Mid-Summer Night's Dream

Today is the last day of July. Do you KNOW what that means?



It means that tomorrow is the first day of August. And THAT means I have only one month left of summer before I have to go back to classes. I have been doing a remarkably good job of actually relaxing since that root canal. Something about a heavy dose of benzodiazepines that will drain the workaholic vibe out of you... The point is, I've been relaxing, and I've gotten a taste for it. I have also not watched television this month. Not once. So I am actually relaxing as opposed to vegging out, which I think is different.



I've been enjoying my down time in "flow," a concept made accessible by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the Hungarian-born psychology professor. Flow is an enjoyable state of mind wherein the task at hand is suitably matched to one's skillset and abilities and provides meaningful feedback so that the person can become actively and mindfully engaged in what they are doing. This is something that just doesn't happen when passively viewing entertainment. Television and movie watching flow experiences are few and far between (the exception perhaps being trying to stay one step ahead of a really good MYSTERY! on A&E). It happens much more often with games, good conversation, sport, tasks and problem-solving activities. It's the feeling of falling into a groove, when you are doing something and are so engrossed that you suddenly look up and it's 8 hours later and you don't know where the time went.



And I've gotten a taste for it.



I've even felt more like I can fall into flow at work. When I get a good counselling session going and feel totally present, always adjusting my gameplan and strategizing to give my client the best therapy I can. Getting feedback directly from the client in terms of how the session is going for them. Yeah, it feels like the days when I was training and HAD to pay such close attention for fear I'd really screw something up.



And that's the thing. Once you become good at something, the challenge lessens. In order to experience flow, you need the right amount of stress. You need to be challenged enough to keep you on your toes, but not so much that you feel hopeless and give up. If your skills are solid, that's great... but the danger is that you will go on autopilot and not be truly present. It doesn't matter how skilled the therapist is, if they are not present in the therapy exchange, if they are bored, if they are multi-tasking in their mind, the client loses out.



Right now I'm present.



And it feels good and I don't want to lose it. Which is why I started to get a little weird and possessive of my time in the past few days. Suddenly my inbox is filling up with messages from the University. Workshops are being advertized, working groups are planning when they will meet, the mailroom is being reordered for the incoming students, and I'm expected to register. Oh, and a paper that I gave to my supervisor almost 5 weeks ago, which they told me they could turn around in 48 hours, is still sitting on their desk. There are still deadlines counting down in the summer "break." There are things I have to DO.



But I'm enjoying flow too much.



And before you say anything snide, yes, of course I know I can apply my newfound flow prinicples to school work... I just don't want to yet. You see, it's the thing about meaningful feedback. Last year, it was pretty non-existant. In one class I didn't get any feedback until after the semester was over. In another class, the feedback was meaningless because the prof belled grades on such a steep curve... you had no idea what your skills were really like. In another course, my only feedback came in this form:



"Very good paper. A."



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I had to stop writing before I was actually finished that post and now we're a good week in to August and it doesn't have the same oomf as when I wrote it on July 31st. I have a meeting with my supervisor today and don't want to go. It feels like detention somehow, only I go alone and not with a cadre of 1980s teen archetypes. My prof is no evil Mr. Vernon, but just as clueless at times. Not their fault, it 's a generational thing. And this not-quite-a-summer has infected me with a sort of teenish agnst -- a feeling of not-quite-fulfilled-and-i-want-something-but-don't-know-what feeling. So yeah, I don't want to go... I want my breakfast club and I'm not getting it there.

If John Hughes were still alive I'd want him to make a new movie for all of us grown up teens as we ride gen X into our middle age. And I hope he'd remember that some of us are still in school, some of us didn't have a good prom, and some of us had grandmothers who felt us up on our birthdays. But I guess that's what Avenue Q was for.

Time to download a few soundtracks and make one last push for the summer that never was but might still be.

