Yesterday I quit therapy. Today I signed up for physical therapy.

Mentally I've been feeling pretty good since getting on Lamictal. I have a lot of personal development I want to do, but that can be addressed through different methods that are just as good as therapy and half or less the cost*. Part of why I stuck with therapy so long was that I though insurance was covering a significant part of it, but it turns out that they weren't, and we've given up on fighting with them.

Physically, in addition to my chronic knee problems getting worse, my shoulder rotator cuffs are shot from switching all of my resistance training from lower body to upper body. My personal trainer has been on my case from the start to seek help about this. I'm finally making the time for it, and a good thing too! Between bad knees and bad shoulders there's very little that I can do at the gym.


*_{A great coach is about half the cost of a great therapist who is not being covered by insurance. Plus there are lots and lots of random self development workshops and whatnot that are not very expensive.}

Last week, my therapist gave me homework to write a list of my accomplishments, because I tend to gloss over them in conversation and in general. Today, when talking to my coaching pod leader, who doesn't even know me, she made a very similar observation.

She noted that in order to improve, it would behoove me to appreciate where I'm at. Ie, if I give myself credit for where I am now, then it is easier to build from that and get better, as opposed to trying to reinvent the wheel, proving myself from scratch every time.

Plus life is a lot more fun when having appreciation for where one is at in addition to striving for more. With constant striving there is no point, because there is no appreciating what one has.

My pod leader gave me some homework regarding self appreciation and appreciation of self achievement, which I'm repurposing my makesmesmiley for, for this month.

( Sexual experience, including a bit that could potentially be upsetting )

My doing this was inspired by both the workshops, as has been the case with a lot of my behaviors lately. These two have obviously had a huge impact, given how often I refer to them.

The message from both of them is to just be transparent about emotions, even when they're really not what you want to feel. When we repress what we feel to do what we think we should, the emotions are still there, and come out covertly. One way they come out for me is a general deadening of emotional life.

( how Big Mind fits into this )

Also, its really nice how much more accepting Patri has been since our workshop. Having been drilled about the difference between the masculine and feminine way of moving through the world, he has more space for my fluidly changing emotional landscapes, even though he's still baffled by them ;)

I think my journal is a good example. I write one thing one day, and then am embarrassed about it the next. Or no longer identify with it. Something I write will be of monumental importance to me in the evening, and the next day, the next hour, its a passing self absorbed thought. Each state is real to me. I've tried all my life to have a consistent "me" that agrees with what it says one moment in the next moment. And its a great relief to just accept that my perspective changes, often drastically, with my moods, which change constantly.

There are of course some things that stay the same for a long time, likely for all of my life. Such as my faith that acceptance of self generally leads to a happier self. As well as the that there is a need to put on masks for the world, even when they are not necessary for masking for one's self.

I'm making progress both with myself and with Patri. Especially with Patri, its something I am approaching gingerly and with a strong connection where I can read when he is or isn't ready for something.

An area where I accept myself and he doesn't is my anger. He takes it very personally and stonewalls hard if I come on too strongly. I think he believes me about how anger, even really intense anger, from me, is passing, and likely won't be a big deal for me five minutes after expressing. Emotionally he is not ready.

My therapy homework this week is to journal about an awareness of taking responsibility for Patri's capitulation to monogamy.

My desire to be monogamous was inspired by:

( detailed and long reasons for wanting to be mono with a lot of repetition from last mono post )

I know he loves me deeply, and that it is a sign of his deep love and devotion that he's even willing to consider monogamy, given how identified he is with the ability to sleep around as part of his identity. (in practice, he has shown a lot of interest in swinging and has for the most part actively avoided romantic relationships outside his marriage)

I have great confidence that his relationship with me is at the center of his world. Which has repeatedly baffled me :) Perhaps related to not thinking of myself as enough, the thought that someone would really value me is rather foreign to me. I'm constantly surprised by Patri requests that I spend more time with him, his turning down of activities I don't want to go to on the basis of preferring to spend time with me, and his preference most of the time of spending alone time with me over having other friends over.

