While my mother always made it a point to stay involved in my life (to a fault), it was never because she loved me. She’s not someone who’s emotionally intelligent enough to understand what love is.

Which is why she tries to cling to me so desperately, even when I try so vehemently to avoid her. It’s the same way that some men or women only love the idea of marriage, instead of their spouses. They’re relationships based on all the wrong reasons.

Realizing this has made me wonder; did I ever actually love my girlfriends, or did I just love the idea of love?

My anxiety is now under control¹, so my therapist and I have moved onto other issues.

It’s funny that I started going to therapy for my anxiety attacks, but he keeps digging up issues I never knew that I had.

Not that any of it is as debilitating the way the anxiety attacks were, but it’s made me realize that they have affected my quality of life. All of it stems from my parents (as opposed to being teased, some kind of incident, etc.). Once again, I say that I don’t like to blame them, but the glaring fact is that I can now trace every issue back to my childhood.

The idea of a self-destructive pattern whereby we repeat the pain of our childhoods is called a lifetrap. They’re categorized differently, depending on the school of psychology one prescribes to, but my most significant ones (i.e. rated “very high”) are emotional deprivation, dependence, unrelenting standards, and punitiveness. When I first started, I also had pessimism, but this has mostly gone with my anxiety.

I’ll touch on two of them now:

Emotional Deprivation

• One of the things that sparked the realization that I didn’t have a regular childhood was when I was asked to fill out a diagnostic questionnaire. I was told to rate how strongly I felt about the statement “I have not had someone to nurture me, share him/herself with me, or care deeply about what happens to me”. I thought to myself, “That’s normal? People have that?”.
• This is why I feel alone and detached from the world. It’s not quite as clean-cut as this, as there are a bunch of other issues that factor into the issue, but it’s an overall feeling.
• Until that point, I never considered the idea that such people exist. I assume the parents are supposed to fill this role, and eventually a spouse.
• In many people with emotional deprivation, the lifetrap manifests itself in relationships where they remain emotionally distant. For me, it’s more of a difficulty communicating to my girlfriends about my needs, and then feeling disappointed when my needs aren’t met.
  • This makes me wonder how certain relationships would have worked out if I was a different person and didn’t keep breaking up with my girlfriends
  • Unfortunately, I could write a book on this.

Unrelenting Standards

• I’ve realized that I’m still being too hard on myself. This stems from the expectations put on me as a child, or simply the fact that I think being unsatisfied with stagnancy is healthy because self-improvement makes me a better person. Most likely, a bit of both.
  • Sometimes I have to compare myself to someone like Pat to give myself perspective on this issue. He’s a person who hasn’t “achieved” much when evaluated by my standards, but he’s happy and that’s what matters. It makes me question what I’m trying so hard to achieve. I think of an old Calvin and Hobbes strip, where Calvin says, “It’s hard to argue with someone who looks so happy”
  • I understand that it’s the pursuit of greatness, not greatness itself, that should make life worth living, so when I have this self-destructiveness as a result, it doesn’t quite make sense. I’m working on this. It helps me to keep a quote by Charlotte Cushman in mind: “To try to be better is to be better”.
  • A side effect is that I’m too hard on other people because I project my unrelenting standards on them as well.
  • A lot of people tell me that I wouldn’t have had so much pressure to be the best and perform well if I wasn’t an only child.

1. I don’t say solved because I don’t think one can completely eliminate anxiety [↑]

John figured out that I don’t forgive people because my memory is too good.

And it’s true. Not only do I remember experiences, but emotions. It’s like I can relive every moment I’ve been hurt down to the smallest detail¹. The pain remains strong and salient, years after the incidents have passed.

While time may heal wounds for most, it doesn’t for me. I’m generally fine with this, since I believe that it should be actions and apologies that breed forgiveness, not time.

It’s only hard when I want to forgive someone, but I can’t.

1. This works with the other extreme too; for me, being happy is just as vivid. [↑]

My therapist is on vacation now. When he gets back, I’ll start to see him on a bi-monthly instead of weekly basis. At first he suggested that we slow down only once I get a handle on my anxiety, but when I explained that the sessions were putting me in a negative cash-flow scenario, he understood and agreed¹.

• My depression is gone. Most likely, it was a side effect of my anxiety, or generalized anxiety disorder, which is mostly gone now.
  • The root of this is from my habit of predicting negative outcomes and asking too many “what ifs”, which I’m still learning to control.
• There’s this idea of learned helplessness that I struggle with. The bigger issue is that when I feel helpless, I get depressed as a result, about things out of my control such as the weather.
  • I love how the practical side of psychology falls in line with Taoism. In this case, I think of verse 29 of the Tao Te Ching:

    Allow your life to unfold naturally
    Know that it too is a vessel of perfection
    Just as you breathe in and out
    Sometimes you’re ahead and other times behind
    Sometimes you’re strong and other times weak
    Sometimes you’re with people and other times alone
    To the Sage all of life is a movement toward perfection

• One issue I had a hard time understanding was my belief that attempting something is a waste of time if I don’t succeed. I suppose that it seems rather silly now that I think about it (such as avoiding getting in a relationship just for the fact that one may get hurt), but I spent an entire session on this subject alone. It’s a problem because I give up on certain things before I try, and lose important opportunities as a result.
• I’m starting to become more aware of my automatic thought patterns. I’d automatically avoid certain situations because they would give me anxiety, or predict how other people would react based on past experiences, without even realizing it. This is wrong.
• I was a little skeptical about the usefulness of thought records at first, but now that I’ve finished about a half-dozen, I notice a change in my thought process. Every time I get flustered, I think in my head of what I’ll write down later (simply because I don’t have time to write it in the moment) and just doing this helps a great deal.
• My therapist is a fan of Chappelle’s Show (which is generally considered to be a low-class and crude form of humour), because it breaks social barriers by making fun of stereotypes, thereby robbing them of their significance. This makes him the coolest middle-aged white guy ever, and makes me want to smoke a spliff with him.
  • He also calls weed, “grass”, which is cute.

1. We’re both baffled by the fact that the sessions aren’t covered by OHIP, whereas physical health problems are. [↑]

I can gather all the news I need on the weather report.
Hey, I’ve got nothing to do today but smile.
Da-n-da-da-n-da-da-n-da-da and here I am
The only living boy in New York

Half of the time we’re gone but we don’t know where,
And we don’t know here.

—Simon and Garfunkle, The Only Living Boy in New York

Every day, we get caught up in our lives.

We adopt pets to give us a sense of family. We eat breakfast at work or in the car to save ourselves time so we can work some more. We scorn those who express emotion, we avoid eye contact with strangers on the street.

Everything we do — the food we eat, the movies we watch, the home team we cheer for, our coffee shop romances — they’re just trying to fill that hole, that gap that’s missing, the only way we feel alive.

We don’t slow down, we don’t figure things out. We don’t reflect and appreciate what we have.

Like strawberry cheesecake ice cream with a thick graham cracker swirl. Like the serenity of the snow that falls around us, when heaven decides to bless the earth.

Life gets in the way of living.

And now I realize just how guilty I’ve been of this. I’ve been looking for love, but never recognized it when I found it. All I ever wanted to do was lie in bed, look into your eyes, and go through my favourite albums with you. But I never did. And now I wonder. Why can’t we just live? We can’t we just love?

Sometimes you have to stop. You can’t capture everything. You need to throw yourself in.

A thousand kisses deep.