The Root Of The Problem OR Stealing Nerves In The Mines Of Moria

Today I had my very first root canal. I asked for some of the infected nerve goop that they endontist pulled out to put in my baby book, but he seemed to think I was only asking because I was in a Vallium-induced haze. How wrong he was, how wrong he was.

I have a RATIONAL fear of the dentist. Despite my own dentist being a hug-giving, tiny sweetheart, she is a dirty, dirty LIAR. She filled my first cavity for me when I was in my late 20s, and promised me that I wouldn't feel a thing. Then this wonderful sweetheart of a darling dentist shoved a mining instument into my face and clipped a nerve. Human reflexes dictated that I jump off of the chair and knock over a small tray of flouride. Her sweet Iranian accent broke the tension when she said, "Okay, Psyche... you take a short break and I go get you the Vallium..." We ended up finishing the procedure the next day with additional, extra-strength Vallium.

Naturally, I was out of my mind terrified when she told me that the intense throbbing in my jaw and inability to tolerate heat, cold, sweet, air or even my own saliva on my molar was due to an infected root. Crud. I visited the endonist (who charmingly looked like Carrol Spinney) and he offered me the choice between being awake with no nitrous oxide or being asleep at twice the cost. Since my insurance will only cover the cost of one non-morpheoused tooth, I had to deal. I had to take the pass through the mountains and go with him into the Mines of Moria.

I told him that I as a flight risk and the Spinney look-alike assured me he would give me the max amount of happy pills allowed. I arrived dutifully 45 minutes early and swallowed the blue pill. By the time my procedure began, I was still as nervous as a bag of cats, and he had his hand so far down my throat that he could have put green fuzzy pants on me and called me Oscar. The pills really only kicked in about halfway through, at which point I could have fallen asleep. Then they finished, I went home, and did fall asleep.

The legend goes that the dwarves dug too deep and unleashed an incredible evil... a Balrog that even the orcs and goblins that frequented the deep caves feared. The denist I had previously must have also dug too deeplly to fill my cavity and unleased a terrible evil as well. OR maybe I was the one who dug too deeply because I ate too many raisins and didn't floss well enough. [Side note, no one taught me to floss until I was 28.]

When I awoke, I was slightly dazed and wearing white robes. I can't feel a thing in that tooth. I was given more painkillers, but feel a complete lack of need to use them. So yeah, much less climactic that Return of the King, but there you go.

OMG, don't get me started on Return of the King... but that's another post. Point is, mission accomplished. Well, until I have to go in to get a the crown placed on my tooth. That is, if my tooth will finally accept its destiny and reforge the sword that slew the hand of Sauron 3000 years ago...

What Is Meant By "Anal" OR Vomiting For Revenge

So, aside from when I was in the throws of a wildly serious ED and not eating enough to actually need to poop, there are basically two times when I have felt like I desperately needed to take a dump and couldn't.
(Wow, Psyche, you silver-tongued devil, you...)

The first was on a weekend road trip with my mom. I spent 72 straight hours with her, mostly alone in a car. We left after work at 8am (yes, AM) and I missed my usual morning BM. This was the most misguided "fun" road trip ever, as was evidenced by my anal sphincter attempting to make diamonds in my rectum for the entire weekend. I didn't go for three days when I was with her, plus about 24 hours before, so about 96 hours total. When I dropped off at my appartment and my mom took over the drivers seat at 7:30am, I watched her pull away from the building, turn the corner and disappear behind an office building.

And then I publicly shit myself.

Okay, I'm kidding, I didn't actually lose control of my bowels. But I did feel things relax down there at an alarming rate. So much so that I ran up the stairs rather than waiting for the morning rush hour elevator, for fear that I would not make it to the toilet on time. Be advised, running up 3 flights of stairs carrying a weekender suitcase, a travel pillow, a purse and trying to fend off a shit cramp is not a well-thought-out scheme. I made it in time, but just barely.

