Wet

Friday evening, my friend Skye (I know, right?) took me to her spa for a hydrotherapy evening. She has a membership to the spa that involves use of the hydrotherapy pools and massage. She gets one or two guest passes a month and asked me if I wanted to come with her this month.

The hydrotherapy set up consists of two pools and two saunas. You start in the hot pool. Then you move to the wet sauna where you scrub your body with salt (and you sweat and try to breathe the hot wet air). Shower off the salt, then out to the cool pool (which feels quite cold after the sauna), and finally to the dry sauna with cedar ledges. We did two full circuits, separated in the middle with a sit in the quiet room with tea and cookies, and then a final soak in the hot pool. Afterwards, I felt soft, smooth, loose, and relaxed. It was one of the most wonderful experiences I've ever had.

And we talked. We started out with the basic "what have you been doing lately" and, as we were there for nearly 3 hours, it just kept going deeper and wider.

I can be a chatterbox, especially if I'm feeling anxious or self-conscious. I realized later in the evening that I had forgotten my afternoon dose of Xanax, so that probably contributed some anxiety, but also I am still getting to know Skye and I am fairly insecure about my ability to make friends. Plus, I like Skye and want to create a solid friendship with her, so there's a little bit of anxiety there. (Hi Skye! I know you're there!) Because I know about this chatterbox behavior of mine, I remembered from time to time to specifically ask Skye about herself and to listen closely. Sometimes when I am in full-out chatterbox mode, I can forget to let the other person participate. I even apologized for babbling at the end of our hydro time, partly because I wasn't sure if I monopolized the conversation and partly because I was often chastised for talking too much as a child, sometimes by my parents and sometimes by teachers.

One of the topics that came up started with a discussion of fibromyalgia. In general, experts say that people with fibro should avoid exposing themselves to extreme temperatures. However, I enjoy heat a great deal. The few weeks when I went to a therapy pool for my fibro, I was completely grossed out by the body-temperature water. It felt dirty or greasy. ::shudder:: Heat doesn't seem to hurt my fibro any.

Rebound Effect

Wednesday's post was like flying, like rocketing up through the clouds into bright sunlight. Thursday was like faltering at the peak of my flight, Friday was stalling and then falling back through the dark clouds towards the earth, and today was like crashing in a fiery explosion on the ground. I am experiencing such a strong anxiety reaction that I had to spend over 45 minutes in bed this morning talking to myself and breathing just so I could get out of bed to take a Xanax to calm myself. And instead of the .5-mg that I've been taking for morning and afternoon doses, I returned to 1-mg doses for both of those. I'm still quaking inside, but I'm functional. Mostly.

How did I go from Wednesday to today, from being filled with light and life to being filled with shards of glass and fear?

One highly likely possibility is via the Rebound Effect, where my peak that came from reaching great depths in therapy rebounded to depths in response to the vulnerability and the anxieties and insecurities that remained in place even after the wonderful therapy-initiated learning. Vulnerability and fear operated like rubber bands to pull me back an amount equal to what therapy helped me soar to.

Why? Well, Wednesday did not cure me — it just provided me with new insights and perspectives and even handholds to keep pulling me toward progress. But I have been more vulnerable, to varying degrees, in the years since my fortifications were breached, and when I touch things deep inside myself during therapy or self-exploration, I am extremely vulnerable and all my history has taught me that vulnerability makes me unsafe, so touching that vulnerability can spark an equally powerful fear response. I think that is part of my response, my anxiety.

The other thing is that I have been feeling anxious and disappointed in myself for not having other paid work and for not searching hard for other work for many weeks. Add to that the fact that I didn't follow through with a commitment I made to the housemate who is supporting me (I agreed I would water some potted plants for her while she was at work, plants that were showing dryness and that she doesn't want to lose, and I had not done so by the time she got home), and she went into one of her temper fits, which triggered many of my worst anxiety and fear responses.

