Several years ago I participated in a Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) group to help with my depression. The group didn’t do much for me, but I did gain some insight from it. We had a session where members of the group were talking about different issues. I remember talking about the realization that since we live in the Bay Area, I would never be able to afford a house in an area that I would actually want to live in. Mundane, but at the time upsetting to me since I had grown up believing that since my parents bought a house(while my dad was still in grad school) that I naturally would follow in their footsteps. The most striking shared story was from a young woman who started with a tale about being in a minor car accident, but that quickly morphed into some weird conspiracy theory about the government or some shadowy organization being out to get her and ruin her life. I remember the rest of the group just kind of going quiet and realizing that perhaps this person might be better suited for more specialized help. The facilitator played it cool, but I really hope that he talked to her afterwards. What I took from this was the way in that people can distort reality. Not just this young woman who took a car accident and some random phone calls and assembled the pieces of the story in a highly elaborate conspiracy, but that even I was guilty of it. I think I thought of it as differing levels of reality distortion. I tend to twist or filter reality to push out any positive traits about myself and convince myself that I am a complete and utter failure, worthless and better off dead. Having that realization didn’t make the thoughts go away, those thoughts still float around in the back of my head at times, but they aren’t as powerful or present as they used to be, but it made it easier to see that perhaps I wasn’t viewing things from a completely accurate perspective.

As I’ve mentioned before, my wife and I started up couples’ therapy earlier in the beginning of the summer. The focus has been on recognizing how we trigger each other and fall into these negative loops. Our therapist specializes in Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) and recommended a the book ‘Hold me Tight’ . It’s been amazing for me to be reading this book and look back on what we’ve been doing in our sessions. I can see how our patterns of behavior are very commonplace and how many other people react the same way I do to stressful situations with their partners.

Things have been stressful at home with a new schedule for my wife’s work and a new school for the kids, as well my starting a position in a new lab. It came to a sort-of-head the other night when my wife seemed to suddenly get really cold and annoyed with me. I asked what was going on, and she told me that she was really mad at me and had been for several days . She didn’t know completely why(although there are plenty of reasons), but there it was. Normally I would have stormed off and announced thoughts of how our relationship was doomed, and I that couldn’t do anything right.

This time around, those thoughts were still there, but at the same time I was also a bit mad and feeling that she was being unfair. From the reading and our therapy sessions I knew that me withdrawing wasn’t going to help, so I calmed myself down and tried to engage my wife in conversation to see what was going on. She was very resistant to talking about it(I found it interesting that I was the one trying to work out issues this time around), but in the end we did manage to discuss her stress and worries over work and the kids. Nothing was solved, but it felt like a bit of tension was released and were able to do it together.

This episode reminded me of a recent exercise given to me by my coach, I had to come up with a list of reasons that I am a good husband. Painting myself in a positive light of any sort is extremely hard for me, but this exchange with my wife and thinking back on the CBT group has pushed me to go ahead and do it. Here is a subset in no particular order:

• I respect my wife as a person and individual.
• I support my wife in times of need as well as in the pursuit of her own dreams and goals.
• I am committed to bettering myself and constantly working on our relationship
• I am conscientious of how my being away from the house can impact the family and make an effort to always check before participating in activities that will keep me out later than usual.
• I take an active role with the children.
• I am willing to adjust and shift my schedule if she has her own obligations to take care of.
• I encourage my wife’s independence, but also appreciate shared time and activities.
• I appreciate how lucky I am to such an amazing woman as my partner in life and try to let her know that.

So that’s it for now. It’s hard for me to look at this list and not want to qualify it or put some sort of disclaimer, but I’m going to let it be. I hope I can keep this perspective during the inevitable stressful periods that I will encounter in the future. I’ll work on reminding myself that difficult children, eye rolls and exasperation from my wife are not necessarily signs of a conspiracy proving that I am a terrible person.

The image above is a recreation of what our couple’s therapist drew. Yes, that’s me with the raincloud over my head. For some background, we started up couple’s therapy again because my wife has been so stressed with work, the kids in general, my daughter’s recent behavior(really worth a post in it’s own), and our lack of communication. During our last session after hearing my wife discussing her various stressors. I was asked what I was feeling. I responded honestly that I felt like a complete failure in all aspects of my life. I feel so unhelpful and disconnected from her and the kids, and I don’t know how to help. Saying it out loud really hit me hard, and I really felt off and a bit out of it for the rest of the day. The therapist made the drawing and asked what we could do so that I was not only protected but not alone under that raincloud.(the theme of our therapy has been for us to turn to each other during difficult moments instead of turning away). By this point I think I had shut down, but I also was taking the question quite literally. I really couldn’t come up with a detailed plan on what to do next. My wife, being much less literal than me, and quick on the draw, jumped in with “an umbrella for both of us”. She’s sharp that one.

