#sometimes navel-gazing is okay

Yesterday Reaction Junkie helped me go to my first therapy session with my new therapist. He came in at first, helping me get over my sudden desire to simply curl up and cry. We talked with the therapist for a while, and then I told Reaction Junkie that he should go enjoy happy hour. He got up and gave me a kiss. I told him, “Tell people I said ‘Hi.’” and he headed out.

I started talking to my therapist and he mostly listened quietly, but actively. I felt uncomfortable, a little awkward at first, but eventually settled in and opened up. I talked about work first, then talked about how being depressed has caused issues with social anxiety and made dealing with any poly issues more difficult.

During the conversation about poly, I mentioned what happened at the con Reaction Junkie and I went to about a month ago, and that’s when the tears came. I talked about how upset I’d been, and we got into my thoughts and feelings about poly, jealousy, how you’re “supposed” to do poly, and how I shame myself when I feel like I’m not doing poly “right.” (Obviously there isn’t one way to do poly, but my jerkbrain likes to convince me there is.) I could tell that dealing with poly and jealousy feelings is going to be a theme in my sessions with this therapist.

I brought up the fact that I’ve been having more issues with social anxiety in the past month or so, not being able to talk to new people, not wanting to go to social events, and the like. I said that I feel like I can’t think of things to say to people, and, while in the past couple months prior to this upswing in my depression, I would just shrug off an unsuccessful interaction, and move on, now I feel as though it’s the end of the world.

I talked about how how I compare myself to more outgoing partners and feel bad about the fact that I’m not. Partially because I feel like I should be/have a habit of negatively comparing myself to others, but also because I wish I was more extroverted and comfortable with new people. It would make life easier, and would make finding new partners easier.

That led to a discussion of the fact that when I don’t find new partners as easily or often as a partner, especially if that partner is my only partner and/or someone who is a primary or primary-esque, it makes me feel bad. Besides the fact that new people are fun (At least they used to be for me. Not so much lately, with the depression and all.), I feel vulnerable, like there’s a differential investment in the relationship, like they have more options, so they aren’t as concerned with me. That happened with MLAM. I <i>know</i> with Reaction Junkie that isn’t the case. For fuck’s sake, we’re talking about living together and our future and we spend a lot of time together and I can just tell from how he talks and treats me and acts with me that he is just as invested in our relationship as I am. But that doesn’t stop my depression brain from making me worry about him finding someone who is more interesting, more fun, a better rope bottom, toppier, less needy, etc. and deciding that I’m not worth that time and effort anymore.

We moved on to a more general discussion of me not being kind to myself, having negative self-talk, and beating myself up for things. I told him that within the last month or so, I’ve been having an issue where, when someone says something like “X is the best at <activity>” or “Z is so much fun to play with” what I hear is “You’re not good at <activity> and no one wants to do <activity> with you/you’re nowhere near as fun to play with. I said I knew that was silly, and my therapist replied, "Well, that’s depressed thinking.” Self-esteem (or lack thereof) and insecurity are also going to be big themes, I think.

As we discussed things, I connected the work stress, the poly difficulties, and a resurgence in my social anxiety. They’re all related in a harmful negative feedback loop, each causing the others to get worse. The work stress means that I use up all my emotional and mental energy at work. That makes dealing with any issues at home, especially with jealousy or other poly things, much harder. That upsets me and brings me down. Then I start being meaner to myself and being more insecure. That makes being at kink events more challenging, since I’ll do more negative comparisons to other people, hear negative things about me when people are actually just saying positive things about others, and struggle more with partners playing with other people. Then that makes me feel shitty about myself and worry that I can’t “do poly.” Social anxiety gets worse, as well, especially as I get more into a depressed mindset. And that, of course, feeds back into the poly insecurities about not finding new partners and differential investment. I get distracted and less productive at work, need to stay more and stay up later to get things done, and feel more rushed when deadlines approach. And then the whole damn thing begins again.

I compare how I am now with how I was the past few months before this, and I miss feeling excited about things, meeting new partners and friends, doing more play with more different people, finding it comparatively easy to counter negative self-talk, and being more resilient with social or other failures. I miss that old LFB and worry that she’s gone. I feel like my depression will continue indefinitely, that my friends and partners will be less interested in spending time with me because they’ll get annoyed by how I bring things down and get tired of dealing with my sadness. And then, of course, I feel even more upset about the loss of pre-depressive episode LFB and the life I was living.

Talking about everything and making connections and saying things out loud that I hesitate to verbalize was hard and sad and uncomfortable and made me cry. But it also made me feel better. That past LFB isn’t gone. The problems I’m having with countering negative-self talk and insecurities, with finding managing jealousy very difficult, and with social anxiety aren’t problems I’ve always had, at least not to this life-disrupting extreme. They started to get worse with added work stress, lack of sleep, and maybe even with some particularly bad PMS that all added together to start this awful negative feedback loop. And since those problems haven’t always be there in the same way, since I can start to see what might be causing them to get worse, that means I can figure out a way to deal with them. All is not lost. I won’t be like this from here on out. I can, and will, get through this and come out just as, if not more, capable of disrupting negative self-talk, brushing off things that are now pushing insecurity buttons, managing with jealousy, being more outgoing and extroverted, and dealing everything else that depression is fucking with.

I went into the session feeling despondent, and I came out feeling hopeful.