Impulse

In the mid-90s one of my favorite comics was Impulse by Mark Waid and Humberto Ramos. The series starred a teenaged superhero with superspeed who was known for being impulsive--perhaps not the best character trait for someone who can act in an instant on a whim to buy Chinese food... in China. This is, of course, what drove the humor of the book.

I am generally not a very impulsive person, at least not in my day-to-day life. If it's not in my plan for the day, it's generally too much trouble. Maybe I'll fit that spontaneous trip to the park in next week.

When it comes to major life decisions, though--schooling, career, marriage, children--I can be pretty impulsive. I can honestly say that I don't regret any major life decisions I've made, but I often think back on how quickly I've gone from one plan to another, like when I switched from the English PhD track to the MLIS track. Granted, I had a bit of external motivation for that change in the form of two rejections, but still I made the mental hop from one camp to the other rather quickly, considering that we're talking about what I'll be doing for the rest of my life here. Similarly, both times Foxy and I decided to get pregnant, the decision came in the form of an epiphany of sorts after a period of not wanting to have a(nother) child. Both times we... ahem... acted on the epiphany pretty immediately (though if I recall correctly, with Little Dude it took us a month or two before we succeeded).

Again, I don't regret these impulsive decisions. I don't regret pursuing an MLIS instead of a PhD, and I certainly don't regret either of our children. Nor, for that matter, do I regret the decisions to marry or to separate, though both were made at least a little impulsively. Therapist says that he always knows what the right decision is--the thing is he usually doesn't know until after the fact. The right decision, you see, is always the one you've made. That doesn't mean that the next time you're faced with similar options the right decision will be the same one; it means only that the decisions you've already made are the only ones that could have led to the present reality of your life, and it's fruitless to say that reality is "wrong."

With that in mind--the fact that there's no point in questioning past decisions except in so far as what you learn from the questioning might inform future decisions--yesterday Therapist and I talked a bit about my propensity to make major decisions on impulse. What it comes down to, we concluded, is that I tend to get excited about new ideas and want to test them out NOW. While some people live in the past, I live in the future, always anxious to make whatever new future I've envisioned happen ASAP. This isn't a bad thing, per se, but it's a good idea for me to be aware of it and temper my actions accordingly, particularly when other people are involved.

As it turns out, Impulse eventually learned to temper his impulsiveness, at which point he changed his name to Kid Flash. Then last year he grew up and started calling himself Flash. And then last week he died.

Take from that whatever moral you want.

Hope Returns: A Midweek Fobsvithe

I blogged a couple months ago about the death of my optimism. I should have known myself well enough to recognize that like Jesus, Superman, and most soap opera characters, my optimism would not stay dead for long. It's too intrinsic a part of who I am. Next to me, Little Orphan Annie is jaded.

I've said before that I was unhappy in my marriage, but this is inaccurate. I was happy much of the time; the unease I felt was not a lack of happiness but a lack of peace. I was not at peace with who I was and where I was at in life because I couldn't accept the reality of my life. When we don't accept the present reality we fight it, and it's hard to be at peace when you're fighting reality. (It's also hard to win that particular battle.)

Over the last few months I've gained a sense of peace, not so much because of my change in life circumstances as because of a change in perspective that came through help from Therapist, through some spiritual experiences I've had, and through my mind's natural propensity to find wholeness. Therapist says that it's the nature of the human mind to heal itself if we just let it, and I tend to agree with him. This healthy state of mind and the peace that comes with it are not dependent on any external conditions. Over the past couple weeks I've been struggling with some very difficult questions about who I am and what I want out of life, the kind of questions that not too long ago led me to an anxiety attack, and in the midst of all this I've been calmer and more content with my present life--unanswered questions and all--than I had been in a long time. With this newfound peace has come a renewed sense of optimism, hope, and faith.

In religious contexts hope and faith are often lumped together, and I see why--the two often work together hand in hand. I have hope for FoxyJ's future because I have faith in her ability to do hard things, and finding peace when life throws huge obstacles in your way is one of the hardest things to do. I have hope for our children's future because I have faith in their resilience and in Foxy's and my love for them. I have hope for my future because I have faith in my ability to find peace regardless of my life circumstances. This faith is not based in wishful thinking, but in experience. I know that I and the people I care about (and even the people I don't care about) will be just fine, no matter what happens, because that has been my experience in life thus far.

So if you've come here looking for angst and suffering, I'm afraid you'll be disappointed. It's all flowers and sunshine here, baby. And avocados. Lots of avocados.

Pentecostal Thoughts on This Fine Pentecostal Afternoon

As I walked from church to the gym this morning, the rain pouring down on me, I thought of S-Boogie, whose first name we gave to her because it means wisdom in Greek and whose middle name we gave to her because it means heavenly mists in Hawaiian, reminding us that if we are full of charity, "the doctrine of the priesthood" (or, one might say, the wisdom of God) shall distill upon our souls "as the dews from heaven." I'd never thought before of how appropriate her name is for Pentecost Sunday, the day when we celebrate the Holy Spirit descending upon the church. The common metaphor for the Spirit is fire, but wouldn't wisdom descending as rain be so much more pleasant?

