equivocality — Jeff Ngan's collection of thoughts, experiences, and projects, inspired by pretty much everything
Viewing entries tagged with "therapy"
Pages (2): 12
06 Feb 13
3

tin cans and string for years

Man can­not remake him­self with­out suf­fer­ing, for he is both the mar­ble and the sculptor.

—Alexis Carrel

I’ve been dis­cov­er­ing that I don’t know how to take care of myself. Not in a prac­ti­cal, every­day sense, but a cog­ni­tive one. Consistent psy­cho­log­i­cal abuse dur­ing my for­ma­tive years meant I never had the chance to develop some impor­tant life skills, like how to nur­ture my emo­tional needs, how to make mis­takes, and how to view myself with­out judg­ment. The poi­son was in the wound, you see, and the wound wouldn’t heal.

So far I’ve just started rec­og­niz­ing these issues in ther­apy, and it all makes me feel dam­aged and defec­tive, likely why I’ve been hid­ing these parts of my life from oth­ers for so long. But I’ve been hid­ing them from myself most of all. It’s hard to go through the painful but nec­es­sary process of griev­ing when I’m alone; always eas­ier to ignore things and keep going.

I asked Tiana to help me through this, cause now I know I can’t do it by myself. It wasn’t easy. Even the sim­ple idea of ask­ing for help makes me anx­ious. People who’ve had major roles in my life have hurt me or let me down in a very sig­nif­i­cant way, so trust­ing oth­ers has always been hard, and I’ve avoided being vul­ner­a­ble for so long because of that.

Luckily, Tiana responded the way I needed her to, and it’s been a great com­fort to give myself up to some­one I can trust. To be able to cry in front of a per­son with­out feel­ing guilty about my emo­tions or how I’m mak­ing them feel. To be able to talk to some­one who’s recep­tive and atten­tive and gen­tle and car­ing and appre­ci­ates my open­ness as well. To be the lit­tle spoon, cause every­one needs to be held some­times. She lets me let go, and for the first time, I’ve been able to sur­ren­der myself fully and still believe that I’ll be okay. I can sigh with relief instead of sadness.

These are still baby steps though, and the whole process is ter­ri­fy­ing. My sense of con­trol is what makes me feel safe, even if it’s detri­men­tal to my growth, and I’m still learn­ing how to give that up. But I tell myself it’s progress nonethe­less, which is what I need now.

tagged with #friends #reflection #self-evaluation #therapy #Tiana #vulnerability / filed under Thoughts
23 Jan 13
7

that I may cease to mourn

At some point along the way, I dis­cover that I’m ter­ri­ble at being alone. I need some­one to care for / spoil / love / give my exis­tence mean­ing. Echoes of a try­ing child­hood I’m just now sort­ing out. Otherwise, I’m con­stantly feel­ing empty instead of fulfilled.

Once a week I’m torn down so I can be rebuilt again, and some days I won­der: what of me will be left?

tagged with #childhood #self-evaluation #therapy / filed under Random Thoughts
22 Jun 12
8

don't give up on me now

In the last ses­sion, I explained to my ther­a­pist how I felt more respon­si­ble for and in con­trol of my own hap­pi­ness, and less depen­dent on oth­ers for a sense of iden­tity or ful­fil­ment (things I’d strug­gled with before). I also told him how I’ve been more vocal about my needs, to give my friends a chance to be involved in my life instead of always putting my feel­ings aside, and how I’m lucky that they’ve responded so pos­i­tively to that. I’ve made some major life deci­sions that I believe will lead to pos­i­tive changes, I’ve been pro­duc­tive, and I’m happy for right now instead of being deluded by a hope­ful sense of what the future may hold1.

When I brought up idea that it may be the med­ica­tion that’s been help­ing me so much, he said it’s good but not that good. Otherwise, he’d be pop­ping pills every time he needed some sort of per­sonal epiphany. Instead, it’s there as a way to help me think more clearly in cer­tain cir­cum­stances, but it doesn’t do any think­ing for me. This came as quite a relief, as I didn’t want to think that I’d be depen­dent on some­thing for this sense of men­tal well-being.

