There be faeries in the garden

A short, therapeutic rant

Sometimes the psychobabble builds up in my brain and I must set it free. I am a Psych major and this is what it has come to:

I.just.cannot.get.into.this.class. Notice the periods between those words. That is me gritting my teeth. Narrative therapy. Oh my freakin' screeching weasels. 

Page 284 of my textbook (and I doth quote verbatim): "To externalize the problem: What does Depression whisper in your ear?" 

Really? Really??? As a therapist, I should be able to utter that question with a straight face? Quackery and balderdash. If a therapist ever said that to me, the first thing that would flash into my mind is, "This shrink is either a fraud or a pervert." The second thing that would flash into my mind, mere milliseconds later, would be "Oh boy. This is going to be good. I will toy with him much in the way a sweet fluffy kitten gently dismembers a lizard before going in for the kill." It would be very therapeutic for me, but I doubt the shrink would make it through the session without excusing himself to swallow a bottle of Xanax. Any ethical therapist with an ounce of common sense would know that someone who is clinically depressed does not have depression whispering in their ear - they have it screaming in their brain 24/7. I mean for God's sake, the only thing this kind of therapy might solve is the mild distress caused by chipped fingernail polish or, at most - at MOST - the undesirable aftereffects of consuming a tainted burrito at Taco Bell. 

And get this: you are supposed to close the session by extending the story into the future. You are supposed to ask a client - please remember that I am studying addiction counseling here - "What do you predict for the coming year?" Holy mother of spotted hyenas! Putting myself in the client's shoes, the first thing I would predict is the imminent demise of my shrink. The second thing I would predict is going to jail for same. My guess is the therapist could not predict his own year into the future. Why on earth would he ask the client such a preposterous question? 

My hair hurts. I am going to bed.

Thug's Guide to Higher Consciousness

I am thinking of writing a book about my mental struggles to attain higher consciousness. Here is the preface:

Here is what I am learning on my own journey. I am not saying I've arrived at enlightenment yet. I'm still fumbling with the damn light bulb, but I am sharing in case it might help someone else. We got our Thug Kitchen cookbook, now here is the preface to your Thug's Guide to Higher Consciousness:
1. There are those of us who spend a lot of time trying to silence the committee in our heads. You know the feeling. It makes bad decisions and then berates you for them when you try to go to sleep at night. This is not the real you. The real you is hiding in the basement waiting for the committee meeting to be over, but it never is. Kind of like Congress and we all know how much they get done.
2. You cannot silence the committee without help. The human primate is a social species. Even us introverts need at least one other person with whom we can discuss committee decisions before we act on them. This person has to be someone with whom we can identify. Someone who will not judge, but who will give you honest feedback. For instance, if your committee suggests that you will feel a lot better if you provoke a moose in rutting season, your friend (who has probably provoked a rutting moose or two in their day) will remind you what happened the last time you did that and tell you that you should probably take a short, but vigorous walk and then have a hot bath and some tea instead. Your committee would not think of this. Trust me.
3. This person cannot be you, no matter how smart you think you are.
4. When you feel the urge to act on a committee decision, you should almost always do the exact opposite thing. For example, if the committee tells you to sit and agonize the answer is almost always going to be to get up and move. If the committee tells you to stay up late at night obsessing, the answer is almost always go the hell to bed.
5. If it seems counter-intuitive, it is probably the right thing to do. If you are responding the way you always respond and it isn’t working, doing more of it isn’t going to work any better.
6. It is human to fail. It is healthy to observe those failings and acknowledge them. It is healthy to take steps to prevent them from happening again. It is unhealthy if you don’t let them go. If you are constantly wading through a pile of garbage that keeps getting higher, the garbage will win. Eventually there will be so much garbage you can’t move. It suffocates you, it walls you in, it is piled so high you can’t get over it. Take the trash out every night and leave it in the damn trash can. You would not run outside the next morning, bring last night’s trash bag into your house, and climb in the bag with it. It would be really bad if you did that every day. Wouldn’t take a whole lot of time to start stinking up the house. A week’s worth of the shit will fill your house with enough noxious fumes to down a healthy ox. Mental trash is the same way. Let it go for God’s sake. Just because the garbage men haven’t come yet, it doesn’t mean that you should accumulate the stuff until they show up.
7. And finally, the act of taking out the trash is an act. Not a feeling. Not an act of will power. Not a pleasant thought that you should ponder until you make it a shitty thought. Even Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz had to click her fucking heels together in order to go home. Just saying, “I dream of a better tomorrow” will not make it so. For most of us this is the hardest part of all. Most of us can get with the mentally prepared program, but then when it comes time to follow through, it is like, “Oh gee. Look at the time. My committee is meeting in 5 minutes. Gotta run.” You can think of spreading sunshine and farting rainbows but if you don’t actually do something, that sunshine and those rainbows aren’t going to magically spring out of your ass. Wax on, wax off, little grasshopper.
Peace out.