This made me think of Little Dude, who was born one year ago tomorrow and whose first name means fear of God in Greek and whose middle name means fearless in Hawaiian, reminding us that "God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, of love, and of a sound mind."

At the gym I listened to The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle, who is one of the new agey philosophers my therapist talks about. Tolle suggests that fear, as well as most other negative emotions, comes from an unhealthy preoccupation with the mind and with time. Our mind tends to dwell on the past and future rather than the present, and this leads to sadness, grief, and regret on one hand or fear, anxiety, and stress on the other. When we recognize that our mind is doing this, we step outside of our minds and realize those thoughts are not us, and we become present awarenesses, fully conscious of the Now. When we are focused on the Now, there is no fear.

As I listened I set aside my skepticism and my questions for a moment and tried to be conscious only of the present. I watched the people around me, the gym equipment, the television screens. I looked out the window at the bushes and trees wet with rain. I tried not to think about these things, but just to observe and experience. I had no epiphany or great newfound appreciation for the world and everything in it, but I did sense some truth in Tolle's words. All clinging to the past and worrying about the future do is prevent us from enjoying the present.

I started the day feeling a little stressed about life and hoping for some kind of pentecostal experience, some wisdom from heaven, and I think this is it. Remembering that I have no reason to fear the future does not solve all my problems, but it does give me the sound mind I need to deal with them effectively.

Thoughts on Therapy OR Divine Intervention

I've had five therapists so far in the course of my life, and each of them has been a positive experience. I would not have liked the earlier ones if I had had them later in life, and I would not have liked the later ones if I'd had them earlier in life, which I take as evidence of divine intervention. It also may just be that I'm the highly suggestible type. ("Yes, I am the highly suggestible type.")

I've never felt the social stigma that some people attach to therapy. Going to a therapist is not admitting that I'm broken or that there's something fundamentally wrong with me. Therapy is not just for crazy people. (But really, who isn't crazy?) I think everyone should see a therapist at least once in his or her life. It's like having a personal tutor in emotional maturity--as evidenced by how incredibly mature I am after five of them.

Therapist #1 (T1) was a counselor at LDS Social Services (now LDS Family Services) that my bishop referred me to when, as a seventeen-year-old, I told him I was attracted to men. It would be easy for me now to accuse T1 of encouraging me to deny my true self, to try to be something I'm not--easy, but also rather illogical. I went to T1 because I wanted to change my orientation, and if he had tried to tell me that I should accept my homosexuality as a normal variation of nature, I would have found someone else who would tell me what I wanted to hear. T1 helped me begin to deal with the angst of my adolescence, to recognize the connections and disconnections between feelings and reality.

When I came to BYU I knew I wasn't done with therapy, so I asked my new bishop to refer me to a new counselor at LDSSS. I got T2 (no relation to the Governator), a grad student in social work who had the same first name as two of my best friends, which I took as a sign of divine intervention. (It may just be that I have a tendency to attach a lot of significance to random things.) T2 introduced me to all the literature on homosexual reparative therapy, and I give him credit for helping me get to a point where I was confident in myself as a human being and no longer afraid of men--or at least not as afraid as I had been up to that point.

Then I went on a mission, came back, got married, and had a kid. It probably wouldn't have hurt to see a therapist at some point along the way there, but I figured that I knew what I needed to do and it was just a matter of doing it. Then I decided I really did need help making sense of the mess I call my mind, and went to the BYU Counseling Center. There I met T3, who was the first therapist whose explicit purpose wasn't to make me straight--he was not afraid to admit that that was beyond his expertise and perhaps beyond the confines of reality. His goal, rather, was to help me figure out what I wanted out of life and how to achieve that. He also helped me learn what it means to have an emotionally intimate relationship, and he was perhaps the most empathetic of all my therapists, which is something I really needed at that point in my life.

I thought that T4--who has the same first name as T3, another sign of divine intervention--was going to be Foxy's therapist and that I was just going to be supportive, until right before we went in for the first session and Foxy decided that she wanted couple counseling as opposed to individual counseling. I figured that if she felt a need to get help for our relationship, then we needed help. T4 helped us to be more honest with each other, which involved me being honest first with myself and then with Foxy about how I really felt. It's a little too soon to say whether that was a good thing, but I think it was.

T5 (aka Therapist)'s last name is the same as the name of the street I lived on for my first three months in Spain, which even the most skeptical of readers will admit is a sign of divine intervention. I wasn't sure at first that he was the right fit for me, as his approach to therapy is recognizing that everything we think is just a thought, everything we feel reflecting our perception of reality and not reality itself, which seemed to me a little too much like the Be Happy By Pretending To Be Happy philosophy I've relied on for most of my life. Yes, I can choose to be happy in whatever circumstances I'm in, but I can also acknowledge that some circumstances make that more difficult than others and choose accordingly. Over the past few weeks, though, I've found that there are subtle differences between my approach, which wasn't working, and his approach, which I'm liking more and more.