The deep depression from that session lasted the whole day and night. Since then it’s come and gone, and I had thought that I was doing okay. But then, earlier this week I ran across an article entitled Five lessons I learned from dealing with depression . I found it an interesting article. Not because I got new tips or techniques for dealing with depression(I didn’t), but it made me realize more about how my depression manifests.

The first lesson was that our self perceptions are frequently wrong, but following that was the lesson that our feelings regarding those perceptions are valid. This is me! I tend to have a negative self image to begin with, but when I’m more depressed than normal I tend to get VERY negative. In therapy, the “I’m a complete failure at everything” was a perfect example of that. I wasn’t beling melodramatic, I really and truly felt it. What I’ve noticed, is that despite knowing somewhere in my head that I’m not an absolute failure, I can’t seem to answer back to that idea. After relaying the incident to my coach she wanted me to come up a list of achievements and things I have done and learned. I’ve done this before with her, but I couldn’t come up with a good list this time.(Some examples were learning how tie my shoes and driving stick shift). I could start formulating more substantive examples, but I couldn’t follow through due to a mix of immediately rejecting those since I felt I hadn’t done anything well, but also due to a part of me which consistently fights attempts to get out of that negative mindset.

This is where the idea that those negative feelings are valid comes in. The article goes on explain that being told that you really aren’t that bad doesn’t help much. Several years ago, during a more prolonged and severe bought with depression, I tried a Cognitive Behavorial Therapy group. The basic idea is that you take your fear or belief and map out what the worse case scenarios are. The goal is for you to realize that your perceptions are off and that that information will help relieve the anxiety or depression. It didn’t work for me. I could follow the thoughts out rationally, but it didn’t seem to matter, it didn’t help change my negative thoughts about myself. I also felt like it didn’t deal with the underlying emotional aspect, but I digress. I see that same pattern still when I’m trying to answer the negative voices in my head, it is so easy to dismiss the counterarguments to my depression as inconsequential or not really representative of myself.

Perhaps more worrisome, is that, when depressed, to embrace those counterarguments feels like I’m getting sucked out of a sad but comfortable place. It’s like laying in the mud at the bottom of the ocean, it’s lonely and not so pretty and there is a huge weight bearing down on me, but I’ m used to it. To be pulled all the way up to surface feels like it would take too much effort and it’s too scary. Like some of those deep sea dwellers, I would die up on the surface. There is also the feeling that I would have to exert more energy all around.

Reading the article made me realize that I’ve probably been much more depressed than I had thought recently. The stress over my work(I found another lab to work with, but still worried), the kids, and the tension between me and my wife have left me in a not so good spot. I noticed today I felt pretty good. Looking back I realized that I had pleasant conversation with the casual carpool driver (a complete stranger) and I had run a successful experiment with a colleague at work. It’s a reminder that connecting with people is so important to my emotional well-being. I’ve been working on trying to connect more with my wife, which has been hard with my daughter’s behavior issues, and it’s helped a bit. Time to start working on that large umbrella for my me and my wife.

I had my 20-year high school reunion last month. Besides remembering that college students look so young to me, I have a hard time articulating it properly, but I guess I realized that people tend to be much more complex(in a good way) than one gives them credit for. I spoke with people that I really didn’t like much in High School(because they struck me as mean or arrogant or whatever) and they surprised me with insights into current day events and into many of our classmates as well as events they had experienced in high school(I had no idea that our principal had a “HNIC” placard on his desk!). Part of me regretted not having known them so well in high school, while another part reminded me that it wasn’t always possible to get to know them since the popular kids(a group I didn’t belong to) weren’t all that open to others. I also didn’t particularly try to make lots of new friends in high school either, so that all boiled together to me not knowing a lot of the people at the reunion that well.

A few days after the reunion, there was a memorial service for a doctor I had worked with. He was young so it was a bit of shock to me(it turned out that he had cancer, but had not wanted a lot of people to know). During the memorial people told stories about him, and as with my reunion experience I was struck by the rich and varied life he led beyond the bit I had gotten to know through meetings or projects. I knew he was a successful and hard working doctor and researcher, but I didn’t know so much about his music or how much he cared for his friends. It was moving to see what an impact he had made on so many people’s lives.