Doctor Mayhem

I’ve lost another friend ... too sadly and too soon.  Over the last few weeks I’ve come to realize just how important he was too me.

Bizarre, yes.  Always outside the box ... definitely yes. To the uninitiated and unremittingly conventional, he was perhaps a bit threatening ... even scary. But that was only on the surface. The man had a sweet and gentle soul, which was completely at odds with the image.

He did like to shake things up, especially for those he called “sheeple.” In fact, I think it may have been his mission to make the life of an iconoclast an art form.

As his friend I was not allowed to even consider staying in my shell of introversion. At his urging, I came to his Halloween parties as an Oompa Loompa, Baby Jane Hudson, a dead jester, Monica Lewinsky in a blue dress from Goodwill and knee pads with hot glue in my wig, and a slutty chauffeur.

 I bless Bud for not allowing me to be a bore, for being open to all the possibilities of art, music, movies, fun, and life.

http://cltampa.com/artbreaker/archives/2014/10/23/rip-bud-mayhem-a-true-tampa-orginal#.VFkDuxSgLmU

Tampa Train Station

More Fun With Words

I think many would agree that both the scientific and vernacular words for lady and gentleman parts are silly.

To my ear, “Vulva” sounds like “vulgar.” “Pussy” sounds sweet and evokes the image of an adorable pet. In Greek, “vagina” means “sheath,” so "sheath" may be my preference in future.

“Penis” is far too pretty sounding to describe the actual appendage. The Greek from which it comes means “tail,” so "tail" it could be except that it has an altogether different meaning in the expression "piece of tail."

“Dick” is fairly matter of fact and suggests a derivation from the root form “ridiculous.” “Scrotum” sounds just about right. “Junk” seems appropriate to describe the whole ensemble.

Sometimes the slang is insulting though imaginative: “gash,” “bearded clam,” “love muscle,” “skin flute.” “Cunt” and “cock” sound just plain horrible.

Words to describe the acts performed by these parts is the subject of another entry.

Oh, look – a squirrel!

“Someone once asked me why do you always insist on taking the hard road? and I replied why do you assume I see two roads?”

                  Unknown

You’re the student of psychology, so please come up with an alternative label for ADD ... one that doesn’t contain a double negative.

You know how I feel about quirks, and how angry I get that they are generally seen as deficits and disorders rather than blessings. They are what make us unique. Be they genetic accidents or the karmic hand we are dealt, they cannot be denied.

So why not accept them and embrace them and make them work for us? For the time being I’ll call what you have Cosmic Renaissance Multiple Focus Condition (CRMFD).

The ramble above this one was written before I read your latest. I got it to 140 words, and I hope it will be the last post from the desk of Mister Naughty Pants. Or maybe not.

By the way, it bugs me that the dialog is backwards. Is this good or bad for the brain? And can it be fixed?

Digression #3 (CRMFD): What about showing your photographs as a slide show at the gallery rather than as expensive prints pinned to a wall? My art is moving off the wall rapidly. Because, well, you know, we both seem to suffer from OTWS (Off the Wall Syndrome).

Three weekends; three photos

Much catching up to do

Dear John,
I have sadly neglected my end of the conversation. In the way of my people (the mentally ill), I will overcompensate today which has the tremendously beneficial side effect of allowing me to procrastinate on my school work. The current class is family therapy, the teacher is beyond un-inspirational (meaning that she not only meets, but exceeds, the low end of the scale in the end of class survey which unfortunately does not provide the option of rating her performance using negative numbers).

But I digress since before becoming inert, we were discussing viscera and vomiting. Interesting that the butterflies in the stomach can indicate impending bliss or impending doom. For me it has always been the latter. Interestingly enough, when I tried to pinpoint how I feel when anticipating something exciting, I found that the only suitable term was "impatient." I think I am afraid the anticipated thing will slip away if it does not happen right-fucking-now. It is a paradox. Anticipating something good makes me almost angry. Fear brings butterflies.

This is why I have worked so very hard to live in a state of neutrality where neither anticipation nor fear seep into my consciousness. They are allowed to stay in my sub-conscious where I keep things like old telephone numbers, slide rules*, and certain old relatives in creaky rocking chairs of whom I was not particularly fond. But the pre-frontal cortex is off-limits. This is either dysfunctional repression or a state of Zen, depending on whether you ask a psychiatrist or a Buddhist monk.

*In composing this sentence, I was forced to use Google since I could not remember if these archaic devices were called "slide rules" or "slide rulers." Oh look - a squirrel! The Museum of HP Calculators.

One love,
Carol (a.k.a. still "Not-John")