It has always seemed my life has been broken into two parts. Those of intense interest, characterised by childlike wonder and a sense of immersion, and those of extreme boredom, characterised by a blasé attitude to just about everything. I typically spend the time I spent in the latter trying to find something that brings me into the former. Anyway, it was during my horribly existentialist period when I did little or nothing, unless I found it appropriately amusing. Teachers would say, “write this essay”‘and I would respond “well, what’s bloody the point? Life’s inherently meaningless and I could be watching films or walking and writing poetry”. This was a problem apparently. So they sent me off to a therapist, I think this was the first of them. We were talking and I said I was unhappy because people always told me what to do and I had no actual freedom to do anything that actually meant something to me. They asked “well, what would make you happy?”. I explained that I either wanted to be abandoned in a foreign country to my own devices or I wanted to just walk cross-country/hitchhike/backpack to everyplace of interest and I would take my trumpet and harmonica, use my comedy routine at art festivals in Edinburgh and other such places, and generally just peddle for money. They said that this was a highly improbable career path for an eleven year old and, most likely, unsafe. I said “Well, you told me to find something that’d make me happy and I did. The improbability and security aspects of it are entirely meaningless to the overall goal and the predictability and security of my life’s current set of affairs may very well be what makes it so dull”. Essentially what cognitive behavioural therapists try to do is they precede you down a very narrow path through specifically vague questions. These questions are intended to create an appropriate response and result in a state of realisation in which the patient (or client as the medical industry believes is less “offensive”) jumps off the chaise longue (For the spellingly sceptic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaise_longue ), exclaims”eureka”, firmly shakes the therapist’s hand, and runs out of the office a changed man. When you are clever, or crazy, enough to observe the faulty parameters of their logic, they then attempt to throw you out. being as kind as possible to avoid altercation. Another such instance of mine at a therapist’s demonstrates this perfectly.
There I was. A thirteen year old with a motivational problem sitting in a chair counting the tiles in the ceiling once again. What really irritated me was how the tiles met the wall. Not quite half a tile on the far side of the room. I never quite knew how to count those. I still don’t. I try to round it to an appropriate fraction, but I’m never quite content with it. Every once in a while I looked down to make eye contact with the therapist, trying to time it to when he looked up from his note taking. “So when you have one of these anxiety attacks, what are you so worried about?”, he asked, looking over his glasses. “Well, besides society and the basic human condition, I’m just worried about some personal stuff and I’m just, sort of, afraid”, I say rather sardonically. My attempt at humour had failed, but my careful word choice led him away from my interpersonal relations. He asked, “What are you afraid of?”. “I’m just afraid I’ll get worse. That I’ll wake up one day and not be me. I’m afraid I’ll be cruel and hurt people. I’m afraid I’ll snap and become a sadistic sociopath or a suffering schizophrenic”. “Ah, a problem”, thought the therapist, “a perfect opportunity to use a cognitive behavioural strategy, so much better than psychoanalysis”. He asked “How worried does the thought of getting worse make you, on a scale of 1-100?”. “I don’t know, about 85”, I really despise how subjective these scales are and it showed in my tone. “Now, what evidence do you have of getting worse do you have?”. “Well”, I paused, “none I suppose”. “Now how does it make you feel, having realised that you have no evidence to support your fear?” I snapper, not only had he forced me to use a scale, but he asked me “How does that make you feel?”. I calmly begin my rant, “No change”, I swallow, “It’s a fear. By the very definition, it’s irrational. All you’re doing is trying to use a lack of evidence to prove a point. At least, Creationists have creation to go off of. My fear is also about the future. Just because I have no evidence now, it doesn’t mean I will have no evidence in the future. I have no evidence to suggest I’m getting any better. I realise my fear is irrational, but the whole point of fear is to keep you alert. If being afraid of getting worse keeps me acutely aware of getting worse than that could mean a world of difference and that’s enough of a reason for me”. The tables had turned. Usually the clock works in my favour, now it was in his. “Well, it’s getting close to the end of our session. I feel you may want to come back again in a couple of weeks, but if you don’t want to that’s perfectly acceptable”. “Same time two weeks from now should work”, I say, while raising from the uncomfortably comfy chair. I walk out, wondering if I should have told him I wanted to stop coming as much as he wanted me to stop coming.
They asked me the same question, about what I should do to be happy, again rather recently and I told them more or less the same thing I told them the first time round. About wanting to just go mobile and go wherever I fancy by whatever means necessary. They told me it still wouldn’t work and I’d just be running away from my problems and so on. Then they told me I didn’t get the point of the exercise (if I haven’t made this clear already a therapist’s child is a therapist’s worst nightmare) and I pulled a loose paraphrasing of the above John Lennon quote out of my arse and told them they didn’t get the point of life.
A Well Organised Asylum 