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. [↑]

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.”

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. [↑]

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 [↑]

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. [↑]

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.

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

• 29: The Child
• 29 1/12: The Adolescent
• 29 2/12: The Lachrymologist
• 29 3/12: The Once Loved
• 29 4/12: The Mask

(I love these entries.)

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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.)

Continue reading

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.

On the last entry, my Uncle Joe posted this comment:

You’ve changed a lot. More mature, more stable, more tolerant. 5 years back, you paid more attention to your appearance, now you care more about what you do, what you observe. Now you’re a bit sloppy …and I like that. Your spending habit is so much different.

I don’t know what caused all that…work experience? Parents’ divorce? Love life? Tai Chi and Taoism?

The causes of my changes were too big to cover in the small box, so I said I’d cover them in their own entry. Here goes.

Therapy

One of the significant things my therapist helped me with was the ability to not sweat the small stuff. It took a few thought records for me to realize that there are things out of my control. I used to be really moody, where if a small detail didn’t go right, I’d get really grumpy. Now that doesn’t anymore, although I do occasionally have to remind myself of this idea, as it’s not a completely natural reaction (yet). This is probably what Uncle Joe noticed as me being “sloppy”, as I’ve stopped worrying about things going wrong, so a bit more carefree when it comes to details. Even Bronwen said she’s noticed the change.

I also had intimacy issues, where I’d push my girlfriends away if they got too close. I’ve since learned to let someone in, even if it means it may hurt me in the end, and there’s a great comfort to be had in knowing this. In figuring out what went wrong, and being given the hope that my future relationships won’t end due to my old intimacy issues, which I’m sure was buried in my subconscious before.

Taoism

Taoism has given me the same rough mindset as therapy, in terms of letting go of the little things that don’t go my way. But it wasn’t just due to the fact that things are out of my control, but also the idea that things don’t really matter. I’m still working on other tenets, like spontaneity and wu wei, but what I’ve been able to understand and apply so far has helped a lot.

When I’m having a bad day, I can go to the Tao Te Ching, find a verse that’s appropriate to my situation, and for some reason my heart finds such contentment in the words. Perhaps it’s even more than the individual tenets, and the fact that I now have something to believe in that brings comfort, stability, and happiness. A non-religious opiate, if you will.

Relationships

Having been through two good relationships with two good people, especially with the memories I have now, has given me a lot of satisfaction. Sure, they may have ended, but I never thought I’d be in a good relationship, probably because of my childhood with my parents, along with confidence issues. I think some people go their whole lives without ever having the sort of love that I did, or being able to experience the same wonderfully intimate moments. This has given me a contentment I wouldn’t be able to find anywhere else.

Occasionally, conversations around the dinner table turn to psychotherapy — someone knows a co-worker, or a friend, or a relative who sees a shrink — and my family would talk about it so disparagingly.

They’d say there’s something wrong with people who go to therapy; not the fact that they have mental health issues, but the fact that anyone who needs to pay someone else to feel better is foolish. They think psychologists are bad, or of no use. That you only need to go to therapy if you don’t know how to “find a hobby” or “blow off steam”, or don’t have any friends to talk to. Their ideas about it are so naïve, simplistic, and stereotypical; a perfect reflection of their minds and the way they see the world.

I’d always stay quiet. How could I explain the damage done, when it was some of them who damaged me in the first place?

But when the conversation turned to me, I mentioned that I had a therapist. Perhaps to change their minds about it, to defend something that has helped me so much. After all, I might not even be here talking to them if it wasn’t for my therapy.

Now they know.

But they still don’t understand.

Sometimes, I wonder what my life would be like if I didn’t have so much baggage. How my relationships would be different. Which ones would have worked, and which ones wouldn’t have changed at all.

