I've just had my first one-to-one psychotherapy session after group therapy yesterday. As usual, I really enjoyed talking to -----, my PT. As she pointed out to me, therapy sessions aren't meant to "solve all my life's problems", as I so eloquently put it. Therapy environments and the safe circles that are required for therapy sessions aren't meant to replicate real life situations and interactions, she tells me, after I told her how I found therapy sessions to be akin to "paradise". After all, in group therapy, we are all there because we know we need help, we are ready to be personal and vulnerable, and as such we're all so... nice, to one another. In individual therapy, hah, need I say any more? An attractive lady, sitting down with me one-to-one to talk for an hour about my problems, actually understanding and empathising with me, whom I can genuinely make laugh and who can genuinely make me laugh? Who can be open minded enough to accommodate my renowned stubbornness, and kindly point out problems and suggest how to improve? In real life? Forget about it! Not even if I paid her that fifty dollars per hour!
Rather, therapy sessions are a learning environment similar to schools, she puts it. According to her, nothing you really learn in school, nor the interactions you have in school can be directly superimposed into the working world, into society. Nobody in the working world is going to cheer you on, etc.. Unfortunately I cut her off before she could elaborate much, because naaaaaaw! That doesn't happen in schools, what the heck are you talking about? School in my opinion directly matches real life, in my opinion. In my polytechnic days I've had people refuse to help me with questions I had because helping me would "affect the bell curve". You have underage students sleeping with teachers in exchange for grades, you have ten, twenty faced students at every turn. It's all about learning how to survive in a society, in a network of interconnected, symbiotic human beings, that ironically all somehow seem to harbour immense hatred for each other. Just like real life and society, don't you think? School has always been less about the textbook stuff and more comparable to an appetiser, a sample, of what's to come in our lives.
And so hopefully it comes as an understandable shock to me when I'm told that the learning environment that is therapy isn't supposed to prepare myself for real life, as I believe school to prepare us for real life. There's some irony in there somewhere, I'm sure. Rather, she tells me that therapeutic environments, be it the eight week group therapy sessions that I've been to, or the individual therapy sessions that I'm still going for, is mainly to exercise some "mental muscles". Muscles that may perhaps prove useful when I'm out swimming with the sharks again. For example, in the past eight weeks, we were tasked with challenging ourselves to do something that was out of our comfort zones. I've heard stories of how some of my therapy mates challenged themselves to ask for directions, to talk to strangers, girls, letting their kids cross the street or take a bus on their own without having an all too controlling watchful eyes over them, or even just taking a selfie. Me personally, I've shaved my head bald like I've wanted to for so long. I've managed to show up to therapy sessions in T shirt, shorts and slippers, which, trust me, is a bold move, okay! I have severe insecurity issues when it comes to my appearance, owing to my oversized body and having been laughed at by kids for not understanding societal norms and cues. I'm... er... going to try, to take up Iaido lessons to better hone my mind and get in some exercise, and hopefully make some friends along the way. But that's still in the works, i.e. I still need to work up the balls for it.
The aim of therapy, as my PT tells me, is that we leave therapy a better, stronger person, with more resources at hand and healthier thinking tendencies and habits to deal with life's difficulties. She even put it in a way that I'd never have had the balls to say it, lest I get shot eyes reserved for the insane: it's almost like I have a little therapist inside me that's growing, so that I can consult with myself the next time I'm challenged by life. And it's true! I do catch myself thinking, "gosh, this is so wrong, but what would ----- say to me in a situation like this...?", a lot of the time. After all, hey, if I can be as perceptive, and mentally strong as her, as mentally healthy as her, to the point where I can help those around me with their own struggles, then is that not to say that that would make me... immune to depression? I mean, short of having my limbs hacked off and my family burnt to death at a stake while I'm forced to watch, but you get my point, right?
I open the previous paragraph with "as my PT tells me", because she also tells me that psychology is a "soft" concept... whatever that may mean. I mean, I think I know roughly what she means by that, but I don't necessarily know how to put it into words. My take on it is that psychology is something that varies person by person, with different people of different needs requiring different approaches. As such there are no absolute methods that will work for everyone, and in turn, that there are no absolute standards that everyone should be held to. Different people find different things challenging, you know? Like how a social media influencer might have no trouble uploading a selfie a day, yet someone in our group has had to challenge herself to do it. Some people break down and cry when they get a 91/100 in a test, and here I am just happy I'm done with my diploma, 2.1GPA be damned.
Especially on the nights before an appointment with IMH, I panic when I try to sleep. Sometimes I'm afraid to close my eyes to sleep, because the moment I don't have something to preoccupy my mind, the moment I try to clear my mind to sleep, I start to think about myself, and my life, and those prospects terrify me. My mind does Swanton Bombs into a bed of double wishbone suspension springs through fire arrows as I freak the hell out about every little thing that has went wrong with my life, about every little thing that has upset me, about me as a person. Just as therapy sessions hope to "impart a little bit of everybody in you, so that you have more resources, and more helpful voices in your head next time something comes up", I think I've had that exact thing happen to me my whole life, except for the worse. I've had close friends and family alike tell me that I don't have a problem. That I should "just" go find another job. That I should "just" suck it up and be a man. I've had my worst fears, my deepest sorrows, trivialised like that every time I have tried to share and be vulnerable. Yet at the same time, having my suffering made light of doesn't alleviate any of the pain I feel. In fact, it just makes me feel like I'm weak, that I should let these "small" problems affect me as much as they have. And, crucially, at night when I'm trying to sleep, it makes me wonder if I'm victimising myself. If I'm making a mountain out of a molehill. If I'm just looking for pity. If I'm just hopelessly weak and that natural selection should've long since erased me if society isn't so hell bent on politically correct inclusion.
