I roleplay giving myself therapy
Me: I’m back!
Troi: Like a tension headache. I think I can feel it starting to …no, wait, it’s already here, standing in front of me.
Me: A pill won’t be able to make me go away.
Troi: Maybe not but the cops sure will! Anyways, what brings you in today?
Me: I don’t have anyone else to talk to.
Troi: What about your friends?
Me: I guess I could talk to them but I prefer being your tension headache! In all seriousness, they’re friendly people but they don’t share my excitement about delving deeply into various topics. Besides, we lack closeness. I literally can’t remember the last time I went out with friends just to have fun. I also have a hard time letting my walls down.
Trio: Do you think not having friends your close to is related to being in one relationship or another throughout the majority of your adult life?
Me: Well I most certainly didn’t make the time while married. I guess I didn’t even really start trying until 2019. That year was wild but fun. 2020 was absolutely chaotic but really fun at times. 2021 was when I actually became spiritual but in that process I didn’t meet anyone I cliqued with. The years get fuzzy but somewhere in that process I had Bill and well..as u know there just was something missing. I thought for sure we’d at least stay friends but that bridge has been burnt to the ground.
Troi: Friendships are notoriously difficult to make and maintain once you’re an adult. And it seems you didn’t spend enough time finding your tribe.
Me: I guess I never really felt like it was a big priority for me. It just hits me briefly at certain moments that’s all. If I did have a priority it’s probably learning the true nature of reality. Spent so much time trying to prove or disprove theories thinking I could hit a sort of bedrock. I realize now that it’s a fool’s errand but during the process I came across some very unexpected discoveries that led me to a very unusual place mentally.
Troi: Are you happy in that place?
Me: All of it has felt like an emotions multiplier. The highs are happier and the lows are so low. In my head, I have such a rich inner world and I think because life doesn’t come close to emulating it, I get disappointed.
And I’m still trying to figure out how to contextualize my spiritual experiences. I thought I could fit it all in a scientific box but somethings just can’t fit. Plus for the moment it seems to have completely disconnected from me. It feels like I lost one of my senses…
Troi: That sounds upsetting. Why do you think that happened?
Me: I’m not sure why. I have a few theories. Despite my intense intellectual curiosity, maybe it was a bit much for me emotionally so it withdrew? Though that doesn’t fit with other other times I tried to stop it and it didn’t. I don’t think I have control over when I am connected seems accurate. Which kinda is disturbing..
Trio: Could you elaborate more on your spiritual experiences? These highs and lows, have you considered bipolar II?
Me: I think sometimes I’m vague when I talk about it because I am always concerned with how credible I sound plus some of it has been highly personal that I want to keep private. There’s also stuff I feel like I can’t say. On more than one occasion I have felt like I was going to open up fully and I literally couldn’t.
But to answer your question I guess the short answer would be feeling a deep interconnectedness with everything around me. A feeling almost like having magic but even more special because with magic, things just sort of happen without an empirical reason.
This…it feels like knowing exactly why something exists and but also there being an empirical sort of methodology. It’s like if in a movie a character started analyzing the set pieces, the tropes, various character arcs and subsequently was able to accurately infer not just the past , but know extra things about the present and future.
Troi: That sounds interesting. In psychology, contextual inference and ambient awareness guide how we interpret environmental cues, social norms, nonverbal communication, and other subtle cues to better understand ourselves and those around us over time.
Me: I utilize both those skills on a daily basis especially at work. However, I would say this goes beyond that. I guess I would say there’s an uncanny synchronicity which is interactive in a way life usually isn’t. Pairing it with everything else, I can’t help but believe in something(s) that have a remarkable amount of influence that happens just underneath human perception.
Troi: Circling back to the bipolar II as a possibe diagnosis, you know the criteria, do you think that could be a possible explanation?
Me: Aren’t you supposed to figure that out?! Kidding aside, as far as I know I don’t ever go long enough for anything to be hypomanic nor having anything that lasts 2 weeks depression wise. Definitely not long enough for Cyclothymic disorder nor often enough for rapid cycling.
Troi: Hmm.. why don’t you think spirituality has been proven empirically? How can you be sure it’s not just ideas of reference or some other non-specified disorder with psychotic features?
