perfectionism

so, the dreams have slowed down but haven't really stopped. i started seeing a new therapiste (she's female, so it's therapiste, not therapist, you know), and she suggested that it's very likely that i am finally ready to start dealing with some of the stuff i've been burying, and as a result my unconscious mind is starting to root it up and spit it out because it's finally ok to do so. sounds alright to me, and i'm sure it's better than the alternative (which i gather means swallowing it all continually throughout the remainder of my life until it eventually either explodes and takes me with it or rots me from the inside out) - but it's still exhausting.

frankly, i'm bored with my own brain's inability to be obtuse. we're always reading and hearing about dream interpretation, and how certain things have symbolic meanings that it frequently takes specialists or at least books to muddle our way through, and then even freud admitted that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. but really, my dreams are so glaringly obvious when they even bother to be symbolic at all that it is, honestly, embarrassing. but i suppose that all just reinforces what the therapiste says - must be time to deal with it if i can't even be bothered to codify it.

in any case, in churning through this with the therapiste, it became patently obvious that my underlying, root-cause issue for many of my difficulties (challenges? problems?) is perfectionism. now, those who know me are all sitting and reading this with giant question marks overt heir heads, because i come across as far less than a perfectionist, but there's so much truth to this it was a little painful to hear.

i want things to have discrete results, provable truths, to be right or wrong, black or white, and in the end i prefer it if everything is perfectly lined up and executed to the utmost. when you realize just how impossible perfectionism is, you can see just how paralyzing it can be. roll a massively lacking self image and more than a few pounds of self-loathing on top of that realization, and you have yourself a recipe for never having the confidence to stat anything at all, and for becoming disenchanted with the things one does start before they're ever finished because they're not going right. crap. sounds so terribly familiar i wanted to curl up and quit right there.

and social anxiety? don't even get me started. in sales, there is a thing known as the 'hit rate', essentially the percentage of successful sales made for a volume of calls made. if you're over 10% in most industries, you're superstar. and in real life all our interactions have a hit rate, but we think of them as friends, acquaintances, enemies, or just those who can barely tolerate us. try loading perfectionism into your social requirements and you will desire nothing less than a completely unachievable hit rate of 100%. you want every interaction to go perfectly and to come out the other side with a new best friend. that is never going to happen, so you obsess over what might go wrong. you obsess over what did go wrong. you obsess over what didn't go wrong so you can try to repeat it next time you run up against this person.

what i think makes the most sad about it all is what it may have cost me. i realize this may make little sense, but i do what i do now because of my perceived inability to do what i want to do. i have never wanted to be anything less than creative for a living, to have a consistent outlet for everything inside me that wants to be expressed and to share the beauty or ugliness of that with the rest of the world, be it through visual arts or music. but while i may have some natural ability, i haven't the patience to develop it because it should be perfect already. i have a subconscious impression that everything i attempt should be coming out right and that learning shouldn't be necessary because it means taking imperfect steps. and so i leave myself with a partial ability to do anything creative that is even worthless in and of itself because i won't use it due to its imperfection. now i live in a world of numbers that are provable and discrete. there are right and wrong answers. i exercise some creativity in what i do because there is definitely an art to massaging margins and managing bids, and the handling of salespeople versus product management is an art form all to itself. but in the end, it's not me, and i'm just now beginning to mourn the loss of what i might have been able to do if i didn't just see art and music as having unprovable success rates. in my mind, artistic success translates as sales of work or as being completely satisfied with end products, and i may never have sold a thing and with my current expectations i will never be free to enjoy the satisfaction of looking at my own work and being satisfied with it. that has destroyed my ability to do anything with my desires and left me in a world of numbers.

even now i want nothing more than to spend the rest of the day going over this post to correct everything that is wrong in it. poor word choice here, typo there, that section should be scrapped altogether. that i ever post anything is a bit of a miracle. i do have to go and get in the shower to prepare for work, so instead of revising and editing for rest of the day i will just bury myself in numbers and in the back of my mind wonder about who might be reading this and what they're thinking of it and apologizing to them in my head for all the mistakes in it and for the fact that it really could be so much better written.

ouroboros

i had a very cool experience on friday night. a pair of our friends came over and spent the evening with us, we ate indian food cooked right here in our very own kitchen (except for the naan - that's done out back on the grill, friend), and sat at the table for the next 5-6 hours and drank wine and talked. and talked. and talked more. and across the course of the night one of them opened up just a hair.

this person is reserved and wears as much emotion as possible on the inside. i get the impression that to have such a conversation for this person is rare, and to be let in on it either implies a special level of either trust or drunkenness or both. in any case, there is some measure of darkness that marches in lockstep with my own, but it was the admission that struck me. when talking about it all, and the ability to recognize it and snap oneself out of it with relative ease, there came this: 'sometime i like it'.

