Did the Therapy Thursday thing today.
Told my psychiatrist, Doctor Costin, about the “bad moments” I’ve been having lately, and how I regain my equilibrium pretty fast when they have them but that I am beginning to wonder if I should just let myself fall apart instead.
He said that was a bad idea. That having a breakdown leaves an injury that you never totally heal from so you are better off avoiding them entirely.
OK, fair enough. I will stay the course for now.
But I don’t know for how long, because the “bad moments” are becoming more frequent and lasting just a little bit longer each time.
So clearly something’s got to give.
Knowing me, all I really need is a good long cry. And that does, in fact, seem like a better idea than a total nervous breakdown.
So the next time that cold hard wind starts blowing inside me, perhaps I will see if I can release that energy via tears.
A fit of deep down ugly crying might do me a hell of a lot of good.
Might just be the emotional enema I have needed for a long ol time.
Speaking of being verklempt, I once more did not exactly bare my soul to Doctor Costin. I almost never do. I doubt I ever will. Letting down my guard and letting my emotions pour out in front of others is just not in my programming and it might be too late for me to add it in now.
Like so many other men, at some point I built these fortifications around my tender heart in order to protect it from the cold hard world, and keep it (and myself) from being or seeming to be vulnerable.
Because deep down, it feels like the second we’re vulnerable, the imaginary bully in our minds will pounce and use our weakness against us.
This is, of course, insanity, but nobody said being male and being sane were the same.
Due to my extraordinary intellect, the madness goes even deeper for me, because I can simulate vulnerability to the point where I even fool myself.
Like…. a lot.
But it’s time to confess what’s really going on : I am using the incredible speed and agility of my mind to bring currently inactive emotions to the forefront, in a purely conversational mode, and communicating them in that cauterized form.
And this is with my therapist. With everybody else, I am even more guarded.
And yet I seem very open and honest and forthright. And I am. As far as you know.
But on the inside I know, deep down, the sort of game I am playing. I almost never, even with my therapist, talk about what I am feeling right now. It’s always what I have felt in the past, or some abstraction of emotion devoid of currency or power, or maybe, on rare moments, the thoughts and ideas of the moment.
But none of that involves any true vulnerability. I am one thousand percent confident in my ability to move to protect myself verbally and intellectually from any threat, so I can seemingly bare all without ever really feeling exposed.
It’s all a rather complicated and elaborate game, but all it really boils down to is that, even as I type these very words to you, my sweet and gentle audience, I am not truly making myself vulnerable to you.
In the end, it’s all just analysis after all.
Jesus, no wonder it takes me so long to make any progress. I’ve been faking it.
More after the break.
One little step
But I need to keep in mind that progress happens a little at a time and, and this is the key point, the fact that I can see how things might have been better does not mean that they should have been better and that therefore I have failed.
That is honestly the rubric I have been living under and as you can clearly see, it’s pure uncut looney tunes crazy town.
I can always think of ways things could be better. It’s part of my whole INTJ thing. I have an intuitive grasp of how things work and how things fit together and that means I am a natural optimizer, especially when human thriving is part of the equation.
But a harsh, sere inner environment where there is only one hundred percent total success or abject and total failure is some seriously psycho Asian parent stereotype crazy making bullshit.
It’s my evil superego rigging the game against me while maintaining the very thing impression that success is, technically, possible.
No it ain’t. Fuck off.
I think it comes down to frustration at its root. I have all this life energy and ambitious and passion that has been completely stymied by my mental illness for a very long time and that id energy is very frustrated and angry inside me and that, in, turn, leads me to take that frustration out on myself through corrupted inner judgment.
After all, if I could ever be good enough, I’d have to stop hating myself, and then what would I do with all that aggression?
I’m working on it.
I’m doing what I can to build channels for that raw human energy to be expressed in the world. At the very least, I want to learn to use it to bolster my mood instead of corroding it and making it crumble.
Deep inside of me is a voice driven mad by captivity that is constantly screaming and screaming and banging itself bloody on the walls of its cage.
And I need to liberate the poor thing while it still remembers that freedom is a possibility for it some day and therefore hasn’t gone completely insane.
I’m working on it, my lovely lunatic. I will find a way to let you go without putting others in danger – including me. I will find ways to harness your energies so that you can do something with them other than bang mindlessly on the bars.
God willing, I might even find a way to get you laid so you can get rid of THAT energy.
I have been trying to hide from reality in the world of the mind for far too long. There’s a real world out there which is way more stable and sane.
And I’m gonna make it there.
I’m working on it.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.