Yikes...

THE NEAR-BREAK-UP

Yesterday, I had a late-afternoon coffee with an editor friend. Since I was heading to my shrink afterward, I began telling my friend how I was SICK to death of the way my shrink was constantly encouraging me to dwell on my miserable childhood. And perhaps even more sick of the way that the very method of therapy seems to put me in a position where I am always asking myself: What's wrong with me? In what ways do I suck? And how can I maybe suck a little less? That I was at least equally sick of talking about life more than I was living it, it seemed.

I told her I wanted to stop trying to prevent unhappiness and start trying to make happiness.

I wanted to lighten up!

Anyway, after I left my friend, I waltzed up the 20 blocks to my shrink's office, feeling invigorated to the point of Mary-Tyler-Moore-ness by resolve: After 8 years, I was finally going to tell my shrink it was over! I was going to get that albatross off from around my neck!

And this time, unlike a few times in the past, I knew I wasn't motivated simply by my frustration over my lack of progress or because I was pissed off that my shrink had never suggested I take anti-depressants--which as I've said repeatedly, have really changed my life.

No, I was going to quit because I felt ready to move on, to take the reins, to take more responsibility for improving my life rather than passively depending on her to guide me through it. What's more, I was going to put the money I saved on my sessions to take myself out once a week: to dinner, or to see a performance at Brooklyn Academy of Music, or jazz at Lincoln Center, etc. Woo-hoo! Brilliant! Why hadn't I thought of this before?

And then I got to the office ... and I didn't want to start right in with the bad news ... so I started telling her about the awkwardness of the Saturday night dinner ... and about how I bumped into someone I used to care for a great deal over the last few days and how even just the quickest hug from him as we were both leaving an event tugged at my heart-strings (but is that only because I once thought his love could redeem me, if only I could win it? and is that healthy?) ... and ... one thing and another ... and I didn't go through with it.


http://www.marieclaire.com/sex-love/dating-blog/when-to-break-up-dump-your-shrink-noise-pollution


I really don't want to poke fun at this person's blog entry, being as he/she has spent the last eight years in therapy, but....

as usual, I am going to do it anyway....

I read this post this morning, and honestly, I could not stop laughing. Honey, who is your shrink? I think that you owe it to the community to make their identity public. Did you check on the wall for one of those framed degrees? You should probably take a look next time you go to break up with her.

You had a good plan going there! What happened?

Let's see if I can work some magic that, apparently, your overpaid shrink was unable to do.

I want you to ask yourself a question. What kind of a person requires someone else to "guide them through their life", and pays them to do so? But, more importantly, what kind of a person takes that money from the forementioned person while telling them to take the reigns in their own life???

Answer to question one: Someone who does not see their own strength and value. A person like this requires constant reassurance and guidance through the winding roads of life. They fear rejection, not having someone to love them, not making enough money, not pleasing their friends and family, and, most likely is a doormat in every relationship they have ever been in.

Answer to question number two: A hypocritical asshole who is getting rich off of others' suffering.

Do I really have to point out that your inablity to "break up" (nice choice of words, btw) with your shrink is the core of the reason that you go to the shrink in the first place? Why in the world would your "friendly neighborhood shrink" want it any other way?

You seriously mean to tell me that you could NOT walk into her office and tell her that after eight years, she sucks at this? That's funny, in an ironic and pathetic kind of way.

I think you should just put a quarter in one of those "fortune teller" machines every morning, and just go with it. It will be cheaper, and equally as effective, being as YOU live your life, therefore she is only guessing at solutions based on what you have told her, and accumulated data acquired through careful "scientific study".

That is all you are, honey. You are another quarter in the fortune teller gimmick machine. You put something in, you get something out. It is worth a quarter? Well, only if it seems to come true. So, you have put thousands of quarters in the machine, and it keeps spitting out prognostications and advice, but yet, the end result is always the same.....please drop in another quarter. Then you just wait to see if it was correct.

Do you NOT realize that YOU control whether or not your future is bright and happy? Why should someone else have to tell you that? How old are you? Listen, everyone has had shit in their lives. That is why this profession of "therapy" even exists. This may come as a revelation to you, but there are people who have lived through worse and come out of it without eight years of wasting time and money on regurgitated stock answers that lead NO WHERE!

Find a good friend who REALLy cares and will listen when you just need to emotionally vomit all over them. They are a rarity these days, but they do exist. Have a nice, relaxing day that YOU determine what makes you happy at that moment. Don't forget your past, use it to make you stronger and to guide you and teach others how to live, laugh and love. Make it into a strength instead of a weakness. Allow yourself to fail. You can't have it all, all of the time. Bury your head in your pillow and cry if you need to cry, then get up, look in the mirror and see the puffy red eyes and blotchy skin on your cheeks. Then ask yourself if that is the person you want the world to see. If the answer is as it should be...no. Then get cleaned up, find a reason to smile, and show that smile to the world.

Everything that happens to us, in this life, forms who we are, and who we will become. Don't fear it, but see it for what it is.....just life testing your fortitude.

After eight years, if you still feel as though you are not ready to live your life through your own ability to make decisions and handle the ramifications of them, well then, PLEASE fire that woman, and find someone who will do what they claim is their job....to just be a short term foundational guide....not a dependency.

Speaking of dependency....good luck with those anti depressants. ;)