#teejtherapy

" So we need to talk about this Teflon coating that you have surrounded yourself with the yet again. It's like you're continuously protecting yourself from feeling joy. You achieved a lifelong dream where you also did very well, and you brought joy to so many people myself included in a year that has been marked by so much devastation and sorrow. You just got really positive student valuations from an impossible semester. You just broke your recent running time by 30 seconds! You were charming and delightful on national television and made other queer people feel less alone! And yet there's this barrier that you're putting up, keeping yourself from literally feeling the joy. You said you're afraid that you are fucking it all up. There is no possible physical explanation to how these successes could be fuckups. But it is scary to feel joy. And it is scary to feel love. And it's much easier to focus on the countless things that could possibly go wrong, just in case life throws another blindsided attack just like your father did when you were young. But in keeping yourself safe and smiling politely and disingenuously while people attempt to shower you with love or appreciation isn't doing you any real favors. It's not allowing you to receive so many pasta gifs being offered you. It's similar to when you receive that jeopardy money somehow refusing to take it because you would be afraid of the positive changes that it could bring. You told me earlier that you just wish that you could allow yourself to feel like you are not fucking this up. And you have meant so much just to me watching you on the television and to so many other people. And since you are such a fan of assignments and feeling like you are doing things to be productive, I am going to sincerely ask that you spend this week practicing letting the good sink in and letting yourself feel valued. You have done so well and you deserve some time to catch your breath and be able to process all of this goodness without fearing that it's a wind up for a sucker punch somewhere else. People love you. You are worthy of that love. You need to deal with it." #teejtherapy was really hard today. https://www.instagram.com/p/CIWa1DXFfdcg9YclXd-nGA-svwK7mrf4SRa1Nk0/?igshid=27vxocuv5ue8

"So, suffice to say, you are winning. People poured out love all over you for your birthday. You have a person that matters to you in your life who returns the love you give. People want you to give talks at places and your book is coming out. You are succeeding. And yet of course you are still looking, searching for things that could go wrong. You are in a moment where you have people that you can trust and be vulnerable and allow them to see you and love you. And that is such a gift that you are giving and are given in return. Don't discount that, because it is incredible and so wonderful to be able to live openly and vulnerably like that. Take a moment in your heart to thank the people who daily extend that love and grace to you. I don't brush it off as something to ignore because it is really meaningful. You move through this world and you offer people so much love and so much fierceness. You want them to be better because you love them and because you hope that things can be more improved than they are. Can you do that for yourself? Can you practically let love in this week? Can you listen in the middle of the fears that you have right now and remind yourself that you are valuable? You said today that some of the childhood memories that continue to shape you more than anything else are those of being dropped off by your loving family, into the unknown, waiting to be picked up by your father and knowing that he would be a bad parent to you. It makes sense that that fear is still within you, that intermingling of loss and anxiety that shapes so many of your reactions. But you are also thirty-five and no longer that child. And you are loved. And no one is dropping you off into the unknown. Rather, you are moving forward, confidently, into new and scary but overall wonderful places. This is not 1991. This is a new and glorious time for you and I'm so proud of you." #teejtherapy https://www.instagram.com/p/BwC_l-Hne7TQUQGGP3J4YpVc2YB-VB5SfLRMzY0/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=sbq3llt0nrv8

" Let's talk about the legacy of being a gifted kid in school. One thing is that everything is like a test for you, you don't get to rest on an accomplishment or a feeling, you just move on to the next thing here and I think that's how you feel about most good things in your life you had some extraordinarily great interactions socially and personally this week and you just shelve them and move on and pursue the next thing that's really great as an ambitious academic or as an over achieving 4th grader, but that's not really great for finding value or joy in your day-to-day life. How can you sit and actually let the truth of a good experience and the joy of a good day settle inside you? I would challenge you on 2 fronts. 1st, you are not simply the value you add to others by being witty or interesting. And life is not a series of challenges for you to accomplish. And 2nd, I need you to really think about those times when people have found you attractive or when friends have wanted to hang out with you. These are not things that you need to cycle through and move on to quickly so that you can conquer the next thing. These are important affirmations of who you are in this world and you matter. This week, stop looking at every positive interaction as normal and every negative interaction as a means of self improvement. Start looking at all the positive interactions at for what they are, great moments that say something good about you." #teejtherapy https://www.instagram.com/p/BtO2qGknT-gOoykrmoQegPDBYLRIFBe8fzz00A0/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=bdg41a3q99nw

