Session 2

2nd meeting with the shrink this morning.

It is such a surreal situation. I walk into the receptionist's area to check in and confidently announce "I am Joe Testa and I have a 9:00 appointment with Jim", as I prepare to sit down with Jim and tell him how crushingly unconfidant I am.

Bizarre.

Therapy is going exactly the way I wanted it to. The shrink has me thinking; he raises questions in my mind that I spend the next week bouncing around in my skull.

Today got a little heavy. I am dealing with emotions here, Bubba, and I am a supremely emotional man.

I talk/confessed a bit, and after listening quietly he said to me "You cannot live your life as if your self-esteem hangs on every single moment. Every single question someone asks, every single decision that has to be made, every step you take, every conversation that you have. That is an overwhelming burden to carry around."

The opening sentence had me exceptionally close to tears. Because that is how I live my life and it does rip me apart. In every situation no matter how big or how small, I feel like I am being judged and I think I will always come out looking stupid.

It had me close to tears because he tapped into the mother lode. That is exactly how I feel and that is I exactly what I want to get away from.

He said "You cannot expect to have every answer to every question, you cannot expect to learn new things at the speed of light. That is not confidence. Confidence is admitting when you don't know an answer and then going to find that answer."

He said that confidant people don't feel anxiety at not knowing, or in learning new things. They admit that as a human it is impossible to know everything and they go from there.

He said that you cannot control your emotions but you can control the behaviors that raise those emotions. He pointed out that my primary state of being is anxiety, and through avoidance I feed that monster.

As opposed to confronting it.

My reactions are ingrained from decades of practice. I have to learn how to slip my mind, my thoughts, in between my learned responses and the emotion. I need to apply reason and logic. I need to question my response in these situations.

This makes perfect sense to me.

I talked about how I have built this outward confidant guy personae that is pure bullshit. He called it negative confidence, false confidence, which it is. It accomplishes nothing. I mentioned my wonder at how the outward thing will change when I can unearth the real me.

What I said was "I wonder how I will be when the real me comes to the surface." He smiled and asked "Did you hear what you just said?" It made me laugh to think how ludicrous this sounded.

Therapy feels right to me. God knows my brain is twisted and diseased. The shrink has a feast to feed on. In fact his opening line today was "You brought up a lot of issues last week and I am going to try to prioritize them so we can deal with them efficiently."

He asked what I felt the biggest problem is, to which I replied "Lack of confidence because it poisons everything else."

That led to today's discussion.

So far so good. Feels like I am moving forward, or at least challenging my brain to think differently.

Big step. I feel good about it.

Confidant.

Sort of.