Andy Lien

One of metformin side effects pcos the fun parts of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy is that it’s all about shifting piles.  Seriously.  The idea behind my CBT is that I have distorted beliefs that cause me to feel bad and then I behave in my own worst interest as a result.  An example from yesterday would be: Andy is in the kitchen marauding the snack box because she isn’t a mother (is alone) and thinks it’ll make her feel better to eat as much chocolate as will soothe the Green Monster within her.  In every situation, there is a thought, an emotion, and a behavior…without any concrete order for each to occur.  I can’t say that the equation is strictly saved for CBT; I’m sure it’s what makes the world go around.  Behind every behavior is a thought which is fueled by an emotion.  It’s kind of cool to think about.  And, in my case, it’s necessary to think about.

So, taking yesterday’s example, my $15/week copay is teaching me to examine those parts of the equation to see where my cognitive is leading me astray.  I’m finding that it’s good to trust the emotion because it’s raw and real…it hasn’t been filtered by my thoughts or external societal pressures.  But, it takes a few steps to determine the emotion since I’m using my brain (the cognitive) to ascertain what it is…and my cognitive tends to be full of distortions.  How to figure out the emotion?  Jeez, it ain’t easy.  Sifting through the pile is required.  Another metaphor would be boiling it down.  Where is that nugget of raw truth? I’ll give an past example of how this deconstruction works:

I went camping in Itasca State Park last October with three married couples and their kids, one other single guy, and a set of grandparents.  5 tents and one camper…that meant each of the families with kids were squished into a tent per family, the single guy had a tent, I had a tent, and the grandparents had the camper.  The first night of two, we all bundled up and burrowed into our tents.  In my case, it became apparent quite early that my sleeping bag rated to 20 degrees was a sack of lies.  My two-person tent turned into a cavern of cold with me in the middle, like the smallest Russian Nesting Doll but without any of the surrounding dolls between the biggest and myself.  I pulled out all of my clothing for the weekend and dressed in layers…in everything but undergarments.  I did my best to wedge my Stay Puft self into the sleeping bag and then roll into the extra blanket from my Jeep.  I think I slept for about an hour or two, but then was wide awake for most of the rest of the night.

To me in my little single-person microcosm, there’s a certain torture inherent in not being able to sleep.  That’s when the mind runs amok and my psyche is at its most vulnerable.  Time stretches…lucidity wanes…and self-pity sets in.  In Itasca, I was so cold…and I’m never cold.  It was unfamiliar, it was unwelcome.  I thought of the grandparents in the warm camper, how warm they were.  I could hear their generator keeping them toasty.  I thought of the families with 2-3 kids per tent…not only did each adult have another for body heat, but they had mini-generators draped over, under, and around them.  I thought of the other single guy and how his mummy bag was most definitely doing the trick.  I didn’t know that for sure, but my self-pity assured me that I was the only person suffering.  Oh, woe was me.  I was alone.  Because I was alone, I was cold.  If I had someone else, I would be toasty warm.  Nobody was taking care of me.  I didn’t even have someone else’s pack to rifle through for more layers of clothing.  And, I was alone because nobody loved me.  Worse than that, I was going to be alone forever.  Nobody would ever love me.  I was paying the penance of being an unlovable person by freezing for hours and hours.  I kept peeking out of the tent to try to glimpse the sunlight, but I only saw the other tents…and the wisps of steam radiating out of their vents…chimneys of love and heat.  I think I even cried.

Eventually, the sun came up.  I tried to wait as long as I could before making much noise.  I didn’t want to wake up any of the other campers prematurely…particularly any of the kids as that could make for a miserable day.  Overtired children are very difficult to handle, especially in group settings.  It had occurred to me at some point just to go sleep in my Jeep with the heat on, but I was worried about waking a little darling who might suddenly pull out a bugle and play Reveille.  No, I didn’t need to be the thoughtless singleton who woke the sleeping soldiers.  Instead, when I thought I’d suffered enough, I got out of my layers, my tent, and straightened myself up in the waking sunlight.  It was warmer outside my tent than inside.  Well, shit.  I warmed up as I found my gas stove, made my coffee, poured my organic half-and-half, and went about photographing the sunrise over the lake, quietly.  I’d survived the night and was making the best of my solitary life as best I could.  Dramatic sigh.

The epilogue to the trip included having a lovely time, borrowing an extra (EXTRA!) mummy bag from another family, and sleeping quite soundly all the way through the second night.  It wasn’t until the Therapy Thursday after the trip that I learned how caustic self-pity can be…as well as how avoidable it can be.  My therapist listened to me tell her all about how cold and unloved I was and how I think it might have come from feelings of being alone as a latchkey kid.  Latchkey kid?  Where’d that come from?  Oh, a friend gave me that little gem to wield as she thinks we can all attribute feelings of abandonment to our childhoods.  I thought I was rocking and rolling.  My therapist thought I was off my rocker.

She had me sift through the pile.  Boil it down.  Okay, so I was thinking that I was cold because I was unloved.  How was that a distortion?  Truthfully, I was cold because the temperature was low and I didn’t have enough protection against it.  Why was I not cold due to a lack of love?  Because there’s no such thing.  Hmm.  Okay, so lack of love does not equal lack of warmth.  I’m there.  So what did I do about being cold?  I spiraled into self-pity.  How?  I spent hours sliding down the slippery slope with the first distortion that my discomfort was due to a lack of love and actually found comfort in feeling worse about myself.  It’s like I was giving myself attention and permission to feel bad by telling myself lies.  Get it?  “Oh, Andy…you’re not getting any attention from anyone else so let me give it to you…let me tell you how you’re unworthy of love…let’s focus on you and how you’d be all warm and toasty if you were lovable.  It’s all about you, you, you.”  Misery loves company.

