollar bills by the end of the week.

I have been studying to be a psychotherapist for the past year. Currently I am in my second year of graduate school. I also work twenty hours a week at a trauma center. The work is unpaid but I am told that this is the nature of the training process- I am learning how to be a therapist in return for my time. I can not say that I am happy about this situation since learning does not pay the rent and man can not live off of training alone, but it seems that I have no choice. I have to bite the bullet and serve my time. I feel honored to work with people who are living through intense trauma but the irony is that it is traumatic for me to work and not get paid. So I have no choice but to find other ways to make a living and with the economic recession being how it is- this is not easy. I figure I have a skill, I am good at doing talk therapy. I have read the books, gone through years of therapy myself and despite what the state says about licensing regulations- I feel that I am ready to go. Since lots of people walk past my driveway everyday, I feel like it is the perfect place to open my therapy practice.

I know that it helps the psychotherapist to be perceived as intelligent and wise if they have self-help or psychology books lying around. So I brought out a dozen or so of my psychology textbooks and a few books written by Jung and Freud and stacked them on the table beside my chair. I figured that this would give me an air of legitamcy. When a passer by saw the name Freud or Jung (depending on their sexual and metaphysical affiliation) they may feel more comfortable to sit with me. Also the books on family therapy, multicultural psychotherapy and Gestalt therapy could not hurt. I put a small clock on my table as well and watched the minutes tick towards afternoon as I sat in my chair, cross legged and waited for someone to come and sit down. I refused to beg- I would just be patient and wait.

At around 1:15 one person did come and sit down. He looked like a man ravaged by life, chain smoking and smelling like he drank too much booze the previous night. At that point I did not care- I was happy to get someone. I told him that the sessions were twenty five minutes long and my fee was by donation. He shook his head and seemed to understand the deal. “You mind if I smoke?” he asked. I did not mind. “So what can I do for you today?” I inquired. He just sat there and smoked his cigarette. “It’s nice out here man,” he said looking around. His voice sounded as if he spent one too many years with a cigarette in his mouth. I watched the clock and noticed that he had already used up seven of his minutes. “Is there anything I can help you with today?” I asked again. The man looked at me from behind eyebrows that were begging for a trim. “Just needed to take a seat friend.” I decided that I would just let him sit there since I remembered learning in graduate school that silence can be just as beneficial to a client as talking. When his twenty five minutes were up I let him know that it was the end of our time. “Well thanks for letting me sit here with you. It was helpful,” the man said. I could hear a few of his bones cracking as he defied gravity by standing up. He put a dollar bill in my coffee can and walked a way.

As I was writing down my client notes (I like to keep notes on all my clients just so I can have a record of what went on) my neighbor came over and sat down. She looked a bit stressed out. “What are you doing?” she asked in a concerned tone. In the town where I live it is hard to spin a cat by its tail without hitting a psychotherapist in the head so it was no surprise to me to learn that my neighbor was a psychotherapist. “Do you realize that you can not just do therapy on your driveway? Do you realize that this is against the law?” I was stunned and disturbed at the same time. All I could think to say was, “I do not really concern myself with the law, I am more concerned with saving the world.” I know it sounds a bit idealistic but this is how I felt. “You think you are going to save the world by doing illegal therapy on your driveway? Are you kidding?” she said getting a little aggressive with me. “Look,” I said, “I appreciate your concern but the world is in trouble and the only way that it will be saved is if we look within ourselves and do what each of us needs to do to make a change. For me it’s doing talk therapy on my driveway.” My neighbor took a long, deep breath and said, “Oh my god. I think that you are the one in need of talk therapy! I am going to write to the American Psychological Association about you!!” She stomped her foot hard on the ground and I could already tell that this women had serious childhood issues that had to do with not getting what she wanted and not feeling heard. As much as I wanted to tell her to go to hell, I was in the therapist role so I said, “Thank you for sharing with me how you feel. Is there anything else that you would like to talk about?” She walked away.

I decided to keep my therapy practice open until six. I know what you are thinking, “What kind of therapy practice consists of two old chairs on a driveway?” Maybe you think I am even a little nuts. That is ok, seldom are visionaries appreciated in their own time. As I see it we are living in a changing world. There is an opportunity for each one of us to redefine who we are and how we want to live our lives. If we want we can choose to transform ourselves and no longer be confined and oppressed by the laws and authorities that have controlled our lives. We all see now that this government and corporate control/oppression has been in the name of profit for the select few and not in the majorities best interest. So my way of transforming the world and myself is to redefine how psychotherapy is practiced. If my neighbor does not like it tough. I should not have to get a license to do talk therapy when I am already good at it. I should not have to be in a florescent lit office all day when I enjoy working outside. I should not have to work for free. So having my therapy practice on my driveway sounds like a brilliant idea to me. Now I just needed to wait for someone to show up.

The Shameful Life Of Salvador Dali.

