Author Archives: Tin Man

New Therapist

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I “broke up” with my psychotherapist yesterday. I’d been seeing her for 11 years — longer even than I’ve had this blog — and it was time. I have not quit therapy, though; I’ve found a new therapist. I still have lots of stuff I need to work on in my life; it’s just that I no longer felt I was getting anywhere with my old therapist. I did a lot of great work with her — she was really good at helping me understand my past. But I have talked my past to death and I’m tired of it. And I have not been able to get myself to a good place in the present. So I thought it was time for a fresh approach.

It had been building up for a while. I had mentioned several times over the last few years that I was not satisfied with my progress. After my birthday and the new year, something clicked in me, and I decided it was time to think about moving on.

Last week, I told her that I was going to be meeting with a new therapist, but that I hadn’t decided yet what I was going to choose to do. She reacted a bit snidely: she said it was kind of like having an affair, like trying to escape the hard work involved in a relationship by looking elsewhere. I felt really surprised and insulted by that. I was not acting on a whim; I had worked hard in my therapy; I had been incredibly patient. Maybe too patient.

Her defensiveness only helped convince me that it was time to move on.

My new therapist is a gay man, which I hope will give me a fresh perspective on things. He’s also more oriented toward the here and now, as opposed to my old therapist, who was much more Freudian and interested in my past, my dreams, and so on.

About 20 minutes into my first session with the new therapist, he said to me, “You seem like someone who thinks a lot about things.” I had brought with me a short list of what I consider to be my main issues in life, and at the very top, I had written: “Overthinker.” Bingo! He got me.

He also asked me a question about something at one point, and as I answered it, I started to ramble. I’m very good at free associating; it’s a bad habit of mine. But as I began to yammer on, he stopped me and said I wasn’t really answering the question. In other words, he corralled me back in. My old therapist would never have done that; she would have just let me ramble on. It was refreshing to be interrupted, to be called out on my bad habits.

After meeting with the new therapist twice, I decided not to prolong it and to just take the plunge and quit my old therapist.

She was a bit pissy last night when I told her I was ending my therapy. I had only been talking for about 15 seconds when she took a blank sheet of paper from her stack of blank sheets and start writing up my final bill. I stopped talking and said, “What are you doing?” And she said, “I’m writing up your final bill.” So I looked at her and said, very firmly: “But I’m talking to you.”

I don’t know if I would have been able to be so assertive a few years ago. Maybe I would have; I don’t know.

She stopped writing and put down the piece of paper, and then we had an honest conversation about my decision.

It feels incredibly freeing to have quit. It was one relationship in my life that I had never really considered ending, because I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to survive without her and that I would miss her. Now that I’ve done it, it feels great. I will be able to survive without her.

It feels — like I said — freeing.

Home Cooking

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I made a resolution to cook dinner more this year and order takeout less. It’s not going great so far, as we just ordered Mexican.

The thing is, there are various vectors on the cook-vs.-takeout scale. Cooking is cheaper — unless you’re making a very complicated recipe that requires lots of ingredients, in which case it might be more expensive. Cooking is healthier — except that for dinner tonight I’ve ordered a vegetarian burrito with brown rice and a side salad, a meal that will contain more vegetables than what I might have cooked. Cooking is more enjoyable — sometimes. I like cooking, but only when I’m actually doing it — caught up in the slicing and the doing. If I think about getting ready to cook, including going to buy the ingredients I don’t have, it’s a pain in the ass.

I guess I have to decide why I want to cook more: because it’s healthier (sometimes). Because it’s cheaper (sometimes). Because I like the process of cooking (sometimes). Because I want to know what goes in my food (always).

Ah well — at least I cooked on Saturday night. Resolutions can be gradual!

2012 Election Predictions

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Regarding the 2012 elections:

Pundits like to pontificate, and so do the rest of us. But really, there’s no way to predict what the 2012 election will be like, what the big stories will be, and what will ultimately happen.

It amazes me that pundits never talk about the effect of a running mate until summertime, when the running mate actually gets picked. It’s like collective winter/spring amnesia. The biggest game-changer in the 2008 election — other than the economic collapse less than two months before Election Day — was John McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate. That didn’t happen until the end of August, and it had an enormous effect on the race (though maybe not on the actual result), giving the GOP ticket a huge injection of enthusiasm. Palin seemed to dominate political news coverage for the next two months.

If things go like they always do, Romney won’t pick his running mate for another eight months. When he picks that running mate, it will change the story one way or another. So maybe we should all stop speculating about what this election will be like until that happens.