May 6

 Eyes are bad today. Difficulty reading. Which makes the coding work I have been doing today more challenging than usual. But eh. At this point. I don't super need to see what I'm doing... blind chess is half my career. Still. Bad. My eyesight comes and goes. Which. Eh. In and of itself is not good. Just another one of those bullshit symptoms I suspect.

I ran out of hydration salts end of last week. Been feeling it. I went out yesterday to pick some up. It definitely makes a difference. It could also explain my eyes today. They do much better with hydration salts. Part of the suspected hypovolemia dysautonomia malarkey.

Therapy this week. Week 1 of 2 of our "closure process". I was ready to end it last week. But. Deferred judgement to the therapist. As the - amusing - recap.

I am zen with ending it now. So. Any closure period would be about you really.

No no. It's not about me. It's about you.

Ok. Then I am done.

Well. And consider the relationship.

. . . .

( which implicitly then puts a you and me back into the "only think about me" statement ).

sigh.

So anyway. Ignoring the whole cake and eat it angle. This week I started by asking what the therapist wanted to talk about. Somewhat mischievious because it subverts the usual setup. But also legitimate. The therapist had an idea of what a closure looked like from their frame. So. I have no clue what their game plan looks like. You tell me.

The therapist wasn't entirely comfortable. We did for a while talk about who is leading what kind of conversation. It was. Ok. But also. Disingenous ? I had to break it down to the fundamentals. Look. If you make a statement like the process usually takes around 4 weeks. That means. You have an idea of what that looks like. You have a plan - even if its not a written step by step plan, its dynamic. You have a plan of what's going to happen. I. Do not. I am done. This is your idea. Not mine. I said I could just talk about anything. But. That's not the point given you have a clear idea of a process in mind.

Which.

Necessitates you leading.

N'est pas ?

The therapist was defensive for the first half of the session. For. No good reason. I noted at the start just that hint of... unhappy. Some ripple disturbed those waters. What. I don't know. But it registered.

They started by saying they had thought about my stopping of therapy. And. It made them sad.

Ok.

What was my response to that ?

Brutally I answered nothing. No emotional response. I can understand why you might be sad. I figured you possibly would be. But otherwise. Nada. Perhaps I said this is more me being in a "defeated" mindset. Switched off. Than anything else.

We talked about that. The whole. Being done. End of the book. End of the conversation. All things figured out. A final. Awful. Conclusion. Good enough to sit with.

I asked why it made them sad. This was me starting to turn the tables on them.

They went around the houses some. Talking. But. At the end. Because they enjoyed working with me.

Ok.

Tricky. I talked about how tricky the line was about keeping a relationship in a certain space in therapy. At one end of the theoretical spectrum you have that therapist who sits behind the patient, is never seen, a disembodied voice, and is as abstract and disconnected as you get. The cold voice of reason. And at the other end of the spectrum, a full on huggy, living in your pocket human relationship. Therapy these days seems to sit somewhere in the middle towards the disconnected end of the spectrum. But. It doesn't have a clean lane to sit in. There are no "30 mph" signs are there I said. It's a good deal more fuzzy than that.

My implication being. People get attached. And sad. When things end.

This is people. People get attached to their favourite cooking utensil. A pair of slippers. It's what humans do when given half a chance.

The therapist said it wasn't tricky for them. Being sad. 

We danced around it a lot.

In the end it was kind of pointless. I was working at one level. They were working at another level that being sad was ok.

Sure. Yes. Not what I mean.

They wanted to know what was useful and what wasn't. This. Was a complete recap of the week before. I had said this. So I reiterated it. We discussed how useful the final piece of it was - just having someone to listen and notice. I said I didn't know. It was useful. Yes. How useful ? Don't know. At that point I said to be brutal, I am just paying someone to sit and listen to me. I'm not sure that's right.

In any case. Stopping felt very right. And. This was part of the process right ? In finding out ? Stop. See how important that is.

The therapist agreed with this. Sometimes removing something makes it more obvious.

Sure. But also. This is untested. It's not complacency. It's unknown.

The therapist then wanted to know overall if it had been useful, and... whether they had "kept up" with me.

This jangled all the bells for me. I fully flipped the roles around.

Why do you want to know if you kept up with me.

They wanted to know if they able to "meet" me where I was, or able to do that at times. Whether they were smart enough.

Why is that important for you ?

They probably went on for a good 5 minutes here. I listtened. And nodded. And the roles were entirely reversed. I got to listen to them think it through. Reveal what matters to them. 

I tested this because there is in that question a lot of angles. And they are not mutually exclusive either. Many forms of validation basically. Both professionally... and personally. Which ones are what. At what levels. And whether they are *honest* about it.

In the end they petered out and said, I suppose I had better let you answer.

Because I still hadn't.

I did the easy bit first. Overall useful. Yeah. We had covered that last week too. But. I went over it again.

Then the keeping up bit. Which. I took as the thing they really wanted to know. And unless I am much mistaken not just for purely professional reasons. Basic human thing. Because. Therapists as it turns out are also humans. ( fairly sure ).