The second time I desperately felt like I needed to go but couldn't was yesterday, my first day back to work after my self-imposed commital to Psyche sanitorium. I am a pretty regular gal, and that day it was just a no-go. It was a little over 55 hours when things losened up very suddenly WHILE I WAS DOING THERAPY WITH A CLIENT on the phone.

Now, I can easily wax psychological about why I can't poop around my mom. I was toilet trained before I was a year old. Too young. A lot of pressure there to do things at mom's command, and as an infant, if one is toilet trained too early, the pleasure centre in the brain can get a little weird around mommy, holding it in, delaying pleasure and all that kind of stupid stuff. If a parent is too controlling, the individual is at risk for either becoming incredibly controlling themselves OR rebelling outrageously and doing the extreme opposite: whatever they feel like whenever they want. As you can tell, I turned out a bit on the anal side, which is why whenever I see my mom my asshole slams shut like there is a herd of Jehova's Witnesses coming up the path.

So what was up with work yesterday and today? And why did I uh, loosen up, around 3pm, just before I took a meal break?

Yes, the org where I work has a slightly Orwellian vibe to it. It is, at times, oppressively parental. Ha, when I first started there, a manager actually commented that I went to the bathroom a "little too much." Uh, you know what? If you never know if your next client is going to be a prank or a two hour suicide call, you go almost every chance you get! I invited this (male) manager to feel free to come into the washroom with me if they wanted to verify if I was peeing OR never mention it again. [He and I actually get along great these days!] Anyway, my every moment at work is clocked... there are codes for almost everything and status reports at the end of the month. Hence my irritation because therapy should not be treated as a call-centre framework. Still... the intense control at the org about things that just don't matter (compared to the issues we discuss with young people - today I had two 45 minute convos with abuse survivors and an hour long psychodynamic session with someone who was sorting out why she let's friends take advantage of her) is very oppressive and I think my brain has crossed wires thinking that holding it in is some small act of rebellion.

When in fact, shitting myself so that I had to go home early would have worked WAY better.

Sigh... unfortunately, I made it on time and without cutting the call short. Sigh... I can see the poster for the support group now, "Excreting Bodily Substances for Revenge and Personal Gain - Public Humilation or Personal Liberation?"

It occurs to me (and has more times than I care to admit) that although I haven't had symptoms for almost 7 years, that I can probably still throw up pretty much on cue and unaided. Sometimes I fantasize about puking on someone I don't like by "accident" you know? Because I must be "sick." Bonus: I would also get to go home.

Clearly I am VERY comfortable with what Jung would call "The Shadow." Very VERY comfortable.

A Post From Convalescence Camp

Hi Everybody. My name is Psyche and I'm a perfectionist workaholic.

["Hi Psyche!"]

I'm writing to you, dear readers, from a miniature mental institution for one that I have staged in my appartment. I am recovering from bona fide exhaustion. Looks like I am not Wonder Woman after all.

I've been at my job at the org for over 5 years now, most of that full time nights and evenings... I heard a lot of trauma in that time, but it took the end of my first year in grad skule to actually put me over the edge into full-blown burnout/compassion fatigue. Basically, I handed in my last assignment at 11:50 on June 5, after finishing a full time week at my professor's conference. I took a few days of vacay out of province (during which I didn't sleep much for some reason) and then returned immediately to full time + work at the org. Early mornings... 7:45am starts on the phones catching the beginnings of summer prank time with kids-at-home-instead-of-school-needing-help season. Two weeks into this I got a call from a girl who just found out 15 minutes earlier that her mom had breast cancer, had lost her best friend to suicide two months prior AND has had 5 other relatives dies in the past 12 calendar months... oh, did I mention that her father was also a convicted pedophile?