My therapist’s ini­tial goal was to teach me how to take bet­ter care of myself, due to the fact that I had insuf­fi­cient cop­ing mech­a­nisms. Now, he believed I could han­dle that suf­fi­ciently, and after say­ing that I looked “delighted”, we agreed that I didn’t need to con­tinue with our ses­sions any­more, some­thing he’d never said to me before. I walked in and out of there feel­ing good. I like the fact that he respects me, cause he’s one of the few peo­ple who truly under­stand me.

On the other hand, I didn’t par­tic­u­larly care for my psy­chi­a­trist, an hoary man who didn’t seem to have a sense of empa­thy, whom I met for the first time a few weeks ago. As a sign that my expe­ri­ence with him was part of Canadian health­care indus­try, he had no clue why I was there, when it was a doc­tor at the same clinic who had to write the refer­ral for me. At the appoint­ment, I was asked to fill out a ques­tion­naire that included things like:

Sometimes he talked over me, as if he wasn’t inter­ested in hear­ing what I had to say, although it’s hard to blame him for that, see­ing as how his role is to mon­i­tor my med­ica­tion instead of deal­ing with any kind of psy­cho­analy­sis. At the end of the appoint­ment, he said I had a lot of options cause I had a lot of inter­ests and intel­li­gence. The only thing is, I don’t think I told him any­thing that would have given him that impres­sion, so it all came out as flattery.

At least I won’t have to be see­ing him for much longer, as I was told that I could stop my dosage, but he rec­om­mended that I con­tinue for at least six months after I start feel­ing bet­ter (not after I start tak­ing it), which means I can’t still can’t drink until some time around Christmas. But by then, hope­fully I won’t have to.

  1. One thing I’ve learned is that real­ism is more valu­able than opti­mism (and a lot more valu­able than pes­simism) when it comes to psy­chol­ogy. [↩]
tagged with #reflection #self-evaluation #therapy / filed under Thoughts
02 Jun 12
8

the right ones

Before my ther­a­pist starts talk­ing, he has this habit of repeat­edly purs­ing his lips when try­ing to find the right words. It always makes me won­der if I have any habits too, and whether some­one could do a rea­son­able impres­sion of me by mim­ic­k­ing some man­ner­ism I’m unaware of. The only thing I can think of is this par­tic­u­lar way of clear­ing my throat out loud that Bronwen used to tease me about, some­thing I’ve since real­ized that I picked up from my dad.

The ses­sions are get­ting abstract and philo­soph­i­cal, a sign that they’re focus­ing less on details and issues and more on root causes. He’s been chal­leng­ing my think­ing, but he always does it in a gen­tle and encour­ag­ing way by let­ting me explore ideas myself, giv­ing me a lit­tle nudge in the right direc­tion if I need it. Most impor­tantly, he always makes it clear that I’m the one in con­trol, that I make my own deci­sions, and that he won’t judge me whether he thinks they’re healthy or not.

The thing I’ve learned most recently is that some peo­ple are sim­ply never meant to fill a cer­tain role in your life. Getting upset at them for not being more is like get­ting upset at your cat for not being able to play LittleBigPlanet with you. It’s a hard real­ity to come to terms with; not only am I faced with the sud­den real­iza­tion that some peo­ple aren’t who I want or need them to be, it means they’ll likely never be that as well.

But that’s the way the world is, and I’m learn­ing to let go, and to not hold every­one to the same stan­dards I hold myself to. The best I can do is con­nect with the right peo­ple, the ones who can be what I need because that’s who they are, not because they’ve tried to change for my sake.

tagged with #reflection #therapy / filed under Thoughts
25 May 12
10

better living through chemistry

I can’t pin­point the exact moment I started to feel bet­ter, which is a very pecu­liar feel­ing in itself. There hasn’t been any event to which I can attribute the fact that I’m not so anx­ious about how scary the future is any­more, or how I’m not depressed about every­thing that’s hap­pened. The only vari­able has been the med­ica­tion, which means it’s working.