His lack of confidence that this will always be the case, that his preference will be spending time with me over spending time with another woman, is a reason why I don't feel secure in our relationship. I understand that people change over time, and that more commitment in this realm on his part might not change outcomes at all. But that doesn't change how I feel about it on an emotional level. And, having written that, his lack of commitment to making it primary probably does make our deep pair bonding connection more likely to disappear at some point. With not committing, it is more likely that he might switch to another road. And with being poly, he's more likely to find another road that he's interested in switching to, as am I. (As noted, unlike him, I'd actually have a slightly active interest in other roads if poly, because of my desire for the security of monogamy for a deep primary partnership that I can trust in as much as is possible to stay primary and give me as much love, devotion, and time basking in that love in devotion, on the deepest level as a man has to offer until the day we die)

That was a lot of pretext :) The part I'm writing about for therapy is how, as we're starting off this year of monogamy, I've had the attitude of trying to make monogamy work for Patri. This is disempowering, because it takes away from my experience of monogamy if I'm constantly worrying about whether or not its working for Patri. I should allow Patri responsibility for giving it a real shot on his end of things. After all, his willingness to try it at all is a sign that he really is taking it seriously. As Liz pointed out, there is no way of knowing even if its what I will really want all said and done.

I have no certainty about any of what I just wrote. As Deida says about his own opinions, he does not commit to any of them, they could all change given time. They certainly have changed up to this point.

So, the best both myself and Patri can do, is to give this a shot, as openly as we can, and just see what its like. I could for example decide that the freedom that poly allows is something that I value so highly that I don't consider it worth the trade off. We might not connect more deeply with not being poly, and therefore several of my points wouldn't apply. And on Patri's end, the slightly higher likelihood of my leaving might not be worth the loss of this important piece of his identity, or the stress that it would put on him to resist his urge to sleep with lots of women and to turn down women who are interested in sleeping with him.

So, I will do my best to really experience the day to day of what monogamy is like, without pressuring either myself or Patri regarding what decision we might make a year from now, or forty years from now.

( short and incomplete explanation of Deida levels, etc )

My therapy homework this week is to live into the affirmation:

I Am Acceptance

The one last week was

I Am Love and Respect

I'm switching to acceptance, because I think that the other two naturally fall into place as acceptance happens.

Its happening. I feel the tension and relax into it. Feeling the tension is big, because once I identify the tension, I can often calm myself and let the defensiveness dissolve.

Acceptance is about relaxation. There isn't any less pain, its just transferred, or likely, its more pain. Rather than the pain of holding up defenses and all of the energy put into that, I get to feel the pain that those defenses block out. And the pleasure. It all evens out in the wash, except that I can live more fully as I stop shutting my eyes and see the world for what it is.

That is my therapy homework. Based on Landmark type stuff. Live into that: I am love and respect.

The theory is that you can't just wait for yourself to change. You have to *be* the change you want. Now.

flamingnerd has a great email tag line from Gandhi:

Be the change you wish to see in the world.

A lot of overlap with this philosophy and coaching. If someone starts talking about how they should do X (mental process) more, I'm going to jump on that and say do it now. Probably process coach with them to get as deeply into the experience as possible, and likely give them homework to set aside time to practice doing the process work on their own.

For myself, I want to be open. I want to smoothly let experience in and breath it out. Love is something that is especially difficult. Lack of respect is one tool I use against myself to shut down the part of myself that wants to be open.

The picture of Patri and I from our anniversary is one where I was practicing bringing myself to openness. One piece of this is relaxing my face. You might be able to see that my expression there is softer than normal, although it might not be as marked for people who don't know me well, since I tend to pick pictures more in that genre for what I post in my journal.

I am Love and Respect.

How is it that I am locked away from my own emotions and also empathize with others?

In other words, I have to be feeling what other people feel in order to understand where they are coming from and "match their energy" to use coaching speak. I did a *beautiful* job of this with several people over the weekend at coaching school.

I believe what is going on is that I project my own emotions onto other people. That is how I both feel them and am distanced from them. The fearful part in my head has been absolutely convinced that its not really me.

Another odd thing is that I feel like I've known this forever. There are several things of this nature that I am sure that I've always known, and yet that I haven't been recalling as part of the picture. I'm still very confused about that.

