last day with lisa

end of a somewhat significant chapter in my life today (thur sept 1): today was my last day with lisa. lisa (driscoll) has been my therapist for the last year and some odd months. i began seeing her i guess mainly because i was confused about what i wanted to be doing with my life...whether i should stick with grad school or not. but it soon became apparent that my troubles went far beyond the decision regarding school.

in our last session today, lisa asked if i had had any thoughts/feelings about this being our last session. i said yes, i had been thinking about it, but not in a nervous/anxious sense, more of in a taking stock sense, seeing how far i had come, what i still needed to work on. but all in a very positive light.

and there, in thinking about what i'd been working on recently, and what i'd accomplished in terms of being a healthier person, i realized that the focus of my sessions with lisa had shifted from mostly being about jon (and a little about andrew and my dad) to being about almost everyone in my life. in other words, what i had thought was unique to jon, was simply the magnification of my issues with dealing with people in general. now that's a pretty crude and simple way of putting it, but in essence it's true. i didn't (and still don't very well) know how to deal with anger. i didn't know how to deal with not getting the response i'd expected out of someone. i didn't how to deal with rejection, disappointment, or negociating; i wasn't able to understand that people are in different spots; and i didn't know to not to take things personally.

i've learned that i can't control people and how they will respond or react. i can only control how i react. i'm getting better at staying even keeled, not becoming too distraught when things don't go as expected. i realize now that people act in ways that may have nothing to do with me -- they may be at a point in their life that makes it difficult for them to respond to the situation in a manner that suits me, or that may simply be who they are. i still struggle with anger, but i've recognized this and am working towards handling it better.

in short, i'm becoming more adept at dealing with people, all kinds of them: friends, lovers, enemies, parents, bosses, colleagues, romantic interests, roommates, teammates, and strangers. i am discovering who i am and how i work and how to manage my emotions. i'm not all the way there yet, and may never be, but i've come a hell of a long way.

side note: my sessions with lisa were more effective at controlling my eating than any other therapy i ever undertook before, which is curious because she focued less on the food and more on the seemingly extraneous emotional issues. but in fact, the emotional issues were the main issues, the eating simply a manifestation of my inability to deal with them. and by focusing on them, we were getting to the root of the problem; instead of trying to merely treat the symptoms, we were trying to cure the disease. as a result, i feel much more in control, even when i am eating, because i have an understanding of why i eat. this is revelatory and empowering. by continuing to recongize my emotions and feelings, i can begin to intervene in healthy ways more and more often.

another side note: focusing on my dad (and to a lesser extent my mom) has helped me to understand where i'm coming from. some of my tendancies are rooted in my upbringing, and identifying factors that led me to behave and react in certain ways helps me to work at changing them. for example, i cognatively know now that not everyone responds in the same way as my dad -- the same things that incite anger, approval, disappointment, etc. in him won't necessarily elicit the same response from others.