The side-effect that still affects me most is the insom­nia. I sleep for two hours, do some­thing mind­less for two hours, then go back to bed. Lather, rinse, repeat. I don’t feel rested until night, at which point I’m soon ready to sleep again. It’s wreak­ing havoc with my moti­va­tion — not to men­tion my col­i­tis — which is why I haven’t started rebuild­ing my life yet. For now, I try to do one thing every day that will make me happy, so I can say it was a good day. Baby steps.

But I’ve also lost all inspi­ra­tion, and I’m left won­der­ing if this is another effect of selec­tive sero­tonin reup­take inhi­bi­tion. When I walk the streets, it feels like a com­pletely dif­fer­ent world from what I knew.

I used to pick up my gui­tar through­out the day and noo­dle. I used to carry my cam­era with me every­where in case some­thing caught my eye. I used to write almost every day. Creativity was a dri­ving force in my life, and a huge part of how I used to define myself. Now I never feel like cre­at­ing. I used to be ter­ri­fied of going on med­ica­tion for this exact rea­son, but I’ve dis­cov­ered that the med­ica­tion makes it all okay. It’s like Cipralex is both the cause and the cure.

At least I can go out­side now. I can face the world, and start fix­ing what needs to be fixed.

tagged with #depression #inspiration #self-evaluation #therapy / filed under Thoughts
07 May 12
2

pharmaceutical intervention

Sanity is sup­posed to come from lit­tle por­tions of Cipralex, but I have to sur­vive long enough for the doc­tors to find the right dose. It may well be sev­eral months before they dis­cover what works, and every day in between ter­ri­fies me.

Until then, I can’t sleep, I can’t come, I can’t eat more than half of what I used to before get­ting full, and I can’t go with­out Gravol to fight the nau­sea. The side-effects are sup­posed to be bet­ter than the alter­na­tive — and I sup­pose cot­ton­mouth is good way to get me to drink more liq­uids — but every wretched day makes me ques­tion whether this unique form of hell is worth it.

This used to be one of my great­est fears, and here I am faced with it cause I couldn’t han­dle life by myself anymore.

tagged with #life #therapy / filed under Daily Life
11 Mar 10
9

Damaged Goods

I have to write this so I can admit it to myself.

I have to write this because I can’t think of any­thing else nowa­days, except for how hard it is to get out of bed in the morning.

I’ve been read­ing a book my ther­a­pist rec­om­mended to me a long time ago, the one that deals with life­traps. In one of the first chap­ters, it goes through each life­trap by first explain­ing a “core need”, which is some­thing a child should have in order to thrive. It goes through exam­ples on how we should have been raised, and how a healthy mind will grow from that. Then it explains how the life­trap may develop if that core need isn’t met, by giv­ing exam­ples of destruc­tive child­hood environments.

And for almost every life­trap in the book, I saw my own child­hood in those exam­ples of destruc­tive envi­ron­ments, such as the one about “Self-esteem”:

Self-esteem is the feel­ing that we are worth­while in our per­sonal, social, and work lives. It comes from feel­ing loved and respected as a child in our fam­ily, by friends, and at school.

Ideally we would all have had child­hoods that sup­port our self-esteem. We would have felt loved and appre­ci­ated by our fam­ily, accepted by peers, and suc­cess­ful at school. We would have received praise and encour­age­ment with­out exces­sive crit­i­cism or rejection.

But this may not have hap­pened to you. Perhaps you had a par­ent or sib­ling who con­stantly crit­i­cized you, so that noth­ing you did was accept­able. You felt unlov­able.

As an adult, you may feel inse­cure about cer­tain aspects of your life.

When I was read­ing that, all I could think of was one spe­cific inci­dent from my child­hood. I was young enough that my mom would bathe me, and she would do it in the en suite bath­room of the mas­ter bed­room. One day, she came to dry me off with a towel, and both the bath­room door and the bed­room cur­tains were open. I told her to close the door, because I was self-conscious about being seen naked by the neigh­bours across the street. I was really upset about it, and instead of walk­ing two feet to close the door, she laughed and said, “You’re no Tom Cruise”, and left it open. From that point, I’ve had this irre­press­ible feel­ing that I’m never attrac­tive enough for some­one to even be inter­ested in see­ing me naked.