and that's just the thing. sometimes we all like it. B has always made fun of me for wanting to be a 'tortured artist'. she's always contended that i am, in reality, far to happy-go-lucky to be such a thing, and my life hasn't really ever been terrible enough to qualify as tortured. point taken. agreed, my life has been relatively kind to me, and i try my damnedest to be happy-go-lucky. but i do love to be tortured. many of us do, and some of us more than others.

what our friend said struck me for the truthfulness of it, and it was a strange repeat of a conversation i had had earlier in the week with someone else. to hear other people admit that they like to be in that place sometimes was oddly freeing. i don't know that i had ever really admitted to myself before that i like to be there to some degree. B and i talked about it a little, and she nailed it right on the head: for me, it's because it feels natural. it is, at my base, who i have been for a long, long time, and it's easy and comfortable for me to be miserable. it takes work to be happy, it takes little effort to swim around in one's own head.

and this seems to be where the problem lies. like the mythical ouroboros, i eat my own tail because i like the taste of it, never realizing that all along i am consuming myself. i refer to my depressive cycle as a downward spiral, but that is only half right - it is truly an inward spiral, one that turns in on itself more and more and more until the outside world ceases to feel familiar and my own tail is the only flavor that becomes acceptable. social anxiety makes it that much easier for me. if one fears others, there is a convenient excuse not to eat with them, and simply to withdraw into my own dinner party with and of myself.

that cycle is a tough one to break. i taste good to me. my own sadness and anger are the meat and potatoes on which i have raised myself, and that i consume myself in feasting on them is immaterial, or just goes unnoticed. this is how i got to where i got to. i enjoyed it. i loved it. i ate myself, gorged on my own darkness until i nearly ate myself whole, and if i consider myself as that mythical lizard i ate my own tail and had to get a look at the back of my own head entering my jaw before i could stop.

that is how close it was. writing that made me see it for real, and i can admit it to myself. i was likely within weeks, if not days, of finishing the meal. thank god for that fight, thank god for that one single clear moment, and thank god for that god-forsaken place i went that made me stop eating.

ramble. rumble. grumble.

scattershooting while wondering what ever happened to...crap, i don't know anyone obscure enough to pull one of those off. that's just fine with me, and it should be with you, too. thppt.

so, i mentioned the other day that B pointed out that i get testy when confronted with large crowd situations. fair enough. who, when confronted with one of his deepest fears, wouldn't get a little bent out of shape? especially when that deepest fear doesn't involve something truly optional, like heights or dogs or spoons (?) or something like that. crowds are part and parcel of society, and involvement with them in many situations is compulsory in order to get anything done, like truly visit a church and get to know its members. its not like going to the mall scares me - i'm not an agoraphobe. it's not merely the volume of people that gets to me. it's the necessity of interacting with them that spooks me. terrifies me, actually.

small aside: 3 months ago i'd have gone into the fellowship room at the church we visited, afraid or not. the idea of admitting that it frightened me was more scary than the fear itself. now that i've admitted it to myself, i find i'm not quite so able to sack up, which is a little disappointing. i'm hoping it's just part of the healing process.

anyhoo, B asked me what it is that frightens me about people, and when i hedged she postulated that it may be that i fear what they might want from me and that i can't control that. i don't think that's the whole thing, but a substantial chunk of that rings true. it might explain the terror i feel when i have to make a phone call for work while mall crowds don't bother me. it might explain why i can play drums or speak in front of a congregation, but the idea of standing in a receiving line makes me want to curl up in a ball. is there some paranoia about what demands every human interaction might place on me? could i truly be afraid of what everyone might want from me?

i hope not. that might be more depressing than an unexplainable fear. i know i'm not the most trusting person in the world, but i'd like to think i have slightly more faith in everyone else than to flat-out judge every intention like that, but who knows? it could be the case. if my whole life has been one giant jacked-up response to stress, then every single demand placed on me could be an additional stressor. and thusly, every single interaction could potentially produce a demand and, consequently, an additional stressor. and that would be bad, see?

eh, i don't know. something about it doesn't quite fit. i know B is right to some degree. there's no question that i fear what people might want from me. the idea of being asked for something bugs the crap out of me. but in a situation like a party full of people i don't know, what could possibly be demanded of me? there's no reason to expect that anyone would produce any stress for me beyond the interaction itself. so is it possibly the control variable? is it that the conversations themselves are beyond my knowledge, a collection of 100% unknowns? could be.

