It became apparent to me, in my life back on the East Coast, that the sum of my parts was not greater than the whole. In fact, sometimes some of my parts subtracted from the whole.
My mind, my body, and my livelihood were not working together. They weren’t coherent, and they were pulling each other apart.
This is the story of how I was forced to face the music, and it wasn’t that bad.
The Starting Point
I can’t quite place exactly where the dis-coherence started, but it was in full force by the time I got to university. I got a degree that I wasn’t passionate about. I then worked on a start-up that fell apart. I was in a string of relationships that disintegrated. And I made decisions out of desperation that led to only more desperation.
I was a mess, that knew I was a mess, and hated that I was a mess. I was a painfully self-aware mess.
The Boiling Point
It all came to a boiling point, when I left my job and then found out my dental expenses would be over $6,000 in the next year. I crunched the numbers, and no matter which way I manipulated them, I would have to sacrifice all leisure activities for the next year in order to fix my teeth, and in the meantime, my student loan debt would continue to grow.
I was angry, frustrated, and felt trapped and hopeless. But the anger wasn’t new, it had been growing so insidiously that I stopped being aware of it, and it became a part of me.
The Hard Knock
I had been angry since, when I was twelve, I was the unlucky recipient of a preventative dental procedure that broke. The procedure, dental sealants, were supposed to prevent tooth decay. Instead, the sealants cracked, large cavities formed underneath my previously healthy teeth, and I suffered from headaches until they discovered the cavities. I received a root canal, and then a crown which cracked, and then a gold crown which destroyed the tooth underneath it because it didn’t fit in my mouth correctly, then another root canal, and then an infection, and now an extraction and a prosthetic implant.
I knew that I had just gotten unlucky. I also knew that lots of people are unlucky, many even unluckier than I, so I tried to focus on fixing the problem instead of getting so wrapped up in my own anger at the injustice of it all.
But my solution was to invalidate my anger, instead of channeling or focusing it. I spent so much time and energy trying to force myself to be okay and to be happy and optimistic, that on the days or moments when my mind slipped, and I simply didn’t have the energy to force myself anymore – the anger inside me would well up and lash out.
This part of myself, my anger, was growing like a cancer and undoing many of my efforts to establish myself professionally, financially, and socially.
The Shame
For many years, I was secretly ashamed and embarrassed by my explosions of anger. I can’t even begin to count the number of times I have been vicious or broken down, not just in public, but to the people I love.
The worst part, is that I could always sense when I was about to lose control. But even though I could sense it, I had used all my willpower up on forcing myself to be happy and willing myself through the pain from my teeth, that when the floodgates opened, all I could do was be a passive bystander and watch myself become a monster.
Therapy and Forgiveness
I dedicated myself to therapy for about a dozen years. I talked endlessly about my feelings, my childhood, my experiences. I could analyze myself very well, but only in hindsight.
About four years ago, I began doing Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, a type of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.
The therapy focused not on my past, but on my present thoughts and emotions and how they subsequently affected my behavior. I learned to be in the moment, and to analyze in real-time my emotional patterns.
It taught me how to have conflicting emotions within myself, and how to accept and fix myself, without invalidating myself. This idea was the seed that allowed me to begin healing.
The Blessing
The physical pain, and the emotional pain that ensued from being “the scary” person that few people wanted to connect with, drove me into an awareness of my self that I otherwise never would have experienced.
Through the engineering degree I completed but wasn’t passionate about, I learned how to solve problems and think analytically. Through my failed start-up, I learned that I liked design and not so much coding. Through the job I just left, I learned that I am actually good at making people happy – at the price of being so sensitive to others’ emotions that I couldn’t handle the negative emotions of a new manager. And through the constant pain from my teeth, I have learned acceptance, forgiveness and patience.
And even though the last few years feel like they’ve been chalked with all too many failures, I have had a few milestone successes.
In the past year, I have experienced moments of coherence for the first time since I was but a wee child. Moments when I was flowing in my technical work and interactions with other people. Moments when I felt as if I had twice the brain power and awareness as I usually did, because every part of me was working together and not against each other. Moments when I felt stillness and strength inside, and moments when I was able give that stillness and strength to others in need.
The Future
My experience of coherence, however, is usualIy limited to a fleeting moment. A few times it has lasted days, and once it lasted about two weeks. But the tide of anxiety and negative self-judgment is still dominant.
I still need to repair my mouth, patiently change my old habits, and find a way to earn a living that allows me to be coherent. Only with time, patience, and forgiveness can I even hope to make these desires a reality.
On my quest for coherence, I know I am going to make mistakes and stumble. But hopefully they’ll be funny and I can laugh about them afterwards. 🙂
Questing for Coherence 