And that was just one exam­ple. My child­hood was filled with so many such mem­o­ries, each one branch­ing into other lifetraps.

I’ve never won­dered why I have self-esteem issues. I fuck­ing hate how self-conscious I am, because I know the extent of that self-consciousness isn’t nor­mal. I’ve strug­gled with issues like that my entire life, and I can trace every­thing back to my par­ents. It fills me with rage to know that they dam­aged me to the point where I feel so over­whelmed by my flaws that some­times I’d rather be dead.

If I were ever to com­mit sui­cide — and at this point I feel like I can’t rule out the pos­si­bil­ity of this any­more — I’d say that my par­ents would be 55% respon­si­ble1, with my mom shar­ing more of that blame than my dad.

I hope she reads this one day. I hope my entire fam­ily reads this. I hope all my cousin’s moms read this, because they usu­ally try to defend her. I want every­one to know that if I die by my own hand one day, I blame my mom more than any­thing else in the world. I want par­ents to know that they have a respon­si­bil­ity to their kids because they’re peo­ple too, that they have to treat them prop­erly, and that I was an exam­ple of what hap­pens when you don’t.

This is start­ing to sound like a sui­cide note, and it’s scar­ing me. Good thing I’ve always been a ratio­nal per­son, and I still rec­og­nize that sui­cide is an irra­tional deci­sion for me at this moment. Sometimes, I watch sui­cide videos just to shock myself into real­iz­ing how final, irre­versible, and hor­ri­ble that deci­sion is.

I’m at a lot bet­ter than where I was two years ago, before I went to ther­apy, but I’m still far from being fixed. I can admit that to myself now.

  1. The other 45% being my own inabil­ity to deal with these things, but I attribute that to tem­pera­ment, which is inborn and hence not their fault. [↩]
tagged with #childhood #depression #memories #mother #parents #self-evaluation #suicide #therapy / filed under Thoughts
25 Feb 10
4

Protected: Prescription for Love

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tagged with #reflection #self-evaluation #therapy / filed under Thoughts
22 Feb 10
6

On The Mend

My ther­a­pist has the curi­ous habit of push­ing his lower lip into his upper gums when think­ing. He also has a very par­tic­u­lar way of talk­ing, and some­times I won­der if I could imi­tate him.

I went into my ses­sion feel­ing great, and left with a lit­tle more mod­esty than when I started. I may pride myself on my self-awareness, but he’s always there to remind me that some prob­lems are rooted in my sub­con­scious. While my feel­ing of empti­ness has dis­ap­peared, there are still a few under­ly­ing issues, such as why I started to feel that empti­ness in the first place. He said that when we meet again that it should be on a reg­u­lar basis, and I shouldn’t wait for a cri­sis to begin fix­ing issues. I agreed, but wanted to give things a chance on my own first, armed with this new-found enlightenment.

He approaches my sit­u­a­tion from such a per­pen­dic­u­lar per­spec­tive. It’s always a view I’ve never con­sid­ered before. When I first went to see him, it was for my anx­i­ety attacks. Not for the other deep-rooted emo­tional prob­lems I had (and was unaware of). Sometimes, I won­der if we’ll ever get to the point where he’ll say to me, “You know what, Jeff, I don’t think you need to come here anymore.”

tagged with #self-evaluation #therapy / filed under Daily Life Random
21 Feb 10
2

My Therapist is a Rockstar

As I was writ­ing notes for ther­apy tomor­row1, I was doing some research on life­traps and came across a short para­graph that cleared up every­thing for me to the point where I didn’t feel like I needed to keep my appoint­ment. It was the answer I didn’t even know I was look­ing for.

Now the feel­ing of empti­ness that’s fol­lowed me for so long is gone, and every­thing makes sense. I feel sta­ble again, though there’s still a hint of doubt because I’ve been here before but it’s never been any­thing permanent.