It was the breast cancer that put me over the edge. I started to cry on the phone (thank CHRIST for the mute button) while she told me about discovering her mom's diagnosis. Breast cancer freaks the fuck out of me. EVERY single woman on my mom's side has had breast cancer EXCEPT my mom and I. Aunts, grandmothers, great aunts... great grandmother... ALL OF THEM. I get pissed at my mom for not doing regular checks or wearing sunscreen (she is fair and lots of freckles) and Mummer just tells me that she's "decided" she's "not going to get cancer." Uh, Mummer? I don't think it works that way...

Anyhow... I needed to debrief, maybe even go home after that call. I asked for debriefing but couldn't get it because the supervisor was in supervision. Great. Talking about it with a colleague didn't do the trick. That was it for me. I stared at a computer monitor for the rest of the week, hoping no one would notice I wasn't really working. FUCK! It makes no SENSE to treat a counselling service like a fucking call centre!!! Do you know that I have an actual QUOTA to make with at least the web counselling that I do? Seriously! I am expected to answer a call to counselling on the Internet every 40 minutes. These motherfuckers are an average of 500 words long (sometimes they are 3000 words long!). When I told my journalist husband about this, he plotzed, or would have if he was Jewish. He works for a daily and says that 500 words for print take about 4 hours/half a working day. And, he pointed out, no one he writes for is in danger of committing suicide. Jebus...

I got lost there for a sec, what was my point? Right... I'm burned out. So I'm off this week. And yeah, even though I work for a mental health institution, I don't dare tell them that I am burned out, because they have a track record of acting inappropriately about this stuff. Our old CEO was actually heard saying something close to (sorry, not a direct quote), "So what if the counsellors burn out? We can always hire more counsellors." Nice eh? There was a woman at my workplace that was suffering from post partum depression with a note from her doctor requesting a change from nights to days for a few weeks while she recovered, and management refused to let her counsel period and tried to bully her into quitting. Yeah... I know...

Mental health organizations tend to attract the mentally ill. And yes, I have already thought about what that might say about me.

What was my point in all this?

Right. The point is that I'm taking a week off to recoup. I admit to being a silly dork for not thinking I needed any vacay after hell-year at dipshit campus. Clearly, I neeed a month. But a week is what I'm getting because my GP is on mat leave and the sub doesn't know enough about the hell I've endured at the org to truly get where I am coming from -- although I shouldn't sell her short, I don't know if she would support me in taking more time or not.

But you know... what gets me is how much I just panic when I'm not being perfect. Not being able to handle this... having something inside of me insist on a mental/emotional vito of my workaholic plans sends me into a state of panic. I think that grad school might be really an unhealthy place to be. You're expected to be on call, constantly availalble to professorial whims... doing a FUCKLOAD of work all the time, always expected to be brilliant, insightful, cutting edge... and if you're not... well, you're just an average schmo. Like that is going to get you a high-paying job at the end of this hell.

Okay okay okay... in my mental institution, there is rum... Heyyyyy... the doctor said I needed to take some time for myself and just relax for a bit... so this rum is doctor's orders.

I am patentedly BAD at taking time for myself.

I don't really know what else to say. I'm dreading my meeting with my supervisor to get my course schedule approved for next year. Fuck. Grad skule is supposed to be this mentoring experience and yet, nothing is formalized... there is no template for what you are supposed to do... for example, I have a course entiteled "practical research" that I have done absolutely NOTHING for (that's another post) and suddenly this "A" just appeared on my transcript... because I'm certain my advisor is just too busy to discuss it with me. Seriously... how did I get an A when I did NOTHING???? (And not for lack of trying, like I said, this is another whole post.) Isn't there someone somewhere that I should have to answer to?

Oh, and get this... my therapist (whom I also must conceal I am seeing because of a weird bias in my department... apparently on paper we are pro therpist but in practise it is a mark against you if you see one) says that he has 10 patients from my univerisity to every other patient he has! OMFG!!! Is that not incredible???

Okay, clearly I am too hopped up on rum to go on. Will update again shortly!

