Meta: Messing with Appearance

I’ve changed to a different pre-built site theme, and am about to start playing with the CSS, so the appearance of the site may be wonky for a time.

Sorry for any inconvenience. Feel free to e-mail me at niemaodpowiedzi [at] gmail [dot] com with any requests for additions to the webpage, or if you notice a bug in the display(the only browsers currently at my disposal are Chrome 5 and Internet Explorer 6).

EDIT: It will probably take me a couple of days or weeks to get things where I want them, but I will try to keep the site operational throughout.

On Therapy

When I was thirteen, my parents took me to a therapist against my will.

They had just separated and were preparing for the divorce to be legalized, and were worried about my reactions to all that, because I was angry and snarky and bitter and didn’t like being around people, and I had made the mistake of telling them this.

The therapist, S., was most concerned by the fact that I didn’t hang out with my classmates from school or have any of their phone numbers. Ou did not see my desire to be alone as valid, and demanded that I become less averse to social interaction in the course of my treatment with ou.

This is how I learned to fake it.

My mother had recently decided that what the two of us needed was a “church family.” So, in order to please S.’s and my parents’ expectations/desires for me to be other than myself, the youth group at the church my mom chose became my ruse – my pretend friendships. I spent every Sunday afternoon at the church with the other teens, trying to look healthy enough to get out of the therapy that made me miserable.

Finally, I made it. A year and a few months later, S. and my parents agreed that I was “cured” of my social aversions. A successful intervention in my alienation from the rest of society, or so it was deemed.

Fast-forward almost ten years. Present day, present time.

I don’t trust people. I am incapable of feeling safe around them. I live in my room, avoiding leaving it for almost any reason. I try to ignore my need for food or the toilet or bathing facilities because these things are kept outside my protective barrier of wood and sheetrock.

I don’t trust, or like, or want to be near people. I have anxiety attacks when I do need to be around others.

My mother, in her latest round of “cure niemaodpowiedzi,” believes I will be less depressed if I stop isolating myself. If I do things like go to libraries and spend time around the people in them. If I go to therapy, because “you remember how much S. helped you with this before, right?”

And it’s not that I don’t think a therapist wouldn’t help the agoraphobia. It’s not even about my fears that a therapist won’t be able to tell the difference between my social phobia and introversion. It really isn’t about that at all. I think, actually, therapy scares the pants off me because I don’t know how to find “a good one” without getting hurt more in the process.

Cross-posted to Tumblr.