With the first lie, so came the rest of them.  But, what I wasn’t equipped to do was sift through my pile at the time it was happening.  What my therapist walked me through was what I could’ve done, instead.  Self-pity is what?  A reaction to an emotion.  What is the emotion?  Helplessness.  And, the helplessness was followed by sadness.  Was I helpless?  I thought so…but I guess I had options.  I had a vehicle, I had keys, and I had a need…I could’ve entertained that fleeting thought and gone to sleep in my Jeep with the heater on.  Why didn’t I?  I didn’t want to wake any children.  Well, wasn’t the camper generator loud?  Yes.  Were the children awakened by it?  Not that I know of.  Is your Jeep parked next to their tents?  No.  It’s in the parking lot.  Then why would your Jeep engine awaken them?  I guess it wouldn’t have.

To alleviate much self- and temperature-inflicted suffering, that’s all I would’ve had to do.  Just that one paragraph of being my own therapist was required, which is the ultimate goal of therapy, anyway.  Then, I said to my therapist, “I’m still sad because I am, indeed, alone.  I worry that I will always be alone.”

“You might always be alone,” she replied.  So, the next issue is how to deal with that sadness.  See a theme here?  Like yesterday being nobody’s mother…nobody’s wife…nobody’s girlfriend, I worry about being alone forever.  As indicated by tests I’ve taken with my therapist, it is one of my primary fears.  But, it is something that is unavoidable.  She walked me through that progression.  In the tent, I was alone.  There was nobody else physically there with me.  At that time, I had to act on my own best interest rather than be deluded into thinking that someone would help me…I couldn’t conjure something out of nothing.  In my life, I am alone.  There is nobody else physically here with me in a helpmate capacity…and there is nobody to count on as such in the foreseeable future.  At this time and for the foreseeable future, I have to act in my own best interest rather than be deluded into thinking that I can conjure someone out of nothing.

This is where reframing happens.  Reframing is when a seemingly negative situation is consciously changed into a positive opportunity.  It’s a necessary tactic in Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy, or so it seems.  I am alone.  One positive is that I may not always be alone.  But, in the meanwhile, how can I make my solitary life be satisfactory?  How can I view it as a good thing?  Let’s look at last night.  Following the post yesterday, I felt some catharsis…that I’d vented my frustration and sadness.  But, even better than that, I FELT my frustration and sadness.  Despite the snack box binge, I was fully present and conscientious in my examination of why I was crawling out of my own skin.  I didn’t go out and spend money that I didn’t have to spend as a means of distraction.  I didn’t go home and self-isolate and drown myself in cable and wine.  I didn’t buy a box of OREOS and drown myself in sweet trans fat pacifiers.  Instead, I kept my walking date with Rachel and Henry (and the baby blueberry), making sure Grendel got to stretch his legs last night, too.  I spoke of my feelings, but didn’t dwell on them or over-dramatize the situation.  I let it have its time and today I feel like turning around the situation for my betterment.  After all, it’s not the job of reframing to deny the negative situation–a negative situation must be given the limelight in order to acknowledge it and move on to accepting it.  Do I accept that I am alone?  What does it take to come to that acceptance?  What IS acceptance?

Acceptance is the opposite of resistance.  If I can’t change the situation–as I have no control over it–it doesn’t make sense to resist it.  What’s the point of resisting the setting sun?  I have to accept that the sun will, indeed, set…whether or not I want it to.  Likewise, what’s the point of resisting being alone?  I am, in fact, alone.  What can I do to change that?  I’ve been dating for ten years, I’ve tried various methods of meeting people, I’ve changed myself despite my misgivings in order to seem more desirable, I’ve self-medicated myself to forget how much I deplore being alone.  Where did those methods of resistance get me other than down the rabbit hole of low self-esteem?  My resistance only hurt me.  On the flipside, acceptance can only help me.

More than being the opposite of resistance, acceptance is actually not even attempting to change the unfavorable situation.  Accepting that the sun sets means that I will go to sleep in peace and wake up when it rises…rather traversing time zones in a westerly direction each night to keep the day’s sunlight on my life.  To accept being alone means that I go to bed with a certain peace that my life is good, knowing that tomorrow is a new day and the sun will rise.  And, tomorrow, I may find someone to share my life.  But, if I don’t, life is still good.

How do I know that life is good?  By means of reframing.  By looking at the positives of my one-woman play.  By not believing the distortion that the “grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.”  By loving the one I’m with.  Me.  The granddaughter.  The daughter.  The sister.  The friend.  The aunt.  The Godmother.  The employee.  The alto.  The writer.  The artist.  The thirtysomething singleton.

Shifting piles isn’t easy in Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy.  There are so many lies that I’ve come to believe about myself that it’s paralyzing even think about sifting through the piles before shifting them.  But, it gets easier all the time.  My therapist says that it takes 10,000 hours of doing something to become good at it.

That said, I’m getting pretty good at therapy.

Shifting piles?  I’m a pro.