These two events started me thinking about how I can take this insight and apply it to enriching the experiences I have with people I know today. It’s so easy to fall into a routine and just take people for what I see. A few years ago I was listening to a lot of Buddhist-inspired mindfulness audio books and was struck by an exercise suggested by either Pema Chodron or Tara Brach of imagining that someone you see (but don’t know) is a close friend. After starting this exercise I realized that I had usually made all kinds of assumptions and judgments just based on how people looked. It reminded me of when I played soccer as a kid, and the people on the other teams always looked kind of weird to me since I didn’t know them. Is it a built in function to see unfamiliar people as odd or different? After doing the exercise and imaging someone is a friend, I find that my attitude towards these strangers softens. I not as distracted by visual oddities or unfamiliar behaviors and can realize that the person I’m looking has their own joys and sorrows and life story. I do this on the bus very often for kicks, I also tend to end up in a better mood when I do this. All of this leads me back to the idea of without being weird or creepy, how can I get to know the people I see around me everyday in a better sense? With the people at the reunion, or those who I have some sort of obvious connection with, Facebook has proven to be a useful tool to open up lines of communication, even if they aren’t ever used. At the least you can get a sense for what people are up to in their lives. But for those you don’t have shared history with it’s a bit harder. Further complicating things it that I barely see my close friends as it is, so the idea of making a whole new set of friends seems impossible.

At the end of the reunion(we got kicked out of the bar because it closed), people started looking for a house to “keep the party going at”. I guess it happened rather smoothly at our 10 year(Unfortunately I didn’t attend any of the after parties 10 years ago). If you can, try to imagine a group of 38 year-olds, many of us moms and dads, trying to find a house to party at. We tried to go the local pizza parlor, but it was closed for the night. Drunken college kids were also out and it was enjoyable and maybe affirming to see a tipsy college guy trying to hit on one of the women from our reunion; “Honey, I could almost be your mom”. In the end, the funny part to me was that in high school, people would have been trying to find a place where the parents weren’t home to go and party. This time the party couldn’t keep going because those who lived in the area all had kids at home.

I spent that night at my friend’s place, who lives on the other side of town from where I grew up. The next day, driving in that neighborhood, I was struck that I knew so little about the people who had lived on that side of town while growing up. It was a relatively small town, but once school assignment boundaries changed, it felt like another world. I felt nostalgic and maybe a bit melancholy(“oh, how I could have done things differently in high school”), but it was another subtle reminder to maybe stretch myself in getting to know the people I pass by everyday, I don’t want another 20 years to pass and realize I passed up some interesting relationships.

I just finished up my two week summer vacation at my mother-in-law’s house near the beach. The rest of the family is there for another two weeks, so I’m at home alone. My wife says it still counts as a vacation since I don’t have parenting obligations.
The vacation started off well, with surfing, swimming with the kids, all around relaxing and fun. I finished the latest book in Jo Nesbo’s Detective Harry Hole series(my wife says it sounds like a porno but apparently it is pronounced “Hoola” in Norwegian), “The Phantom”, then moved on to “Consider Phlebas”, the first book in the Culture series by the late Iain M. Banks. Kind of jarring to jump from Norwegian crime/mystery to intergalactic adventures. We even had a slightly awkward but generally enjoyable outing to my father in laws house and nearby park. The conditions under which we went were that there would be no discussion of the ongoing pool safety issues or the subsequent e-mails. Things started going downhill halfway through the trip when I awoke with a pulled chest muscle, probably from surfing, and my daughter started coming down with some bug that lasted about 3 days.

It was a tough adjustment to the new limitations on time and activities. The morning surf is usually the boost required to keep me in good spirits for the day. Without that surfing, and combined with the near incessant complaining/whining from my daughter, it was tough. As I’ve mentioned in the past, when I don’t get to surf I start feeling trapped and low on energy. I had hoped to meet a friend for lunch about an hour from here for my fish taco fix, but was ultimately unable to. Also the planned surf outings with my wife’s cousin’s husband were cancelled due their son’s having coming down with some illness, probably the same one my daughter had. I still managed to have fun though. Among the many family activities we did, perhaps my favorite was a beach trip(despite being only 15 minutes away, we don’t tend to go very often when we are down there) where my oldest daughter and I rode a tandem down the boardwalk. It was an hour of riding, and it felt special for just us to be doing a shared activity. I can’t wait to do it again.

