Tuesday, February 11, 2025

 Tuesday, February 11, 2025

      Ever since I had that hypomania episode, I've been putting myself through a lot of changes.  I feel somewhat like I'm struggling to keep my head above water. When I was younger, I always felt like I was trying to catch Niagara Falls in a saucepan.  

   Some people deny distress except that caused by others. I'm in the other camp. I see my own limitations as a cause of distress and struggle to contain them. That doesn't mean other people don't cause me distress.  Believe me, they do. But I struggle to find effective ways of dealing with them, both within myself and with them. The big problem for me is people who don't believe in reconciling differences. If I'm uncomfortable, it's all my fault. If they're uncomfortable, that's also all my fault.  I've learned to run for my life in situations like that. 

  Each unreconciled relationship weighs on me.  Giving up on some and bowing out of contact has remedied some of my worst feelings. It's amazing how relieved I feel to give up on a person. There are moments of sadness and grief, but it isn't a daily torment as I try to figure out what I can do or be to make the relationship work.  I suppose if I do it all their way, it would work for them, but not for me.  If there's no give and take, I have to leave, and I do.

   I sometimes feel that I'm addicted to the pain.  I don't know.  Either way, I'm currently putting myself through several healing programs: my usual therapist/ life coach, Shelly, the Grief Recovery class, the therapist  Dr. Reed recommended, and the cranial-sacral treatment. On top of that, there's the current political situation.

   I called the owner of the empty lot next to mine.  She had it back hoed several months ago.  It was badly overgrown, with the haole koa trees reaching ten feet and blocking my ocean view.  She said she had hired someone to weed-whack the lot regularly.  She paid regularly and never checked; it never got done.  The regrowth has a good start. I called to tell her and offered to work with her to monitor the work. She did not take my offer well.  She was pretty pissed at my suggestion that she didn't know it was growing back in and made it plain she wouldn't need my help. Oh, well. I should have known she would respond that way.

    I had my second appointment with the therapist Dr. Reed recommended.  It's gone fairly well.  He sees me as left- and right-brained instead of just one.  He is the second therapist who has identified the Cassandra effect in my life as partially self-generated, while in the myth, it was a curse laid on Casandra by Apollo. The therapist seemed to enjoy dialoging with me without being overwhelmed. It was good to have another therapist besides Shelly, who doesn't see me as the client from hell.  But today, he left me with the feeling that he enjoys me a little too much. I don't mean he's coming on to me.

    Not at all. Rob finds dialoguing with me fun. I asked him what his therapeutic method and procedure is. He was stymied. He said getting to know me and my therapeutic objectives. That's all good. But every therapist/ teacher develops an approach. I have methods I have developed. I see myself as watchful of the client's understanding of their own needs. I am prepared to make adaptations, develop something new, or admit I don't have a solution.  I'm flexible, which many therapists/teachers are not.  It's their way, or there's something wrong with me.  I wonder how Rob, the new therapist, will respond to my question.  I want to know how he addresses pain and despair.  I know what Shelly does. I know what the Grief Recovery does.  I know the premises of past therapists. I had to figure it out, but I had a pretty good idea of how they worked.  Can Rob tell me how he works? He only had to say that he would get to know me and see what I wanted to accomplish.  I thought I'd pretty well covered both those points. Now what?

   I had a confrontation with seventh-grade RC last week. She withheld information from me.  I told her she had to make up her mind about what she wanted to accomplish.  Both she and her mom relate to me in ways that make me uncomfortable. The mom is Asian, probably Chinese.  Its culture encourages introversion, keeping a low profile, and saving the other person's face.  As with all cultural patterns, it has good and bad aspects.  This girl strikes me as being passive-aggressive. Whatever she is. I had not been comfortable with it. We had not met on a mutually comfortable plane.  I wanted out. However, I knew she had lost her dad. I wanted the separation to come from her if she wanted it. Her mom called me to cancel the relationship. Yay!  But it's also a failure, and that doesn't feel good.