So I had my first session today. Unlike the couples counselor we saw last year, this therapist came off perfectly normal. I mean, Birkenstocks again (we do have that in common), but her personality didn’t seem the least bit weird or off. That was refreshing.
Thankfully also, the session wasn’t hogged up answering registration/in-patient-type questionnaires. I completed a 2-page form and into the discussion we went. It was weird explaining why I was there… there’s so much context and background that one statement requires some historical reflection which in turn requires another… it’s like I might as well have just start from the VERY beginning, right? I dunno. I’m sure I rambled. I talked about my brother. She suggested his behavior was a form of rebellion for all the pressures my parents exerted on him… I disagreed. I considered his behavior simply a selfish sense of entitlement. To this day, he thinks my parents owe him the good life. Anyway, a lot came out (including tears) and just like that, time was up. At the end, I was so frustrated. I think that’s what I hate most about these sessions: the time constraint. I mean, if allowed to just get it all out, the meeting could be so much more productive. Seriously, today’s session barely scratched the surface and at the end of it, she asked if I was interested in continuing. Well duh, I’ve barely even started. Am I supposed to know whether this is helpful just from 50 minutes? Obviously, I can’t really get a sense until we’re farther along… Whatever. Procedures.
Afterwards, on the drive home, I replayed the dialog over and over in my head. I worry that I didn’t articulate my thoughts well enough, or that stuff just came across all unorganized and disjointed and flat-out wrong. I told her I had prepared that document. I left it for her to read. But it bothers me that some statements I said today seemed contradictory. And in retrospect, I want to clarify. By the time I got home, I was mentally exhausted but I couldn’t stop thinking about my predicament.
When John got home, I was already in bed. I felt worse than before the session. After the session was over, I had asked if she had any exercises or things she wanted me to work on. Looking down at my 20-something Manifesto book, she said, “Well, it looks like you’ve already begun working on things.” I guess, but come on, I only have six free sessions, I need progress… fast! I know, aren’t I an impatient beotch?
So yeah, I felt worse when I got home. John arrived and was like, what happened? After talking to him, I started to gain some clarity. Here’s my deal. I have this internal gauge where I measure my self-worth based on where I fall in the bell curve. As John explains it, it’s all about percentiles. I don’t need to be THE best. I know my limits. For example, even though I admire the courage and selflessness of say, abortion doctors (Dr. Tiller) and humanitarian aid workers and even though I sometimes wish I possessed their intense sense of purpose and mission, I also know that I am unwilling to compromise my safety and security. I’m unwilling to place myself in impoverished conditions and in conflict areas to meet a mission. That’s fine. Yet when I meet, a young talented performer or poet or musician, I’m enthralled. Initially, that captivation serves as inspiration. A small part of me believes that with enough effort, perhaps I too can accomplish something great like that. I yearn to join this “league,” to be of comparable caliber. I don’t want to be better than them, but I want to be in their company. Around that percentile, see? To me, accomplishments that place people in those percentiles are what I consider success. So I feel this urgency about life (it passes so quickly), like I’ve been treading water for the longest time, and how will I ever get to that level? I don’t even think the achievements are for my parents or for others. I’m sure they started out that way, but by now, they are for myself, a sort of validation that all their and my resources, emotional investment, etc. was not wasted on a life with so little to show for.
I’m a strange bird indeed. Consider my hip hop dance class. I practiced a lot. My friends asked if I was learning hip hop dancing so I could go out clubbing. Nope. I just wanted to learn it to dance around at home by myself. It’s like a challenge or a test. I see something cool, and I think that I would like to do it, then I try to do it but it’s like a closed circuit. Because it’s not like I’m showing anyone.
So perhaps John is right: I’m finding too many things I want to tackle, and maybe I just need to focus on one or two activities. I have to say, John was a wonderful therapist for me this evening. I’m feeling better already.
To close, here are some quotes from the manifesto that speak to me:
“One of the hardest parts of being a twenty something is feeling that you need to achieve it all– whatever ‘all’ may be. It’s a feeling of urgency, like you need to achieve in every area of ‘life’ — career, marriage, family, money. All the while being happy and content. It’s a feeling of great pressure — that if you don’t work it all out now, you are setting yourself up for a fall in your thirties.”
“The most difficult thing about being a twenty something is that even with all your plans, there are no guarantees. You are not guaranteed a job after college, you are not guaranteed friends if you move to a new place, you are not guaranteed a passionate career, you are not guaranteed a loving partner. You have to go out and create all this or at least hold the thought that it will all happen”
“If you asked me when I was six where I’d be at almost twenty-six, I would have told you that I would be a graduate of medical school, with a home, a husband, 2.5 kids, and a dog. So far, only the dog part has worked out.”
“An Expectation Hangover about my job and relationships led to a short temper and some physical manifestations of my stress. Not wanting to be too angry at work or the people I love, I internalized the anger and it lead to insomnia, constant heartburn, and a depressed immune system that left me constantly sick. I spent a year worrying about why I wasn’t where I was ‘supposed’ to be and frantically trying to get there.”
“I learned that the most stressful thing in my life was my tenacity at holding on to all the ‘shoulds’ in my life. Shoulds only matter if you’re considering other people’s standards and milestones. I decided it was important to live by my own timeline and gave myself permission to go at my own speed. Life is a wonderful, mysterious process, and my only expectation these days is that everything will unfold as it should. My job is to be true to myself and work at the things I know will make me happy. Everything else will work out around me.”
Next session is June 24. Who knows what will happen from now until then.