"We need to talk today about two different kinds of attachment. First, let's talk about letting go, particularly of those people who are vindictive or hurtful to you. In the Buddhist tradition we talk about Mettā, the practice of loving-kindness or Wishing Well towards others. It is, fundamentally, the sense of Letting Go, which is not entirely different from that Greek phrase, decathexis. You've been profoundly hurt by people this year. People that you thought were your friends, people that you thought loved you, people that you thought you could count on have deeply wounded you. And this does not mean that you need to discount what I would call their assholery. However, there is a sublime recognition in seeing that so much of their hurting has little to do with you and so much to do with the many painful things inside them. To be able to let go and wish them well, requires an understanding of who you are apart from the hurt they try to inflict. It involves not only letting go of the pain that they aimed at you, but letting go of holding on to some of that rage that is tied to that pain. This doesn't mean that you have to make yourself vulnerable to them again. But this is an aspirational step by which we can begin to recognize the hurt in them and allow ourselves to be free from that same cycle of pain. Second, let's talk about that endless seeming cycle of self-loathing. That you feel that you are not good enough. That you are not worthy of being loved. That something is wrong with you. What would you do if I told you that I don't believe that you will feel like this forever? I think that we can continue to work through this as we have for this past year, to help you realize the ways in which that self-loathing comes from a false place, has been used to keep you safe and alive, but is as toxic as it is saving. You are extraordinary. You are endlessly worthy of love. Some of this self-hatred comes from holding on to wounds that people have made on you in the past. And some of it you hold onto because at least it's what you're used to. We're going to work through this together." #teejtherapy

Therapy was...a lot today. I've been struggling in particular with the fact that after 6 weeks of very concerted effort to be vulnerable and open and put myself out there and meet people, things have been rather mixed overall. I went on well over 20 dates with 8 different people and most of them seem to have petered out more generally , and people that I had genuine emotional connections with have often ghosted me or emotionally withdrawn, or had complicated feelings and ended the potential. I came to therapy both very honest in my frustration and sense of genuine disappointment. Part of me wished I hadn't undergone any of the vulnerability at all because I had emotional pain and literally was as single as I had been in December. Granted, I am well aware that part of this was about experiences and getting to know more about myself and others, which wouldn't have taken otherwise. But it still feels like a strange equation to feel in many ways the end result is the same whether you had tried or not and you would probably at least been predictably disappointed had you stayed home. I confessed to my therapist that I resented her for encouraging me to do something that just made me sad. And delightfully, she took it in stride. It's very hard to continue to make oneself emotionally vulnerable and open oneself up to a variety of experiences knowing inevitably that you could be hurt. That this is all taking place while I am increasingly exhausted in the new semester is not helpful either. I know that I am a fucking catch, but it is also hard to not let my jerk brain tell me that the one constant in all of this is my general unsuitability. And despite it being painful, here I am yet again doing so, on an even broader platform. I'm trying. #teejtherapy https://www.instagram.com/p/Codl1y9pMKDJ5m2L07zrNSuO0NpmBoXN2W26700/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