Since I didn’t dare surf, I made the most of the situation and fixed up the surfboard I keep at my mother-in-law’s. The board had some holes that I had long ago covered with duct tape(so trashy looking). The problem with holes is that water eventually gets in and causes the foam to degrade and the fiberglass to separate from the remaining foam. I probably should have taken care of the holes long ago but I rationalized the fact that I use it for about 2 weeks a year and that it would interfere with my limited surfing window as reasons not to worry about it. Fixing the board helped me feel productive even if I couldn’t surf. At least I was doing something related to surfing or preparing for it. On my last day there I went for a surf on the fixed up board. My pulled muscle quickly made itself felt, so I had to hold back a bit, but I still got two great waves before I called it a morning and headed home.

Being on vacation also made me think about my career options in the future. Still no idea what I will be doing, but I’m pretty sure a key requirement going forward will be to work at a place where I have a sense of community with my fellow workers. I stopped by a small local surf shop to get some materials to repair my board and was struck by the sense of camaraderie the employees seemed to have. I know they are high school kids, they don’t make much money and that there are probably annoying parts of the job, but they seemed to be having fun just being there. It was slow and not a lot was going on, but they still seemed to be having fun.

Some images or thoughts that I had during the break:
1)Surfing on an overcast morning. Dolphins were out, but what was really striking was the silver on silver of the waves against the overcast sky. It was hard to see the waves coming or at least accurately judge their size. Liquid silver everywhere.

2)Sitting in the hot tub with the kids and squirting water out of my hands. I imagined someone hired to sit in a fountain and squirt water with their hands instead of a pump doing it. Kind of an absurd riff off George Saunders’s short story “The Semplica Girl Diaries”.

It feels good to be home and it’s nice to have time to myself. However, I realize I prefer vacations with my family. That in itself is a thought to keep me warm at night in an empty house.

I’m home with my younger daughter today. She picked up a classmate’s stomach bug and was feverish and vomited last night after complaining of a stomach ache all yesterday. Today, other than not being too hungry she seems much better. I just finished Margaret Atwood’s “Year of the Flood”, which is the follow up to “Oryx and Crake”and the second in a trilogy set in the near future where a man made plague wipes out most of the earth’s population. It’s much more involved than that(touches on genetically modified organisms, corporate take over of government, and other timely topics) but given the stomach bug that’s what I am focusing on. Trying to wash my hands as often as possible.

The time since the last entry has been mixed. My coach and I decided that I would take the space of a month without any scheduled check-ins or meetings with her. This is in line with her realizing that things needed to change, and me realizing that I needed to take more of a role in doing things for myself. It’s nice to know that I can reach out for help if I need it, but I haven’t had any pressing issues come up. I find this experiment kind of exciting. Perhaps some more assertive engaged self will come out of this, or maybe I’ll just keep plodding along and nothing will change, we’ll see. I have been a bit down, but I think that may be understandable, and I’ve taken some opportunities to make more time for activities that I enjoy.

The being down I think is related to the news that a friend’s husband was diagnosed with a particularly deadly form of brain cancer. The doctors are giving him about a year a half to live, but no one knows for sure. My friend and her husband are trying to remain positive and not give up hope. To add to the difficulty in her situation she is also pregnant with their second baby. Besides being upset about the news, it makes me try to imagine how I would cope if I were in that situation. I have a hard time trying to imagine it. It’s also made me realize that I really don’t know when I could lose someone, and that I should take advantage of the time I do have with the people I care about. It can be hard to put into practice, but I’m trying to keep that present. I’ve focused more on that aspect than trying to imagine what I would do if I told I only had 18 months left, I’m a little uncomfortable with what comes up for me. My first thought is that I would want to travel. I would want to go back to South America and Australia. I would want to surf and scuba dive as much as possible. Then I remember I have a family and people who care about me(woops), and I feel incredibly selfish.

I actually did get to go out surfing last week. Part of the plan my coach and I set in place was for me to come up with ideas on how to use the time I would normally be meeting with her. Last week the weather cooperated so I went out for a surf. It was good to be back in the water, and despite the long interval since my last surf session I still remember how to do it(as long as the waves aren’t too big). I did notice that being out of shape was limiting(in terms of paddling for waves mostly) though. So it’s kind of like remembering how to ride a bike in that the motions are kind of ingrained, but the physical aspect plays more of a role than bicycling. Overall it felt great.

In contrast to surfing, the martial arts class I am taking was not as much an overall booster as usual. I went to class last week, and was feeling kind of off. My reactions were either slow or wrong, and I felt that I a lot of stuff I was supposed to know already wasn’t completely accessible to me. We had a seminar/testing event later in the week, and some parts went well, but as part of the testing we had to come up with our own applications of what we were learning, and that was kind of a bust. The Sihing (teacher) used it as a good teaching moment, but I still felt disappointed in myself.

