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What does it take to transfer understanding in the rational part of the brain, so that the emotional part ‘gets it’ too? The number of years I’ve spent in therapy, or support groups, is vast. Here’s a partial list of the therapy:

  • 15 sessions with a court-ordered counselor when I was sixteen.
  • 12 sessions with a PhD psychologist in college, after a suicidal gesture atop the campus bell tower.
  • 180 sessions with another PhD psychologist, who called himself a behaviorlist.
  • 20 sessions with a counselor in medical school, as I went through a divorce.
  • 24 sessions with a Jungian analyst.
  • 150 sessions with a psychiatrist during residency, who mostly had me talk about family-of-origin dynamics.
  • 250 sessions with a psychiatric nurse who specialized in recovery from child abuse
  • 20 sessions with a counselor who practiced sand tray therapy, among other things.
  • 2 psychiatric hospitalizations, of 12 days and 8 days.
  • 300 sessions with a psychiatrist who took me (again) through family-of-origin dynaymics
  • 100 days or so in intensive outpatient treatment.
  • 20 sessions or so with a social worker specializing in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) CBT and mindfulness.
  • 12 sessions with a social worker specializing in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)–ongoing.
  • Recent sessions with a social worker to deal with history of sexual abuse, and how damage from medication brings that up. (long story to be dealt with in another blog)

And here’s a partial list of the support groups:

  • Support group of medical students weekly for 18 months in medical school, then occasionally for 2 years.
  • Alcoholics Anonymous since 1987. Countless meetings.
  • Alanon since 1988. Countless meetings.
  • Adult Child of Alcoholics meetings weekly for one year while living in Manhattan. (These groups were often hard to take)
  • Adult Survivor of Child Abuse meetings weekly for two years.
  • An eighteen month intensive group therapy for child abuse survivors.
  • Numerous meetings, sporadically attended, of other 12-step programs (e.g., debtors anonymous, sex and love addicts anonymous, etc.)
  • Weekly meetings of a dual recovery group for 2 years ’06 to ’08.
  • Weekly meetings for people with a history of problems with prescription drugs, ’06-’08.

Now, you would think that after all that I would not spin out because my blog-stats dropped. But I did. So how do I take all the knowledge that I really do have about codependence, abandonment issues, self-esteem, acceptance, etc, and make myself well? How come it is so easy to know something with my mind, but be completely clueless in my heart? Is there anyway to transfer the knowledge? Can I build some kind of high-speed data connection between the two parts of my brain that deal with these things? (Aside: Don’t you just hate brain/computer comparisons?)

The only answer I can find is to look for improvement (‘progress, not perfection’ is what they say in AA). Yes, I did crash and burn about the web statistics, but I pulled myself out of it pretty quickly. I was even able to see the humor in my response. That is much better than ever before. What’s more, I opened up about what was going on with me, reached out for help, and was rewarded by many kind messages from those who’ve been reading my posts. (And this was true even though I’ve only been doing this with any regularity for 3-4 weeks; a real testament to the kindness of those who read mental health blogs.)

Thus, I look for signs that my emotional skills today are more honed than yesterday. But I am still puzzled about why I’m so dense. Therapy ‘should’ help the emotions. The unconscious ‘ought’ to learn. But mine obviously did not. Or maybe it sometimes learned, but other times forgets. One way or the other, I find my theoretical understanding far surpasses my practical application of what I know about how to be healthy. Hence, I find it easier to give advice than to live in a state of emotional balance and spiritual connection. It would be easy to blog about all the stuff I’ve been told, and never mention that it only works for me half the time. But that would not be honest, or fair, or helpful to others or to me. So here I am, admitting that the simplest things still trip me up, even though I was fortunate enough to have good insurance, the resources to pay for what insurance would not, and to live in an area with a surfeit of recovery and therapy groups.

I’ll end by asking if anyone knows some tricks for taking cognitive understanding, and turning it into emotional maturity. I stand anxious to learn.

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