As Experienced Sleep Decreases, My Wit, Intelligence and Attractiveness Surely Increase

Last night I couldn't sleep. Most likely this was because I knew I had to get up at 6 in order to get to my 7:45 am shift at the Org on time. But also, and much more likely due to the fact that I spent the last hour of my shift the day before doing counselling with a homicidal youth.

Yeah... my job entails that I do that sometimes.

Homicidal. As in, with plans and means to torture and kill specific individuals in their community.

It was really interesting and disturbing. I mean, it is pretty unusual for a homicidal youth to seek-help. The fear of judgment alone is enough to keep the young person quiet. And likely there is an abuse history as long as your arm... no real models of typical development, tons of anger that is misdirected at innocents who are perceived as rejecting the young person. Yes, I'm talking the sort of person who discloses that they are considering a massive Columbine-style retribution for perceived wrongs. Anger is meant for the parents? But ends up being directed at others. I have spoken to homicidal youth before, and according to my supervisors handled it quite well. But nothing prepared me for yesterday's counselling session.

Now, I'm not a psychologist (yet). I'm not qualified to make a diagnosis. But from what I can put together, this kid did NOT quite make the criteria for conduct disorder. Despite the behavioural qualifications being met (desire to harm, hisotry of harming others, setting cats on fire, poisoning a younger sibling with antifreeze, detailed plans to torture and kill individuals that had been followed in the middle of the night) --- this "kid" seemed to be missing a key problematic component.

Feeling.

You see, the main reason why we are terrified of psychopaths (an adult diagnosis of characteristics that blossom out of conduct disorder which is an under-18 diagnosis) is that they lack empathy.

"Typical" people, when sensing distress in others, pick up on their corporeal cues. They see distress in another person's face or voice and their little mirror-neurons fire like crazy. They percieve distress and experience EMPATHY -- a vicarious experiencing of that person's distress that manifests itself in physical cues such as quickened pulse, galvanic skin response, rapid breathing, and a mirroring of the other person's corporeal cues.

Empathy. Feeling. They FEEL the other person's distress, and then, they help, or at the very least STOP hurting them.

Psychopaths don't. Conduct disordered kids largely don't as well.

But this kid. Despite claiming not to feel guilt or remorse was writing to a crisis help line type service. They claimed to be scared that they would act on these impulses... were aware that they were really angry at abusive and neglectful parents.

They were seeking HELP.

Uh-huh.

Brutal for me. They were quite expicit that they were an accomplished con-artist. Extohled their own talents of charm and manipulation. I was freaked out. Was I being conned? I don't know. But I suspect that if they were seeking help, that they were feeling SOMETHING. Maybe not empathy exactly... but something. And I wanted to explore that. Because IF this kids was being genuine with me... my god... what a blessing this was. That they WANTED to get support. That there is hope to avoid future suffering for potential victims... but even moreso, to avoid future suffering for them as well.

Was my life just touched by a potential future psychopath on the brink? Did I give them even 1% possible hope for a life free from revenge and anger?

My god, I hope so.

I am so incredibly humbled by this experience. So incredibly tired. And yet, I can only imagine the hell that this child has been through and the intense suffering that is being defended against. If I believed in "God" I would pray. But I don't. So I will just put it out there. We never know when our judgement or lack thereof may be pivotal in someone's life. Yes, I know I am in the business of non-judgementalness. But wow, this was possibly the most humbling experience of my life since the school shooting call.

I'll tell you about that sometime. But for now. It's sleep. I've just finished my first draft of a developmental framework for self-efficacy and help-seeking on a national child helpline. A circle is complete and I must rest before the next one.

N***, wherever you are. Please know that I meant every word. I want you to be okay. Not becuase I don't want you to hurt anyone else. But because I think that YOU are worthy, loveable and deserving of care. I'm sorry you've been let down and I believe that you can get over this an lead a life not ruled by revenge and anger. I want that for you. I hope you want it too.

Deep breaths, okay? Let us both sleep well tonight.

Isn't It Weird?

