2:34 p.m. - 2008-05-13
The Last Time...
Tonight will be the last time I go to my group therapy. I've been going over 10 years and it's about time to give it a rest. Many very good reasons why it's time, but they all boil down to the fact that group isn't doing much for me any more.

My first goal was to be comfortable in a group/social setting. After being pounded on for my detached and boring affect I think I got that one solved.

After that my goal was "not to be like Member X". Member X was really messed up. This person was avoidant to the point of losing their spouse. (Well, sort of. They were 'separated' for 2 years before the spouse moved out. yadda-yadda... and after almost 10 years were finally working on divorce.) They lost their job. Lost the respect of their kids. Was inpatient for a while and intensive outpatient as well. But Member X never did the work. Member X was almost always late to group. Their being on time was the great exception. Member X would fall asleep while others were talking. Member X just never really tried.
And then... a freakish act of fate stepped in and Member X broke an ankle, threw a clot from the injury, and died from an embolism.

My goal is still to "not be like Member X". After my 'episode' of a year ago and my tremedous efforts to truly change I think I've succeeded in being like myself and not like Member X.

Since that 'episode', of which I don't really care to write about for a long while (see earlier posts on not wanting to write about unpleasant previous actions), I've wanted to truly change and be the best me that I can be.

In striving to do the above mentioned goal of being the best me: I endured being inpatient on a psych ward for a week. I worked hard through a month of intensive outpatient work on the psych ward. I worked hard with my group. I went back to my cognitive therapist. And I started yoga.

After the basic recovery from 'the episode', it's been the work I've done with Dr. C and Yoga Master that has made the real difference.

Dr. C is great at CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy). I've learned to 'think through' the crap that makes me depressed, the stuff that sends me on a downward spiral, and all the other crap that goes on in my head. That's a very simplistic way of saying I've gained the perspective to use objective thinking to pull myself out of destructive subjective thought patterns.

Yoga Master teaches me how to bring my mind to body. The big emphasis is to recognize, acknowledge and love my 'true self'. At first this all sounded like tooty-frooty hippie stuff. But... it seems to work. How it works I can't really say. I went into the whole yoga thing with the attitude that I was going into an entirely different environment (well apart from my scientific/engineering/logic background) that would explain the universe in a completely different way that I was accustomed to.

My intent was to conceive the yoga universe as a system just as the practical, physiological, scientific universe I know is a system. So, if both systems are black-boxes that define the entirety of the universe but use different processes and means of defining what goes on within their respective black-box then I could accept the weirdo mumbo-jumbo I was to experience.

The parallel universe/system idea seems to work. After many months of just accepting it I could begin to see some correlation between yoga-land and the physiology, chemistry and the laws of physics. But... I also learned that it's okay to note the correlation, but it's best to forget about it too. They may be parallel systems but there really isn't a one-to-one correlation of actions, processes, inputs and outputs.

So...
Last time.

Last time with group.

Now it's a new time.
Time for me to fly solo...

{cue 'Fly Like an Eagle'}

{release multitudes of helium balloons}

{Walk off into the sunset with a self-contented look on my face...}

{Fade to black...}

nah... Now the really hard work begins.

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