I apologized, after she finished watering the plants herself and came indoors. She eventually cooled off and apologized for her temper. But my anxiety is still resonating inside of me, and today I have been online a lot and I took a long nap, instead of baking as I wanted.

Power, Protection, and Progress

So. Therapy today was powerful. We talked about a major theme in my life: power and powerlessness, authenticity and invisibility. I came away with my mind spinning, feeling full to the brim, and feeling good. I even turned off my radio so my mind could keep resonating with what we talked about and when I got home I wrote the important bits down so I'd remember them.

It started off with me talking about the TED Talk by Amy Cuddy about body language and using it to change your own perceptions and feelings and behaviors. About the "Wonder Woman pose" that the media has played up and how to use it. (And I have used it, and Amy's other suggestions, and they seem to actually work.)

From there we went into how I diminish my own strengths and talents and accomplishments, and why I do so. I tend to have "don't look at me, I'm no threat" submissive and powerless postures: head or eyes down, shoulders hunched, arms and legs drawn in. I have often thought that I don't deserve as much space as other people, as much air as other people.

Then we went to why. Mostly self-protection, plus a lot of being squashed so much I've just given in and stayed squashed most of the time. Because of being molested, and from such a young age. Because my parents were always telling me "don't show off" (my intelligence and vocabulary), "don't brag," even while encouraging my little brother to show what an exceptional athlete he was and revolving our lives (mine included) around his sports. Because at a job I stayed at for six years (four years longer than I should have), my boss and co-workers treated me worse and worse the more authentically I lived my life and the more I threatened their world view: I both worked AND wrote (and published a story); I took a month off and went to Britain; I took six weeks off and attended a full-time writers' workshop (that you have to apply and compete for). Some people can be downright hostile if you do what they have told themselves they cannot do because that is How Things Are.

I have often in my life felt that The Universe hates me. It has seemed as if, just when my life was going particularly well, the Universe has reached out and slammed me, with moving when I was 16, with the deaths of my father and my brother and my mother, and with other things. And that has happened a lot, but there are times when I've been slammed while things were going very badly, and I'm sure there have been times when things have been going well and I haven't been slammed (I just have to remember them!).

Therapy Hangover

Sometimes, when going through therapy, a person can experience what some call a "therapy hangover." This feeling can occur from extreme emotions experienced during therapy, from reaching a deep place during therapy, and from intense realizations or epiphanies reached during therapy. Usually this feeling doesn't come during or right after the therapy session, but a little while later.

I think that today I experienced a therapy hangover.

Today's therapy was good. I was feeling disappointed with myself for not achieving the goals I set at last week's session. I've been feeling disappointed in myself for not putting more time toward my freelance job and being behind in reaching my deadline. Those were the feelings we started off the session discussing. Fairly simple and normal stuff.

I tend to approach my sessions in a freestyle, stream-of-conscious style. I lose track of original points as some new thought or memory comes to mind and I chase after that. I've told my previous therapist and my current therapist about this tendency and given them permission to control the session more, but both of them have basically let me follow my paths and tangents.

Today, in particular, I think this tactic was useful. I went from being disappointed in my not reaching my goal for the week to disappointment in myself regarding work to having developed the feeling over years that I'm going to disappoint my employer eventually, so I might as well get it over with right away. (I tend to feel this with friends, too, but forgot to bring this up during therapy.) So I tend to do something that will disappoint: I take a sick day early in my employment, I change plans suddenly (such as not coming in on a day I was scheduled to be in the office, saying I'll work at home instead), and I don't always work as hard as I feel I should and can. I'm not just in the process of disappointing others — I'm disappointing myself.

Ideas and memories and feelings kept coming to mind as I spoke, such as my parents' insistence on straight A's, even though they couldn't do the work I was doing in school and they had no understanding for how hard math was for me, for example. I told my therapist that I'd tried not to internalize that mindset, but that I had anyway. Perfection is hard to live up to.