It was Therapy Thur, er, Friday this morning and had a really good session.

Now let’s see how much of it I can remember.

Let’s start with the Inciting Incident.

Yesterday morning, I was on TikTok just scrolling through random yet mostly delightful video clips when I came upon this one very upbeat and sunshine-y dude.

I quite liked him. He was positive yet cool, which is hard to pull off.

And he started talking about how important it is to have purpose and to stay humble and other generic advice like that.

Now, this dude did nothing wrong. With the best of intentions. and a lot of relaxed charisma, he recorded a video to try to help people and cheer people up.

But it didn’t cheer me up.

Instead, it set off a huge explosion of bitterness and anger and darkness in my soul. By the time that harmless little video ended I was filled with a black rage that made me want to reach up into the sky and blot out the sun by squeezing it in my hand.

This is not normal for me.

And I didn’t know how to deal with it. So I went to sleep.

A very sad way of coping, I agree.

But whilst I felt a lot better after sleeping, I still remembered this uncharacteristic upwelling of negative emotion from before and figured that is the exact sort of thing one should discuss with one’s therapist.

Luckily, I had a session scheduled for later that day.

Sadly, as you know, that didn’t happen. My therapist had a problem and couldn’t do the session and had to reschedule for 10 am this morning.

Grumble, grumble. Hate surprise changes. But whatever.

So today’s session started with me telling my therapist Doctor Costin about my little emotional hellstorm and drawing a parallel with a previous rage tsunami unleashed when I tried to join up and participate on mydepressionteam.com.

It’s a sort of Facebook-like site where people with depression can go to support one another and help one another heal. I signed up and signed on.

And seeing these well intentioned people genuinely and sincerely help one another with words of comfort and support set off an even bigger tactical nuke of darkness and bitterness and burning rage in my mind.

And in both instances, when the dust had settled, I was left wondering WTF was that

So that’s where I started today’s session.

OK, so NOW we will see how much I remember.

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I remember that I started out by theorizing that maybe I got so mad because it tapped into so much of the pain I had felt all my life from being so different from everyone around me that it left me emotionally isolated to the extreme.

And that’s most definitely part of it. I have been isolated for so long that it is normal for me and so I don’t notice it on a conscious ;level and haven’t since I was a kid.

But just because I’m not conscious of it doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt. It hurts like hell all the time. The mind knows what should be there and what inputs it should be getting from the outside world, and I got and am getting none of them.

It’s amazing how long you can starve.

More on this after the break.

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More morning bounty

Another thing that came out of this morning’s session is the conscious realization that at a cerfain point in my life, I just gave up.

Gave up trying to get along with others. Gave up the idea that anyone could help me. Gave up on the idea of getting the warmth and love I so desperately need. Gave up on finding peace and pleasure in this icebox dungeon of a life.

Gave up hope. essentially.

And when you give up most forms of reaching out, the only way left is in. I withdrew even deeper into myself and my amusements.

And got farther and farther from the real world.

And I went from having friends to being utterly alone. When I graduated from junior high, like so many nerds, I got abandoned as too uncool to be seen with in this new and more challenging social setting.

So no more Jason Heisler or Michael Copeland. They weren’t the greatest of friends but they were somebody. They gave me a reason to reach outside myself and stay attached and interested in the real world.

Without them, I collapsed into myself almost completely. That’s when I gave up.

I was a robot that went to school.

This is a good time to remind myself, though, that I have not always been alone. I have had friends. There was Kevin and Trevor in grades 5 and 6, and Jason and Michael in junior high. And the Pit Crew when I was in the University of Prince Edward Island.

So there’s been people there. The idea that I have been Forever Alone is a total myth fabricated by my depression to make it seem like it’s always been in control and to extinguish its biggest threat, which is hope.

Ergo I must remind myself that just because I can’t feel it doesn’t mean it’s not there. And that goes for people too.

Depression’s numbness (and social anxiety) might have kept me from connecting with the friends in my life as deeply as I wanted to and left me too emotionally isolated to feel the warmth and goodness in my life when I had it, I have had people in my life who liked me enough to be friends with me at least some of the time.

I just need to remember the message of one of my favorite songs :

No matter how dark the night, dawn comes. 

Thank you. Honey Bear. I needed that. 

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow. 

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