" OK then. Let's talk about anxiety. So, you've got it, surprising no one in this conversation. However, I wanna take a minute to comment on the ways in which you are actively addressing that. You recognized that you were being anxious about the idea of bed bugs and so you proactively took steps to eradicate it. You recognized a sense of feeling out of control so you left your house and you did things with people. You recognized a way in which you felt down and self loathing so you actively went on the Internet to tell people how loved they are. Yes, your brain is being a jerk. But you are also actively bolstering your defenses. And I think it's incredibly important to remind you that you are doing things right there are so few things that we can control in this world and yet it is important to put in a little bit of effort to try and feel less powerless. I am not a person of color although I'm also a queer person and so I can understand slightly what it's like to second guess your motives and your sense of place. And I want to validate how you're feeling when you say that often in predominantly white gay male spaces you second guess yourself, you doubly internalize rejection, and you feel like it's a referendum on who you are. But while I want to acknowledge that, I also want to work with you to think about the ways in which that is another form of anxiety, that is another form of letting things beyond your control deeply define who you are. Let me be clear, I'm not trying to gaslight you about racism. But I am trying to remind you that you can only control so much, and there is a desire within you to try and change everything and everyone and to make everything a referendum on your value and that is not always helpful. This week, I want to encourage you to continue to openly profess gratitude to people as both a means of sharing love and getting out of your own damn head. And I want you to contemplate what it might be like as a revolutionary practice not to let white men once again remind you of how valuable you are or are not." #teejtherapy https://www.instagram.com/p/Bs8nsl-AYRK3XB0Ep5oeQikBBCjCz_nAO_ErXI0/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=14nhclupzrpe3

"Happy New Year. It is OK that things are going well right now and it is entirely understandable that you are feeling anxious in light of not experiencing an immediate crisis or problem. How are you able to sit and give yourself space to breathe? What are ways in which you are lying yourself to unclench, to try and find and marinate in the happiness that you're experiencing? As with the course evaluations, this is not an opportunity for you to ignore all the positives by treating them as what you should expect and then focusing on the negatives as a way of self improvement. This is a time for you to let this truly sink in, to let the goodness of your life be real. Because you're doing it: you're making community, you're stretching yourself out in new and complicated ways, you're growing into the person you want to be. And your default, this trick of your brain to tell you preemptively that you are not worthy of love or desire as a way of feeling safe, isn't helping. I don't think that brain track will ever truly go away, but I think that you can continue to work to decathect from some of those feelings associated with it. You already know that that feeling isn't true even when your brain inevitably puts you on that track. So this week, marinate and that happiness and allow yourself the chance to feel worthy of love and enjoy the life you're working toward!" #teejtherapy https://www.instagram.com/p/BsoBGztAMnH8b01o225Nu_krNPhENt0J8RUWlY0/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=nu890ocxtf1u

" What a transition this is! How scary is it all? But you're right to acknowledge that it's happening in slow bursts and that you have committed yourself to a long good bye. And I know you're scared about not knowing what your life will look like, but I say to hell with it. You've done it! You have done the thing you have set out to do and it will be wonderful. Now let's talk about some other things. We bring myself on occasion but I feel like it's once again at the forefront for you. Do you have this absurd self conception that you are in some sort of 1990s romantic comedy and that you are the Rosie O'Donnell. You are the non sexual best friend who is witty and who is not seen by anybody as attractive. And that is false! You can feel gas lighted here in Virginia and feel like there's nobody that want you, but I need you to recognize that you are charming and charismatic and very attractive to people. You are compelling. You careen into people's lives like a comet and you like things up. And people are going to be drawn to you and to that energy. They're going to be drawn to your purposefulness and your decisiveness. You have a confidence that draws people out and people will want that! what you're going to have to learn as to how not to be instrumentalized by people as a tool just to make themselves feel better. But I will say once again that you imagining yourself as unattractive or beyond the reach of desire is both a lie and something that you tell yourself to feel safe and insulated. People want you, and you are doing no one any favors by pretending otherwise. This week I want you to really try to imagine yourself the way that you know your students still, the way that your colleagues do, the way that your lovers have. I want you to try to bridge that gulf between the way you see yourself and the way you try to make others see themselves. Because really, truly really who is being helped by you imagining yourself to be less than you are? You would tell somebody that you don't have time for that nonsense and you shouldn't put up with it from yourself either." #teejtherapy