I’m still going tomor­row so I can solid­ify my new-found under­stand­ing. I don’t think it’s going to be a reg­u­lar thing again, I just need the bit of guid­ance he gives me that lets me fix myself. I can’t explain how good it felt to make the appoint­ment, know­ing I had some­one with a pro­fes­sional edu­ca­tion and years of expe­ri­ence in this to give me an objec­tive view. My friends are always there to sup­port me, but they don’t make sense of the world for me the way my ther­a­pist does.

  1. This is the first time I’ll be bring­ing notes, only because I’m try­ing to cover such a com­plex topic that I want to be sure I’m not miss­ing any­thing. [↩]
tagged with #reflection #self-improvement #therapy / filed under Random
18 Feb 10
1

Fishing Without A Hook

I’ve been liv­ing the strangest exis­tence lately. It’s been a life with­out struc­ture or mean­ing. I won­der what I’ll think of this phase of my life when I look back in five years.

Some days are eas­ier than oth­ers. Sometimes, it’s a strug­gle just to find a rea­son to exist.

I have to admit that every pain, every sad­ness is inspir­ing. It may make my fin­gers bleed and my lungs ache, but the pure emo­tion that comes out of it is worth it, because that means I’m feel­ing some­thing, instead of the numb­ness that scares me most.

My one mis­take was try­ing to for­get some­one, when instead I should have been try­ing to for­get life in gen­eral. I’ve always had the habit of think­ing too much, and not doing enough. I’ve been try­ing to set goals to get some­where, when it’s work­ing toward those goals that’s the impor­tant part.

I made an appoint­ment with my ther­a­pist again1, because some­thing is def­i­nitely wrong with me right now. It feels like I have the world at my fin­ger­tips. I have so much time and oppor­tu­nity on my side. I laugh at the right jokes. I dance at the right songs. It’s all star­ing me in the face, but every­thing still feels empty.

I’m not look­ing for answers. I just want to stop ask­ing questions.

  1. I haven’t been back since last October [↩]
tagged with #self-evaluation #therapy / filed under Daily Life
31 Jan 10
2

Images

This week I’ve been see­ing images when I wake up in the mid­dle of the night. Usually in the form of slow, flesh rip­ping decap­i­ta­tion, or bul­lets enter­ing non-vital parts of my body, like my arms. Not of self-mutilation but muti­la­tion of the self. These images, in some form or another, have fol­lowed me my whole life, and went away after I started ther­apy1. Now they’re back.

There’s been a new one lately though.

I have a one-inch thick, two meter pole through the heart, stick­ing out per­pen­dic­u­larly to my body in both direc­tions evenly. My heart and lungs have grown and healed around this pole, and even a gen­tle impact on either end, due to the mechanical-force mul­ti­ply­ing nature of the ful­crum that is my heart, could dis­rupt my organs and kill me.

So as I’m try­ing to fall asleep again, I see myself going about any reg­u­lar day, stum­bling around with this unwieldy pole, hop­ing I don’t trip, and no one bumps into it.

  1. Or per­haps, co-incidentally from something/someone else. [↩]
tagged with #reflection #self-destructiveness #therapy / filed under Random
13 Jan 10
6

29 2/12: The Lachrymologist

I used to be a crier. Any strong emo­tion, good or bad (though more often the lat­ter), could bring on tears like a reflex. Now, I can’t remem­ber the last time I cried, which means it’s been a while. More than a year, I suspect.

Getting misty-eyed doesn’t count; that’s too easy. A poignant scene in a movie, the right song at the right moment, even see­ing some­one demon­strate a Tai Chi move­ment with mas­terly detail and pre­ci­sion can cause my heart to swell, but the feel­ing only lasts as long as a few blinks after the blurred vision. When I refer to cry­ing, I mean when the tears are enough to over­flow and leak.