The hooker in a tree called me this morning. I asked her how she got my phone number and she told me that it was copied to her cell phone from the last time I called her. “Would you like to cum up in the tree today,” Dawn asked. Strangely I was a far distance from feeling horny since my back still ached from my previous days fall. Last night my deep sleep was interrupted by hot flashes of pain triggered by every movement of my restless body. I had planed on simply staying in bed today but when she asked me if I would just come by and keep her company, I had difficulty resisting. “I enjoyed your company the last time,”she said “and today I am needing it.” I was still trying to resist when she told me that she would be naked and promised to swing from a few branches.

The first thing that I noticed after I slowly managed to climb up to the wooden platform (the hooker’s home in the tree), was not that my back and arms were throbbing with a metallic pain that made it difficult for me to breath, but that she had shaved her pubic hair (this has always been a particular turn on of mine). The hooker was pleased to see me and sat on the side of her bed smoking a cigar. “I know it is a bad habit, but my father turned me onto the pleasures of smoking a cigar when I was young,” Dawn said holding the cigar in my direction. “Oh no, thank you,” I replied as I sat down besides her. “You know not what you are missing. There is nothing like a cigar in a redwood.” I told her about my accident yesterday (see Sitting On The Buddha’s Head) and the difficulty I was having breathing. She was flattered that despite my pain I had decided to come visit the hooker in the tree. “Would it make you happier to touch my breast,” she asked me in a maternal tone. I declined not feeling much in the mood for anything but sitting still(even though I had an erection).

We drank mint tea and watched the squirrels and birds leap from branch to branch (Dawn threw a penny at a bird!). I felt a rumbling in my stomach that spoke to me about the discomfort I was feeling. Being with a hooker without desire was like sitting in a library without a desire to read. I was confused by what I was doing there as we both silently drank our tea. “Want to see a new movement I learned the other day?” she asked with an adolescent excitement. “Sure,” I said with a hint of apathy in my tired voice. On her oval butt I noticed a tattoo of Salvador Dali (his face). I had not noticed this before and asked her if it was new. It had been there for years she told me. She hooked both her legs to a branch and hung upside down so that her long brown hair swayed in the afternoon breeze. Beneath her was at least a hundred and fifty feet of empty space. She slowly began to do a movement that caused her naked body to move backwards, slowly. So slowly in fact that it almost seemed as if she was practicing Tai Chi. Before I could register what was taking place her body was rotating quickly in circles around the branch. She looked like a windmill with tits, moving so fast that her face took on the features of a Francis Bacon painting.

I clapped at the end of her performance, for which she took a bow. “See, these are the things I learn in my loneliness,” Dawn said making her way over towards me. She asked me to kiss both of her breasts for good luck, which I did with little hesitation (her breasts smelled like cloves). She dried the sweat from her body with a green towel and lay down on her bed placing the heels of her feet on my aching legs. “That was very good,” I told her. “Are you sure that you do not want to masturbate,” Dawn asked me. When I told her that I was sure she said, “how about a slow and gentle hand job to calm your pain, or I could lick your flute with my tender lips?” she said smiling at me with a look of seduction. A small pigeon landed above the bed and sat looking down at the two of us. The hooker immediately chased it away “because they shit all over the place.” “So why do you have a tattoo of Salvador Dali on your butt?” I asked her trying to change the subject. She stood up, walked to the other side of the platform and laughed. It was at the point that I believe she resigned herself to the fact that she was going to get no money from me that day. I had no money to give.

Dawn put on tight shorts and a t-shirt with a picture of Doctor Freud’s face on it. It was obvious to me then that Dawn was well-read and cultured in a self taught kind of way. She sat back down beside me on the bed. “Because he lived a shameful life,”Dawn replied to my question. I was surprised by her response and asked her to explain why this warranted tattooing Dali’s face on her butt. “He was a deviant, he lived like one not concerned with convention, he ate black grapes from the ass holes of young girls and claimed to masturbate and orgasm into a fig twice a day.” I was still confused as to why these biographical details would inspire Dawn to put a tattoo of Dali’s face on her butt. “Are not we shameful as well?” she then asked me. “What do you mean?” I replied. “Well I spend most of my time fucking or sucking off men in my tree fort and you, you like to watch naked girls get off while you get hand jobs or play with your pecker…..and your married!!” “I do not see this as shameful,” I replied trying hard to deny my true feelings. “Well, in America, this is not normal behavior and I would say that we are both leading the shameful life of Salvador Dali.”

Surprisingly I was not bothered by this assertion. In some strange way it felt good to be compared to Salvador Dali. I felt a respite from my pain and a comfortable sense of satisfaction that I was living a lifestyle that was shared by men such as Dali. This thought seemed to make me proud of the lifestyle I was living. I was walking in the footsteps of giants, icons and some how this thought eased my pain. For years I had known that greatness required certain sacrifices. The creative genius has to go beyond the conventional, the moral- in order to gain a unique experience that they can then create from. I had always known this- but somehow the comparison to Dali set it in stone. I suddenly felt myself fill up with a lust that must be the same lust that drives all creative expression. I looked at Dawn who was staring at the sky and smoking her cigar. I asked her if she would not mind undressing, letting me play with her breasts and giving me a gracious hand job. I told her that I was feeling shameful about my request but the shame made me want it even more. Sitting up like an excited nymph she told me that it would cost me $40.00 (which she claimed to so badly need) and I asked her if I could give her an IOU.