Another similar piece was when my therapist asked me "what's in it for me to stay disconnected." At first I gave my standard answer, that its safer. And then as the conversation progressed, I added "and its a point of pride for me." On a certain level I really *enjoy* thinking that I'm impenetrable. And in all honesty, *that* is what has probably been a huge piece of why I haven't given it up. I am resisting *for that piece of my identity.*

The therapist asked me how hard it was for me to say that, and I responded "it was easy, I've always known that." I bet she wanted to slug me. I need to thank that woman, she's stuck it out working with me even though I've been an uncooperative royal pain in the ass. I'm not sure how I feel about the statement I just made.

[edit]

Actually, I don't feel so harshly toward myself given a moment. It makes sense that I don't want to let go of that piece of identity, given that it *has* been a major source of comfort over all these years.

[edit]

And I just now saw the projection I just made: *I* wanted to slug myself for not having put that piece of the puzzle into place sooner.

I'm not depressed. Lamictal is working for me.

I've been tracking my moods for about three weeks, since I've stabilized from the withdrawals from other meds, and I've been consistently stable, without drifting into heavy anxiety or depression for more than a couple of half days. This past week I haven't even had the half day dips.

I've been trying a wide variety of other mental explorations and coping mechanisms for a long time without significant effect, so I'm pretty certain that its not the case that one of them just magically started working.

I *do* think however that all the stuff I have been doing leading up to this shift is helping now.

It feels like a feedback loop. Getting my moods straightened out with drugs gave me space, and from there I was able to put into practice the many of the techniques I've learned, and reaped the benefits of other things such as being in shape and having a good diet.

I'd heard about how with being depressed it seems like the world sucks, and that irritants are more irritating, but I'm really seeing that now, from the other side.

Things that I'd been obsessing about that had been almost unbearable are not bothering me. They're still irritating, but not such a big deal. I'm truly appreciating the positive things in my life, as opposed to having them pretty much bounce off of me. I'm having the best sex of my life with Patri.

I've tried so many other drugs and had no effect (other than mania in one case), so I'm almost certain this is not a placebo effect. I just heard about another big study coming out showing that SSRIs are not effective. I just looked Lamictal up by its other name, Lamotrigine, and it appears affective for unipolar depression as well. For those in that category, I give it a strong recommendation.

Unlike with most drugs, I really like myself. Just myself without the part of self with virtually no redeeming qualities that used to drive me and everyone else who had to deal with me, crazy all the time.

Okay, the rage seems to have passed, maybe I'd just needed to acknowledge it.

Acknowledging is a big part of Shambhala Buddhism, and, of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, not coincidentally. I've been deeply amused by how much significant overlap I've been finding between Tibetan Buddhism and modern pop psychology. It really does seem like we're reinventing the wheel, although certainly better reinventing than not using.

I see strengths to both approaches. Modern psych is certainly finer tuned to western culture and modern studies. Buddhism is a lot cheaper. There are Shambhala or similar centers all across the country that one can use for free or close to. Even though there are not modern studies, Buddhism has been around, and fine tuned, over the course of hundreds maybe thousands of years. Buddhism includes a focus on love that modern psych is not yet comfortable with. Buddhism is much more comfortable in its own skin. Able to approach more holistically, because it doesn't feel the need to prove every piece from scratch. Humanity is too complicated for us to be able to prove the value of love and such in any near future. But of course, an intuitive approach to maximizing joy like Buddhism could certainly be wrong, in small and/or large ways.

I was listening to Patri's dad and sis talk math the other day, so derivatives have been on my mind.

In my relationship with Patri, and I believe, in a lot, quite likely most, relationships, derivatives cause the most problem relative to primary emotions.

In other words, its not that you were angry that is so damaging, its that you were upset with your lover or self for being angry.

In one scenario that Patri and I talked through today, it turns out that it was actually the third derivative where I thought he could start to increase happiness. Unfortunately I can't recall exactly what the situation was, but it was fascinating. It was something like that he fears(3) getting upset(2) the when we fight and get angry at each other(1) in the future.