Good news on the SA front

Hey, I have good news for my cheerleading squad: I think that the blog is working, I am seeing progress! It's amazing. Thank you for the wonderful notes to all my old and new friends!

First you will need to bear with me and read about my theory on why it is working... In my last post I quoted a book: The Gift of Therapy - by Irvin Yalom, MD. If you ever consider going into therapy, read this book first. This is the way it is supposed to be like. My therapist recommended it and I could hardly put it down when I started reading it. It is a wonderful book that I strongly recommend. Did you ever feel that even when you have no idea about the details in a certain area of knowledge when someone knows their stuff it's all logical and you can understand it? This is one of those books.

One of the cool ideas in the book is that there is no need to start investigating deep into the patient's relationships because sooner or later any dysfunctional patterns will emerge in the patient-therapist relationship and can be explored "here and now". The feelings and events can then be analyzed in a lab-like environment.

I think that the blog helped me to further extend this idea. The virtual environment and off-line mode allowed me to breathe and reason between interactions. This helped me to analyze my feelings and gave me the opportunity to take my time in responding. Pretty much everything that happens to me in real life happened while interacting here, but it happened in slow motion: the overly emotional response, the fear of rejection and the need to run away, the pain of not getting any feedback almost as bad as getting feedback that could be interpreted as neutral or negative. I didn't have anything to lose though so I plunged into it and occasionally forced myself into doing more. I am going to take each of these issues separately and discuss them (it helps me clear my mind in the process) in the next week or so.

But today I had a real-life success. I am trying to talk to the babysitter for months and months. Short successful discussions always ended pretty bad. She's very shy and very scared of me. I am confused how can someone be scared of me, when I am scared of my own shadow... But it is not uncommon, I am a scary person. Anyway this girl is really nice: very good to the baby, keeps my house spotless, and tries to do what I ask her to do if she can hear me through her fear. She is however getting sick or missing days quite often and unexpected.

So I finally think that I got to talk to her and tried to express my feelings and tried to encourage to think about her needs. I left the discussion open-ended, but told her that we both need to get over our fear and anxiety and start communicating. I hope that I was gentle enough: we'll see if she makes it tomorrow.

Oh, yes, did anyone see the irony in here? I am talking to the CEO of one of the largest hospitals in Boston, but have trouble talking to the babysitter.