I haven't been this tired since I started my own theatre company in high-school, wrote and directed plays, put whole shows together, rented halls, and had a nightly audience. Right now, I would say that I am so tired...

"How tired are you?"

I am so tired that I could throw up into my own mouth and not have enough energy to spit it out.

And now that I've grossed you out, on to the post.

My computer died. I think I mentioned that little gadget is no more, shuffed off this mortal coil and gone to join the choir invisible. The hole she has left in my life, and the rocks that now live in my lower back, are immense. I'm back to using littleboy... my old laptop. My old, 7 1/2 lb plus cord laptop. If I were a mom, I'd be asking myself how on earth I ever pushed this thing out. Do you see? Can you tell how tired I am considering the "natural" birth of a laptop?

What I am trying to get to here is that I've successfully conquered two hurdles put in front of me since losing gadget. A major presentation and a ginormous stats assignment. Hee hee. I like calling them "STATSASS#." Statsass4 is out of the way... I don't know if my explanation of why error terms are different for different F tests in a mixed design ANOVA made any sense, but it's done. What I'm saying is it is DONE and we don't have to discuss it anymore! And I can't anyway, because the explanation was in a file on my stoopid newer old laptop.

I'm coping with the missing data, but moreso, I just miss gadget. She was too beautiful for this world... so light and bright blue... a 6 hour battery in such a small frame. She fit in my PURSE dammit! And now al I have is this lunking, bulky first born dragging me down and sending me to the chiropractor twice a week. I need a gym membership just so my laptop doesn't throw out my back from carrying it in my knapsack.

Sigh...

This isn't my best writing.

Did I mention how tired I was? Oh, right, the vomit joke. Sorry about that.

RIP Little Gadget

My computer is dead. My poor sweet little acer aspire one is no more. She wouldn't turn on the other day. I used all my powers, then all my nerdly husband's powers, but we couldn't get a heartbeat. Gadget's guts contained many things... including the non-backed up copy of a paper that is due on Tuesday.

Well, it was backed up, but last week's version of it.

Also, all my emails, email addresses, countless files of school work, academic googogs, photos, a proposal... my entire life outside of the bedroom essentially. When it happened, an me facing a deadline (or seven), I panicked. I felt like Dr. McCoy when he and Kirk beamed aboard the Klingon ship to try to save General Kang. There I was, straddling the laptop version of a tiny little Klingon and the best hope for galactic peace in my lifetime... pounding on it's chest. The only thing missing was the globules of pepto-bismol pink blood and Christoper Plummer yelling at me. I kept pounding on it daying, "C'mon dammit, breathe!" But nothing.

"Dammit Jim, I'm a grad student, not a computer engineer."

So I called Nerds On Site. They sent a fifth-level half orc mage with a million experience and two charisma to my appartment. He wasn't pretty to look at but he knew his shit.

Gadget could either be sent to the manufacturer and returned in working order with an 80% chance of having all my files in tact OR we could crack open her still warm corpse and retrieve my data in time to hand in assignments.

"I'll get the sledgehammer."

Sigh... Here's the thing. I DO run backups. But they had been buggy for a couple of weeks and I was too busy to work out the kinks on my desktop. I learned the hard way. MAKE BACKUPS A PRIORITY PEOPLE.

Let's see, so that's $550 for the laptop, + $120 for the awesome 6 hour battery (which totally delivered, btw), another$280 for three hours of the nerd's time = $1050 + tax for me to have a laptop for 7 months.

I know that they won't do anything for me, and I will probably get laughed at, possibly before I hang up the phone. But I still might call acer and yell at them anyway. I need to mourn. But there is no time.

Gadget, you may be dead... but this desktop has essentially mind-melded with you. If I've learned anything from Star Trek is that rebooting the series is always possible. And your consciousness can live on indefinitely in the hard-drive/brain of another computer until Kristy Alley goes to rehab and the genesis project is released.

Say it with me: "KAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHNNNNNN!!!!"