i love to present myself as a free-wheeling, go-with-the-flow kind of guy, and there's a lot of truth in that presentation. i loathe having everything mapped out and scheduled to death. it seems to me to literally kill the moments if you know precisely everything about them. (i split an infinitive there, which is a pet peeve of mine, but i'm going to let it go this morning. se how that works? spontaneity!) that said, there's something to having a very general plan, just an outline of what needs to get done or a map of the topography so you can be sure you're not getting lost. and every conversation with a stranger has none of that. it is all unknown. shoot, even many business conversations are mostly unknowns. many conversations with people i know fit the bill. but a friendly conversation, you can be reasonably sure, only takes place on ground that presents no threat. strangers and business, it could go either way.

i'm out of time, which is too bad because i don't think subject is finished. while all of the above might be components of my anxiety, they just don't feel like they have the gravity required to produce the abject terror i feel when confronted with a conversation. i still just fear being wrong, a fool, stupid, unfunny, an asshole, whatever, more than i fear what someone may ask of me. but i do wonder if the unknowns are what produce those fears. if i know what's coming i can avoid looking like an ass. if i don't, i can't. one of the reasons i'm prepared in business whenever i can be. hard to look like a moron when you're prepared.

but it doesn't explain why i care. the unknowns make me unsure, being unsure makes me fear looking dumb and being disliked (a reduction, but accurate enough). ok, great. but why do i care what anyone thinks? why does it even matter? especially for someone who doesn't really care for people all that much.

social anxiety disorder

so, i had a friend ask me exactly what my intent was in creating this blog, especially with such a first post as the one below. honestly, i hadn't thought out why. i have a need to write things. i do it a lot. but this new...mess, has me needing not just to write, but to write to.

this is a side of me that a few people know. the messy side. i've never hidden the fact that i'm a little odd, a little weird, that i look at things differently and i'm not afraid to admit that i'm more than a little awkward. but i've always acted like i own that and that it's by choice, and i feel suddenly like maybe getting out of this mess might involve my admitting freely that i haven't chosen those traits at all. they're part of what's in my head, and what's in my head operates out of fear.

i was officially diagnosed in 2003 (?) with social anxiety disorder. most people have some idea of what that looks like, but i had someone ask me once what it means inside me to have it.

so, what's it like to have social anxiety disorder? have you ever said something truly stupid out loud, something you were sad to have said the moment it left your lips? and then you were left wondering if everyone in earshot thought you were maybe a little slow? ok, take that feeling and apply it to everything you say. now to everything you do. now expand things so that it applies to literally every person you see around you, not just the ones with whom you interact, and you're getting the idea.

we could try this one, too: remember back to when you were going through puberty, the really awkard part. there was someone you had a major crush on. and when you saw her (him) all you could think of was how sad you were that you were in this really awkward phase, and that this person wouldn't want much of anything to do with you. now, take that feeling and make it apply today to each person you meet, and you're starting to get some part of the vibe.

the difference? those things stopped over time. you grew out of puberty, that idiotic comment faded from memory. for me, each thing i say, every move i make is followed by near-paralyzing concern over what impressions are left. many of us feel that same kind of fear with each moment of our lives. most are blessed with short-term memory that allows us to forget that concern immediately. those like me cannot forget. we obsess about those moments, spiraling over them again and again, wondering what others are thinking of us. and 'those moments'? they are every moment spent speaking to someone that hasn't become part of the trusted few.

and that's the secret. there are only two ways i have found to beat it and unparalyze myself. in business situations, i have learned to tell myself silently and constantly that performance is the issue, not personality, that not only can my likability be offset by the fact that i am very good at what i do, it is perfectly likely that it doesn't even enter into the equation. thus, it is easy for me to dismiss my concerns as irrelevant. but personal interactions can't be treated this way, and the only way to beat that demon is repetition or blind luck. many people can never make it into the trusted file. i have few close friends for that very reason; i always feel uncomfortable. family is easy because they're stuck with me regardless (and frankly, they're as weird as i am). some few slowly become trusted because i have seen enough evidence to suggest that they do not judge me persistently. and then there is a subset so small it has only ever held a handful of very special people with whom i was immediately ok. people so tied to me in some impossible-to-explain way that i never for a moment worried about what they thought. i have some of those people in my life now, some have moves on to bless other lives, and there is one who is lost to this world forever. and they are my true loves, the ones who make this place bearable, the anchors who kep me from drifting into isolation and give me the faith in myself and the strength to go out into that big ol' scary world every day. without them, i would withdraw completely.

so there. that's what it's like. i fear everyone and everything i do, but for a small percentage. some are good people with whom i have formed comfortable rapport. some are my soul mates, i feel, angels of a sort to help me cope. and would gladly give my life for any of them, for they are what gives me any sort of life at all.