And if that's not enough to make you want to run out and find a therapist, then you really are messed up.

Anger & Hurt

Don't fear your best friend
Cause a best friend
Will never try to do you wrong.
Don't fear your worst friend
Cause a worst friend
Is just a best friend who's done you wrong.

"Never Too Late"
Michael Franti & Spearhead

A little over a month ago, someone I love and respect hurt me. Even at the time I could see that he didn't mean to hurt me, that in fact he was speaking from a place of hurt himself--the worst kind of hurt, the kind you feel when someone you care about is being hurt and there's nothing you can do about it--but knowing that didn't make it hurt me any less. All those vague referents might not make any sense, but suffice it to say that there was a lot of hurt going on.

It didn't take long for that hurt, on my part, to turn into anger. How dare he attack me like that? How dare he accuse me of those things? I've spent the past month and a half carrying this anger around, thinking of all the ways I could tear down the logic of his arguments and prove he was in the wrong. Then I would realize I didn't really want to do that. Then I would feel guilty for feeling so angry. Then I would get angry at myself, and sooner or later the anger would shift back to the person who hurt me and the whole thing would start over again.

The problem was big enough that Tolkien Boy grew concerned for me. He insisted I talk to my therapist about this anger, which I then did, briefly, in our first session. We didn't talk about it much, though, until today. Today Therapist suggested I try a process that involves writing down everything you feel about the person you're angry at, then you question the things you've written, then you turn them around to essentially see yourself from the other person's perspective. I told him the problem is that I always jump straight to that third step and all I end up with is guilt and anger at myself. So he suggested we just do the first step--writing down what I was feeling--for the sake of allowing myself to feel the anger, since I seem to try to skip that step. I wasn't too far into my list before I realized I was stretching to find things I was angry about.

"It's like eating," said Therapist, "or, if you don't mind the metaphor, like taking a crap. You feel a strong urge to get it all out, and once you do, you're done. The important thing is to make sure you dump your shit in the toilet, not in the living room."

I don't pretend that writing a list magically cures me of all the anger I've ever felt, but it was nice to experience it and then be done with it, at least for today. Tonight I'm at peace.

Which brings me to the answer to Leslie's question about how people have hurt me in God's name. This afternoon I composed a response in my head, venting some of the anger I feel at the people--to be clear, people other than the one the rest of this post is about--who have hurt me in God's name. Tonight, though, I realize that I don't want to write that post. Perhaps I'll write it for myself, to allow myself to experience that anger, but I need to keep my shit in the toilet, as it were. To air my grievances here would do no good. So my answer to your question, Leslie, is that whatever hurt has been done to me in God's name, it was done with the best of intentions, I was complicit in it, and it is nothing compared to the hurt done to the gay people who have been attacked, beaten, or killed in the name of religion. And holding onto it will hurt no one but myself.

Faith: The Evidence of Things Unseen

Me: It's very difficult for me lately to see myself as a good person... whatever that means.

Therapist*: You see the problem there, don't you? "Whatever that means." You're judging yourself by a standard you can't even define.

Me: Yeah, I know.

Therapist: When you were a child did you believe you were a bad person?

Me: No, not at all. I worked very hard to be sure I was a good person.

Therapist: [laughing] I think that answers the question, doesn't it?

Me: Yeah, I guess there was some sense of insecurity there--that I needed to prove I was a good person.

Therapist: Which would not have even occurred to you if you believed you were a good person.

Me: No, I suppose not. I guess that's the problem--my whole life my sense of self-worth has relied on this view of myself as a good person, which was dependent on what I did. That worked fine as long as I was doing those things that made me a good person, but now suddenly I'm not doing those things anymore.

Therapist: Perhaps what you need to do is prove that you're a bad person.

Me: Should I rob a bank?

Therapist: No, prove it with the evidence that you already have. List out the evidence that suggests to you that you're a bad person.

Me: Hm. The first thing that comes to mind, of course, is that I'm leaving my wife. I'm hurting her. I--

Therapist: Can you think of anybody who has made it through life without hurting anybody else?

Me: Well, no, but--

Therapist: Do you believe it's possible to make it through life without hurting other people?

Me: No.

Therapist: Then you believe that all human beings are inherently bad.

Me: No. I suppose the problem is that I judge myself by a different standard than the rest of the world. I can forgive other people for hurting each other, even for hurting me, but it's harder to forgive myself. I expect more from myself.

Therapist: Is it that you think you're so much better than everyone else, or so much worse?

Me: Both, I guess.

Therapist: What makes you so special? What makes you so different from everyone else on earth, that you deserve this special standard of judgment?

Me: I don't know. Now I feel like I'm a bad person for believing I'm so special.

Therapist: [smiles] And yet you don't even know what it means to be a bad person, or what it means to be a good person. You don't have evidence, and yet you cling to this belief that you are bad. You're a man of great faith, you know.




*Although my Therapist has the same blogonym as Samantha's Therapist, they are not actually the same person, at least to my knowledge.