Love, in all it’s multi-faceted wonder, levels, and types, is never a sure thing for me. I may feel it, but feel that it’s fleeting and conditional at the same time. Other people have the luxury of taking love for granted. They assume they’re loved. How comforting it must be. For me, it’s always been a struggle for stability. “We won’t love you if you don’t do well on this test. We won’t love you if you don’t practice piano. We won’t love you if you don’t finish your dinner. No one’s going to love you if you always stay this skinny.”

It feels like I haven’t survived my childhood yet. And I arrive at this fact so many times when trying to figure out the source of my issues that it’s starting to sound like an excuse. Therapy has helped identify my issues, but it’s still taking work on my part to resolve them, along with patience on the parts of others. I’m beginning to question why people would accept and love me. I guess it’s worth it to some, but things would be so much easier if they didn’t have to deal with my insecurities.

I stopped going to therapy.

Because I feel like I’m fixed.

Not completely, but I’m at the point where I can recognize my problems, bad mental habits, and work towards fixing them myself. My anxiety — the reason why I went to therapy in the first place — is under control, and I’ve been delightfully drinking black tea in the mornings¹. No more suicidal thoughts either.

I asked my psychologist whether I could hang out with him outside of the sessions because I enjoyed his company so much on a personal level. From life to art to sociology, we would always stray onto a wide variety of other topics. Perhaps I found the human mind to be as fascinating as he did.

He told me that as much as he’d like to, his ethics wouldn’t allow him to do so. I brought up the option of going to someone else for therapy, so that we could be friends, but after a bit of consideration, I didn’t like that option either, because I really enjoyed working with him. On top of that, as he explained, he would be available to me if I ever required his services in the future. I won’t lie and say that it didn’t make me very sad, but I understood and respected his reasons.

So after my last session, we shook hands, and he said “I’ll see you when I see you. Take care”.

And he meant it.

1. Caffeine, along with many other things, used to trigger anxiety attacks in me. [↑]

Sometimes I come out of a session feeling great. Sometimes I come out feeling like a monster, like some horrible, fucked-up person.

During my first session, my therapist noted that this was a mutual process. It wasn’t as if he was going to surgically remove an issue with me, it would take the both of us working together, with a progressive effort from me.

That’s what I’m doing now. I’m determined to fix myself.

Dependence

• I have a general feeling of incompetence, which leads to a lack of trust in my own judgments. As a result, I have a very difficult time making decisions because I’m paralyzed by the fact that I may make the wrong one.
  • I can trace this back from my childhood to my early twenties when my parents were overbearing and would never let me make any of my own decisions. In fact, they would make most of my decisions for me, including significant ones, like my program of study in university.
• The result is that I tend to ask people for advice on everything, although I’m dependent on Pat the most. This is because Pat is so smart and experienced, and has never, ever let me down. What I’ve come to realize, however, is that Pat is so smart because he’s already made his mistakes.
• This was linked to my anxiety, where I felt like I couldn’t handle anything on my own.
• I’ve been trying to fix this is to keep in mind that it’s not the end of the world if I make a mistake, and that sometimes, making mistakes is the only way to learn.

Unrelenting Standards revisited

• I realized that I tend to have unrelenting standards when it comes to life in general, but especially in my writing, photography, or art because I feel like this is the only way I will ever distinguish myself and be worth something. I feel like if I’m not the best, then I’m worthless. As a result, it’s difficult for me to enjoy my life, even something as simple as sitting down and watching a movie.
  • The roots of this are more difficult to trace than I initially thought. While my parents were a tremendous influence in terms of making me feel like their love was conditional, I believe a large part of this lifetrap has to do with me making up for my emotional deprivation by filling my deeper emptiness with success.
• Even when I do something that I know I should be proud of and satisfied, I feel like there’s always another thing to do, another level to reach. While this fuels my self-improvement and has gotten me to where I am now, I’ve come to realize that there’s an imbalance between the effort and the payoff. I work too hard for too little enjoyment.
• I may realize this, but it’s a hard habit to break. I have a feeling that I’ll need to fix my emotional deprivation at the same time to do so.

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 [↑]