Suicidal thoughts be damned, sometimes it's hard for me to believe that I have a problem as a result.
"Well, Ke Tat, what do you think?", she asks me.
It's so funny. It's so odd. But something as simple as that question almost made me cry.
Yes, what do I think? Why is that question so shocking to hear from someone else? Why is it such a foreign concept to me? It's always what other people tell me. It's always what other people say. I know what I feel, I know what I think, damnit. It's just... why does what I think and feel always feel so... empty? Weightless? Like nothing ever matters?
Maybe it's because I really do believe that. That my own thoughts, my own opinions, my own feelings, don't matter - or, worse still, that they're errant, that they're an illness that need to be cured, an abnormal evil that needed to be vanquished. This is something that my therapist has assured me that we will work on in the coming weeks - self compassion. After all, what's to challenge that thought process and those beliefs in my life, right? I've never really felt like I've any agency, any control, any say in my life. While in school, I learned that the tallest nail gets hammered down, that unpopular, niche opinions are only valuable in politically correct speeches. No matter how much I hated school I could never not go. Even when they were pulling off stupid, non educational stunts for the whole day, like celebrating National Day, I couldn't not go. I could never not go for those asinine camps where we forsake everything thousands of years of labour and sacrifice of the human race has brought us to suffer insect bites and falling into ponds in the name of "leadership". No matter how lackluster and laughable I found my lecturers and materials in school, hey, what was I to do? My parents are paying out their asses so that I could have a diploma to survive society. No matter how distasteful I find this country and its culture, I'm forced to take up a gun and (pretend to) defend this place, as if I am an adrenaline junkie, as if I bought into their idea of what a soldier, a man, should be. As if I had the makings of a soldier, I am made to hold a gun and fight, simply because I was born with the sin of having a penis. And when I went into the workforce, I was told that I couldn't get my hands dirty being a mechanic, because I'm too "highly educated" for that. As if I've had any choice in what gender to be born with. As if I've had any choice in my fucking education. And now as a grown ass man, learning the ropes of society and struggling with mental illnesses, I need to make a living to support my retrenched mother and retiring father because they had sex very late into their marriage.
Where's the "me" in any of that?
In fact, if I've learnt anything in school that isn't related to bullying, it's that opinions that differ from the norm are to be curbed and shot down as quickly as possible, to ensure the status quo, perhaps because we as Singaporeans are way too comfortable with what we've been handed our whole lives. It also saves the people in power the trouble of having to fill in paperwork, to assess each viewpoint, to implement the changes, etc., and it's a trend that has its peak in slavery, in my opinion, which serves as a grim representation of reality to me.
I guess it's been a lifelong lesson for me that I should just shut the fuck up and listen to others. I mean, what has being angry, being outspoken done for me? I can't tell you what it has done for me, but I can write you another feature length post on what it has done to me.
And now I am so disconnected with myself that, in spite of all the suffering I've had to endure, in spite of having been driven to the precipice of knocking on death's door several times, I still don't see any merit in asking myself, what do I think? What do I feel? Because why does it matter what I think and how I feel? This place needs defending. Food needs to be put on the table. "If not you then who else?". "If everyone else can do it why can't you?". "You so smart you start your own company/ migrate la!". Heck, it'd be worth it to shut up and keep my opinions to myself even if it only meant that I don't have to deal with mouth breathers drunk on adrenaline, propaganda, and masculinity.
But, I'm sorry, this is where I'm going to sound a little defeated, but it's true, isn't it? So what if I find that everything in the world is upside down and inside out? So what if I can't find it in me to pick up a gun and shoot another person I'm told is my enemy? So what if I'm struggling with anxiety, so what if I'm depressed? Everyone needs money to live, everyone needs a job. What choice do I have, to not do those things? If I truly had things my way, I'd have taken my own life years ago. But noooo, I have to live, I'm told. Suicide is selfish, wrong, and illegal, I'm told. Think about the disservice you'll be doing to those closest to you! Hell, even when wanting to die, my own opinions and feelings don't matter. Whatever else I could possibly feel in life would, then, if even feelings as strong and insane as wanting to die won't be heard or even acknowledged, let alone honoured?
And, honestly, so what if I died? So what if I resigned from my job? Would the entire company collapse? Would the world mourn? Of course they won't. Suicide is common. If everyone mourned for every suicide in the world it'd literally be impossible to fit all that mourning in the time of day. It's normal to not be sad. It's normal to be indifferent. It's understandable to not have that kind of time. It's insane to think everyone would genuinely feel so strongly towards everybody who wants to die. Yet why do we always have to pretend? To pretend to be okay, to pretend to be happy? To pretend that suicide is wrong and immoral? To pretend to care only when you see that someone is ready, willing, and able to take their own lives?
It happens. Life happens. Shit happens. People get depressed, just like how people catch colds. So what if I died? I'd just be another one in a countless list. "The world won't change for you", right?
It's gonna be a struggle, -----, to feel as if I'm worth a damn, That my opinions matter, that my personal happiness has value. So please don't leave me.
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