My Shrunken Head Collection

I had my first counseling session today. My therapist seems like a very cool lady who has her office in a lovely historic home in our city’s Victorian District. I am happy to report I think we will be a good fit and I have scheduled another appointment for next Wednesday. I want to write about my discoveries after each visit. This will encourage me to think about what we discussed in our sessions and will help me journal my entire experience with her. I will call my therapist “Dr. Eve”.

Today’s session was about getting to know me and what brought me there. No surprises at first; I told her I was there because my life at work had been turned upside down, I’m married to an alcoholic whom I'd like to be able to communicate with, I have massive anxiety and control issues, and I had an awakening several months ago about my codependence issues. The shocker was that on not one, but two different times during the session I mentioned my mother and instantly started to cry. I didn’t see that coming. I haven’t cried when speaking of my mother in awhile. I shed a few tears on the one year anniversary of her death a couple of weeks ago, but all in all I really thought I was doing pretty well. Apparently I’m still grieving, and I’m pretty sure Dr. Eve and I will need to set aside some time to discuss my Mom.

Another interesting item I took from today’s session happened when I started thinking of too many issues at once and got myself nerved up. Dr. Eve stopped me in mid sentence and asked me if I was aware that I don’t breathe. Obviously I was not... She said she noticed it very early on in the session. I do my breathing from the top of my chest and lungs which means I can easily hyperventilate and cause myself anxiety attacks. Who knew? She even said she could hear it in my voice. She taught me some techniques and I will be practicing them diligently in the days to come. I have to train myself to breathe differently. I found it curious no one has ever mentioned that to me before.

Aside from the breathing, the most interesting part of this session was concerning "Fight or Flight". The shortened-condensed version of this is that our early ancestors had to rely on rushes of adrenaline to protect them against enemies and predators. When faced with danger our adrenaline rushes and we are capable of doing almost super human things (you've heard of the mom who is able to lift a car off her child or the hiker who is able to toss a boulder off their broken leg). In today's world we rarely have to flee from wooly mammoths or sabre tooth tigers but we still regularly have these rushes when faced with fear or panic. The problem is, if we're not running it out, all that energy manifests in our jaw, our neck, our back, our shoulders, creating things like numb fingers, chest pains, and migraines (all ailments of mine). So what do we do to empty our bodies of this excess lactic acid and built up tension? Run! Or exercise, yoga, meditation.

This week I will work on my breathing techniques. Also, I will be aware of holding tension in my muscles and put forth a little effort to get back into walking or some other form of exercise. I think I'll do a little more research on "Fight or Flight" too.

Thanks, Dr. Eve. I think this is going to be helpful.