Me: It’s partially due to it being evasive and partially due to the fact that humans get so caught up in constantly being stimulated or responding to their emotions.
As you know, scientific research usually follows money. Publish or perish means a focus on churning out papers that will likely reinforce the status quo. Plus, the academic world generally is resistant to new ideas. The replication crisis shows that science is still a long way proving reality definitively. Not to mention there’s a lot of unique interactions that can’t be modeled in a lab since a lab requires a controlled environment and materials but reality is a lot more dynamic.
Its either that or I’m just schizotypal!
Troi: If this was Counselor Occam’s office he’d probably agree with the latter!
Me: Wow laughs
Troi: Joking aside, one of the key aspects of the diagnosis requires significant impairment in social, occupational, or other areas of functioning in addition to meeting 5 other criteria. Cultural norms also have to be considered such as believing in new age concepts but within a framework that again, doesn’t cause dysfunction or fixation.
Me: I probably think about this sort of stuff more than average but I don’t think its fixation.
Troi: This isn’t Counselor Christeana’s office either! I’ll make that determination later.
Me: But I wrote your character!
Troi: I’d prefer that you don’t break the fourth wall, I just got this place remodeled!
Troi:Getting back to the subject at hand, can you stop or do you think about it all the time. Any negative effects or intrusiveness?
Me: There’s too much other things to do to even think about it all the time. I do however spend a lot of time daydreaming and then I think of questions and then chatgpt it or YouTube it to see feasibility. And then I go into an educational rabbithole to feed my imagination.
The negative is that I feel kinda alone because most don’t really share my enthusiasm for what if scenarios, science and spiritual stuff.
As for intrusiveness, my thoughts are usually well contained but at times I do feel like I’ve experienced a negativity that doesn’t seem to be due to circumstance or my usual thinking/feeling patterns.
Troi: Do you think its possible that your spirituality is a disassociation or a defense mechanism? Or perhaps due to a biochemical response.
Me: In the past, I would’ve 100% said it was a protective mechanism or maybe some over activation of a brain region. A colleague of mine had suggested that certain brain regions being activated results in the feeling of God or whatever.
Troi: The study your colleague mentioned is not widely accepted since it hasn’t been able to be replicated via double blind studies. It was more likely that Michael Persinger (the person that initiated the study) influenced the subjects via suggestion.
Me: Yeah…I think she alluded to it as a way to be dismissive when I talked about spirituality. I’m gonna show her that study was discredited. She didn’t look into the last bit of research I gave her but I almost feel like I want to prove I’m onto something
Troi: Why is it important to prove something to someone that’s probably not interested?
Me: Maybe because I know she’s intelligent and in some way I want to see what she’d say. She did engage me before about the subject during a visit together and its evident that she’s very well read with a lot of real world experience.
Trio: Is it possible you’re searching for validation?
Me: Probably. Plus I feel like its important to get various perspectives. I ask every counselor I met about their religious/spiritual beliefs and how they believe that intersects with mental health.
On second thought I won’t talk to her about the study. I’ve never been one to push stuff on people.
Troi: Any insights you’d like to share here?
Me: I think its important to know how to sort signal from noise. Doctors are told if they see hoofprints, think horse not zebra.
As such, I think its important to determine if something affecting the client is biologically, sociologically, psychologically, and/or economical and trying to fix those before considering anything spiritual. I think what happens too often is that most professionals only look at one or two lenses. And sometimes they become so used to seeing horse they forget that zebra is a possibility
Troi: Good points. Speaking of the economical lens, it’s time to pay up, your session is over.
Me: Can I pay you in good vibes?
Troi: I only take cash, credit card and Hexbucks.
Me: Hexbucks?
Troi: If you don’t know what it is you don’t have any. Typical third dimensional… It’s currency in the 6th spatial dimension.
Me: Are you a dimensionalist?
Troi: Leaves through a 6th dimensional door
Me: *peeks in the door*
Woah… I can see myself from all angles; inside and out simultaneously as well as see through stuff in front and behind me.
Troi: Shoo! No flaties allowed!
*I fall back into the 3rd spatial plane*
Me: Huh…this place is kinda flat.