Self portrait at 29 2/12

 

When I was young, the kids in school would laugh at boys who cried — much less socially accept­able in this cul­ture — but I was never embar­rassed about it. I thought it was nat­ural, the way some peo­ple are gay or Caucasian. I thought I’d grow out of it, the way one grows out of a fear of the dark grad­u­ally and sub­con­sciously, but I kept cry­ing well into my 20s.

I’ve always won­dered if my dad has ever cried, even as a child. I can’t pic­ture him doing it, not even when my grand­mother dies. He’s so care­free and log­i­cal that I can’t see any­thing affect­ing him emo­tion­ally. With my dad as my early model for a man, I’m sure this is part of the rea­son I don’t feel like an adult yet. Society teaches us that adults, or male one’s at least, aren’t sup­posed to cry.

I’m not sure why it’s been so long for me. Maybe the ther­apy, com­bined with my study of Taoism, has evened out my ups and downs, help­ing me acknowl­edge my weak­nesses (so I’m not as hard on myself), as well as the uncon­trol­lable nature of life. Maybe my life is sta­ble enough now that I didn’t need that kind of release.

I turn 30 in 10 months, and I won­der when I’ll cry again.

The Turning 30 Series

tagged with #growing old #reflection #self-portrait #Taoism #therapy / filed under Thoughts
14 Oct 09
0

Follow-Up

(I love these entries.)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (ver­sion 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the lat­est ver­sion here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

First: lis­ten to this. Some days I feel exactly like this song. Those days are pretty good.

I remem­ber read­ing the blog once of the guy who said that his aunt was Nancy. She was a Canadian woman who suf­fered from men­tal insta­bil­ity and killed her­self (“It seems so long ago/Nancy was alone/a forty five beside her head/an open tele­phone”), and Cohen read about the story in the news­pa­per, and penned this song about her.

Anyway.

I like him. He’s very unbi­ased. He doesn’t try to cod­dle me or side with or against me or force me into think­ing any­thing. He offers per­spec­tives that no one else can give me.

I wasn’t sure where to start, so I just tried to bring him up to speed on my life in the time that passed between us. It began briefly with how well I was main­tain­ing the progress we had made but quickly drifted to the rela­tion­ship, and that pretty much took the rest of the session.

(From here on out, I’m going to refer to it as the rela­tion­ship. Just cause I’m tired of writ­ing “half-relationship” or “rela­tion­ship” in quotes like that. I’d say that two peo­ple as involved as we were would cer­tainly be con­sid­ered to be in a relationship.)

Read the rest of this entry »

tagged with #music #reflection #self-evaluation #therapy / filed under Daily Life Random
21 Aug 09
8

Where Am I Now?

It’s been a par­tic­u­larly try­ing week. I’ve been feel­ing so jaded. Broken. Helpless. Undefined.

Both the cause and the con­se­quence is that I’ve been sleep­ing ter­ri­bly lately. Next week I’m going to try to have a more self-control and stay on a strict sched­ule. Bring some order into my life.

I tried to make an appoint­ment with my ther­a­pist, since I have $300 men­tal health cov­er­age with my work per cal­en­dar year (although this only amounts to two ses­sions). Unfortunately, I need a refer­ral from my fam­ily doc­tor to claim the cov­er­age, because refer­rals are only good for one year, and it’s been that long since I saw him.

I think of how judg­men­tal my dad was when I told him I was see­ing a psy­chol­o­gist. But then I real­ize that he’s prob­a­bly the only per­son I feel like I can really talk to right now (my ther­a­pist, not my dad). I wish I could talk to my friends, but my thoughts are either too embar­rass­ing to admit to them, or too com­pli­cated for them to understand.

I’ve been lis­ten­ing to some quiet, som­bre stuff lately. Trying to acquire a taste for Leonard Cohen’s mid­dle years, when he traded in his gui­tar for horns and vio­lins, even some Depeche Mode. Depeche Fucking Mode. It hasn’t been helping.

I just don’t know what to do with myself lately. But I’m pretty sure I really need to cry right now.

tagged with #depression #emotion #hard times #sadness #therapy / filed under Daily Life
Viewing entries tagged with "therapy"
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