4. You Are Here

Based on my state, as reflected in my previous post, I decided I could no longer avoid seeking help. Despite being very apprehensive and even afraid, I made an appointment with a counselling psychologist, and yesterday I had my first appointment. An hour flies by so fast when you have the chance to speak about yourself and all the things you never could before. For many reasons, a psychologist or a counsellor is easier to talk to than friends or family. Your friends and family have a pre-existing image in their minds of who you are and expect certain things from you. There are longstanding social conventions and discussing very personal thoughts can leave you feeling vulnerable, and if people do not react in positive ways, it can cause more harm. Thus, I am hopeful this psychologist can help me on my voyage. The first session consisted mostly of me speaking about my background and 'introducing' myself. Some outlines of challenging issues also started to emerge. At one point the doctor (is that the right title? I still want to ask the lady how to address her) commented that maybe there is an issue with setting boundaries (or rather not setting them). She also mentioned that bottling things up - which I very much do - is a bad thing. The time flew by, and she wanted to ask many more questions, so my next session will probably be a continuation of the 'setting of the scene' as it were. I came prepared with a printout of my Facebook post I shared in the previous post. She said she would read it before the next session. Perhaps it will give her insights that can help me. 

In parting, she gave me 'homework' for next week. She posed two questions:

1. If I go to sleep tonight as the person I am now, and wake up tomorrow as the 'ideal happy' person I want to be, what would have had to have changed in the night?
2. What prevents me now from being this person?

These are not easy questions, but I want to approach them from an academic standpoint. In my work, I do research, and I am also working on a PhD, so this comes naturally to me. First, I must set out the terms of the 'assignment'. What do people understand by being happy or fulfilled? What does the literature say? Something like Maslow's pyramid comes to mind already. This is also tied to my goals for therapy. What would I like to take away from the sessions? Perhaps I will ask in what ways am I happy or strong/healthy already? What are my strengths? Then perhaps what are my challenges or weaknesses, as clues to why I am not the person I would like to be. But first, I need to build a full picture for myself of what that person looks like. Unsurprisingly, a quote by Carl Sagan (Pale Blue Dot) just came to mind now:

By the time we're ready to settle even the nearest other planetary systems, we will have changed. The simple passage of so many generations will have changed us. The different circumstances we will be living under will have changed us. Prostheses and genetic engineering will have changed us. Necessity will have changed us. We're an adaptable species.

It will not be we who reach Alpha Centauri and the other nearby stars. It will be a species very like us, but with more of our strengths and fewer of our weaknesses, a species returned to circumstances more like those for which it was originally evolved, more confident, farseeing, capable, and prudent—the sorts of beings we would want to represent us in a Universe that, for all we know, is filled with species much older, much more powerful, and very different.

The vast distances that separate the stars are providential. Beings and worlds are quarantined from one another. The quarantine is lifted only for those with sufficient self knowledge and judgment to have safely traveled from star to star.

...

Our remote descendants, safely arrayed on many worlds through the Solar System and beyond, will be unified by their common heritage, by their regard for their home planet, and by the knowledge that, whatever other life may be, the only humans in all the Universe come from Earth.

They will gaze up and strain to find the blue dot in their skies. They will love it no less for its obscurity and fragility. They will marvel at how vulnerable the repository of all our potential once was, how perilous our infancy, how humble our beginnings, how many rivers we had to cross before we found our way.

Just now, I am crossing one of these great rivers, but these strengths outlined by Carl appeal to me. They are only one part of the answer, but they provide food for thought.

As I like to do and have done in research publications and in outlining most of the challenging areas I would like to work on in therapy, I will make a model of these strengths/weaknesses, hopes, and ideas found in literature, to help me answer this question. Ultimately, I do not do so for the psychologist, but for myself.  I have a long and challenging journey ahead, but I am on the road. I am here.