I told them that they did keep up by and large. To be an ass about it. And within certain domains. That they had a wide breadth of knowledge and were smart - within those domains. I knew which ones were no good, and which ones they were better at. Particularly being mindful. And knowing psychology. And therapy. It meant there was less friction there. I didn't have to spend time explaining the basics.

That I thought they were a "high value person" to be an ass about it and its not like I rate people in a table. I corrected myself. I value all people. Regardless of background, sophistication or otherwise. Because everyone has a unique perspective. A unique set of information. But. Not everyone can reach the same places. It's like finding a baker who can make bread. Not everyone can make bread. You find a skilled baker. Oh.

And if you like bread.. the therapist said.

Yeah. I said I find people the higher they go on that scale, the less friction you get. The less need to explain and backtrack. Your bandwidth increases, because you can communicate more in less time.

But people like that are unusual. Rare even. And often only in one domain. Or two.

The therapist raised the point about peers again. Circling the same thing.

Yeah.

If you were someone I had met outside of therapy, you would probably be someone I liked talking to I said. And hanging out with. Maybe. But maybe not. I don't see all of you, and I get a shadow of you that I think is a difference between your professional person and your private one.

I didn't say more than that. I left it there. But the implication is, the person I see in therapy is someone I would like talking to. The person in the real world. Perhaps not so much. I think we are two different people. They are picky and exacting and high demand. And I am... absolutely not that. And find that exhausting at the very least. I could be very wrong about that aspect of them. Perhaps in reality they are a zen cow. I don't think so though, judging by how many times they have found fault in the office environment. It does not speak of someone who is accepting. And instead someone who is exacting. But. That also might be a symptom of projected anxiety. Worry that the environment is not good enough for the people coming to see them. Rather than their preference. All that being said. I'd still take a good bet that they are exacting in the real world. And have pretty good disipline in their professional role to leave a lot of that at the door.

We kind of left it there. The therapist underscored next week would be our last. I didn't miss it. A human ripple there. Just the slightest whiff of passive aggressive poking at a potential wound you are ending it. But. I have no wound. Or worry. No attachment. At all. Which is curious for me. Because I get attached to all sorts of stupid things really quickly. I still have Athenas big solid ball she used to roll around the house sitting in my bathroom. Umoved for 2 years now. And I wont get rid of it. Dont want to get rid of it. It is. Part. Of my history.

So. Attachments. Yeah.

But interestingly not to therapy. Or the therapist. Which again is so weird. I get attached to people.

This did actually come up in the session. We talked about endings. And I said endings sucked. I hated endings. But... not this one.

Anywho. Next week last week.

The therapist has said they will keep open the next few weeks after they get back from holiday in case I change my mind - I had said it was possible given I didn't know - and that in any case, their door was always open, assuming they had appointment space.

So that was that.

On my end. I am zen with it. For me this week was mostly a nothing burger. It was really for them. Not me. I am ok with that. Fine with that. I don't mind at all.

I got the sense that the therapist is running a line here. That tension. Not entirely truthful with themselves. Not entirely open within the process.

I suspect they just like talking to me. Period. And that me not talking to them every week is a genuine downer. I mean. They said as much. Just. In a very therapy safe way. Remove the safe veneer. I think it cuts a little deeper.

I wish the therapist could just be honest. But. You are liable to start breaking boundaries if you do that. That tricky line.

And.

All of this should not be a huge surprise.

If you end up talking with someone in a pub every week for a year. Unless they are annoying the shit out of you. You're probably going to miss them when they are not propping up the bar beside you.

That it's therapy. Is neither here nor there.

We shall see how next week goes. The finale. I. Have zero clue what is left to say to be honest. Half of this week was a recap of the one before. I am not annoyed or frustrated with this. I am patient. Calm. Open minded. No transgressions. So I will sit. And listen. And see where they want to go.

Oh.

One other thing came up.

About the defeated bit.

I still hold hope for you the therapist said.

Uh huh.

And I can see that you don't.

Sure.

How does that make you feel ?

Nothing I said. I understand why you hold hope. I understand your reasoning. I understand why I have none. And my reasoning. And the gap that exists between the two.

I didn't go into it further than that. I left the rest implied and unsaid. Not least of which is the lean that a therapist is sort of *contractually obligated* to have the optimistic side.

The other irony this week. I did end up leaving her behind mid session. Context levels. Everything the same at one level - fundamental particles - and different in a higher context. Different emergent rules. Same system. Neurons. Compared to liking buttered toast. They got some of it. Got lost in the weeds of my understanding of emotions, and sadness and what "tricky" meant. Basically. No signal. Versus signal. A photon hitting a receptor. Versus not. Ironic. Given they were also asking if they kept up.

Typically they do.

I said it was a step too far. Didn't matter. Ignore me. I am. Floating in a different model there.

They said they could see I operated in many different places at once, held many different views of the same thing at the same time.

Uh huh.

Anyway.

Roll on next week.