I tend to be hard on myself, and get upset when I can’t do something I feel that I should be able to do. Besides the martial arts class, I think it carries over into most areas of my life. I should be more patient and attentive to my kids and wife. I should be able to pursue a job search(no qualifiers needed!). This is where the saying “Don’t should on yourself” fits, but it’s a hard habit to kick.

Being at home with my daughter so far has brought a lot of these areas into focus. Part of me wants to get some projects done (like this blog post) or continue on the stereo repair (started the process of replacing capacitors(re-capping) last week). Another part thinks that I should spend more time with her since she won’t be young forever and I should enjoy her whenever possible. The problem is that I can only take so much of playing with stuffed animals or her toys. I feel bad about it, but there it is. I guess I’m aiming for a compromise today. Some playing interspersed with TV time for her (yet another thing I “should not” be doing) while I do my thing. Maybe I can try to find an activity suitable for both of us such as walk outside.

Either way, I’ll keep washing my hands.

I’ve been feeling like I’m on the edge of something, like I’m close to finding some sort of path or gaining some insight. Maybe some opportunity is about to come up. Maybe what I can imagine as possible for me is expanding. I’m not sure what’s going on, but the feeling that the potential for some sort of change is there.

• There was a brief moment of confusion last week in regards to my grant being extended or not. It turned out to be a typo(wrong date) but during that day of uncertainty I wasn’t terribly upset. While it would have complicated things, I also didn’t mind the idea of being forced to make a decision regarding my future.
• A recent Altucher Confidential post reminded me that people are able to do miraculous things with their lives. He has a book coming out(hopefully not just e-book form) that I plan on getting. I’m also trying to follow part of his Daily Practice, and make lists of ideas that come up or forcing myself to come up with ideas for a list. This post so far is kind of a list!
• I read an article on Gawker predicting that the current insane increase in housing prices in our area once again is unsustainable. Our neighbors across the street just sold their 2 bedroom house for approx $600,000! It’s a cute house, but the price is nuts. As during the housing boom of the mid 2000’s I had basically accepted the fact that I would never be able to afford a home. Whether I want to or not is still up in the air since there are plenty of arguments against owning, but “knowing” that I would know ever be able to afford a home in the type of places I like to live (large coastal cities) was upsetting. I’m sure there are many arguments against the idea of another bubble but entertaining the possibility that prices will come down again gives me some glimmer of hope, to have the option someday at least.
• Lastly, my coach/therapist (she’s officially a coach, but I see it as a type of therapy) informed me that her role in our work together was going to have to change.

Several years ago the therapist I was seeing at the time also decided that things had to change. I would come in depressed and most of the session would be her trying to convince me that I wasn’t a terrible person or that I could get better. I would spend most of my time explaining why she was wrong and that I really was screwed and condemned to a life of depression and misery. I think I had grown to really need to hear someone say that I was a good person and had the potential to live a really fulfilling life. I probably put myself in a worse mood to get more of that message. I really wanted to believe it as well, but a larger part of it was getting that message. That day, she announced that things could no longer go on as they had. Our relationship would have to change. This was quite upsetting, I felt abandoned and that she had given up on me. I was also upset because I think hearing her say these positives things about me made me feel cared for and appreciated. Looking back I can see she was correct changing our working relationship, trying to be my cheerleader wasn’t helping.

Last week, my coach effectively said the same thing. She felt that being my cheerleader wasn’t helping me, in fact it was probably counter productive since I was coming to depend on someone else to “fix me” and I was spending more energy proving her wrong than anything else. In her words it was time for her to back off a bit. It’s a bit scary, since I don’t know what this all means yet, but I think she’s right. I’m also not as panicked as last time, I have more context to place this all in. Letting her assume the role of cheerleader is a way of escaping my own responsibilities again(similar to using my depression as in last weeks post). Also, if I’m not getting better(since I’m not necessarily trying), then I start getting upset with her.

This blog is a perfect example of coming to depend on others. I’ve been wrestling with the idea of getting this blog out for others to read. It seems overwhelming so I’ve avoided the issue and secretly hoped that either my coach or wife would find a venue to spread the word. I’m realizing that I really have to do it. I even made a list of possible places(mostly the “other stuff” section of some forums I frequent) I could go to.

I think this feeling of potential is the beginning of an awareness that I need to do more things for myself. I’m the only one who can really figure out what it is that I want to do with my life, I can’t expect someone else to do that for me. Awareness doesn’t always translate into action, but at least it’s a start. To paraphrase the PSAs at the end of each G.I. Joe cartoon in the 80s “Knowing is half the battle”