Therapy: The Dark Side

In the beginning, I was conceived.  The two cells that were my genesis quaked in fear, even in the first few seconds of meiosis.  Kicking and screaming, I evolved into a zygote, then an embryo, and began biting my nails as soon as they grew in.  I popped out of my mother's birth canal and immediately had a panic attack.  The blinding light, the gaseous atmosphere - these changes came too fast.  I was hysterical and naked and about to be violated on the ass cheek by some cult member in a paper mask and hairnet.  But somehow, along with billions of others, I did survive this ordeal and was wrapped in a stifling blanket and handed to someone who was an acquaintance at best.

I'm an anxious person.

Anxiety is an instinct.  Caveman feel anxious, caveman hide in cave.  But what do we have to fear anymore?  How is anxiety even remotely beneficial in these times?  I'm not being stalked by predatory cats.  Rhinovirus isn't going to be the cause my excruciating death.  Something I fear more than a life cut short is to live too long, to be ninety-three with a couple jackass grandkids who won't pull the plug.  We have overevolved.  Our stress is out of control.  For some of us, anxiety becomes a way of life, a state of being, a familiar knot in the chest that stutters a lot and whispers ass-backwards encouragements such as, "It's okay, sweetie-pie.  Socializing is overrated.  Working is just submitting to the man.  And education?  You can find all of that on W-w-wikipedia."  As you may have assumed by now, my specific diagnosis is social anxiety.

You never hear anyone say it outloud, but you can feel the people around you thinking, "Get help, you socialphobic jerkwad."  Get help?  Help is a joke.

Therapy for the socially anxious is a conundrum.  Therapy is anxiety in the form of a tiny office with light jazz and a lady that has such a serene smile on her face that she's surely smoking something or is at that moment transcending into Nirvana after fasting for forty-nine days beneath a ficus.  A typical session of therapy is not a complex thing.  The following is taken from my own experience:  The therapist asks an open ended question along the lines of, "How was your week?"  I answer, "Good."  She smiles.  I nod and smile back, for I am a nervous wreck and it makes me nervous to appear nervous.  There is about an hour of silence, ending in a tendon snapping in my ankle due to the breakneck speed at which my foot has been shaking.  And then the therapist says, "I'll see you next week?"  I look down at my hands, trying to seem busy as I dislodge my nails from my palms; I answer promptly, "Alright."  I don't want to hurt her feelings, causing her to develop a bad impression of me.  It's not really like she gave me a choice, anyway.  The upward inflexion in her voice merely concealed an order.  And so, the week goes by.  I'm too anxious to call and cancel.  A cycle begins.  This is why therapists specialize in anxiety disorders.  Once you're in, you can never escape.

I think that therapy is the cement into which I've plunged my anxiety, my prints ingrained permanently until a jackhammer undoes the damage, this jackhammer probably taking the form of an electrically charged probe to the head.  What really screwed me was the hierarchy therapy.  I think the word "hierarchy" used in a therapeutic context is misleading.  When I think of a hierarchy, I think of a motion upwards.  But hierarchy therapy is actually more of a downward process into a pit of mud and sand and water until you're low enough for a toddler with a poopy diaper to look intimidating.  Nothing gets solved, in fact the stress increases with each level.  It should probably be called something along the lines of - I don't know - "Sadotherapy."  Your therapist hides behind a mask of compassion, but behind the gentle porcelain smile is the grin of a predator.

The hierarchy consists of ten levels.  Please feel free to use my personal program as a guide for your own self-improvement/deprecation:

Level 1:  Walk around a busy department store for fifteen minutes.  This one is pretty easy.

Level 2:  Purchase a coffee at Starbucks.  I suggest reading a few chapters out of "The Idiot's Guide to Ordering Coffee At Starbucks" before attempting this.  Short read, about 150 pages at best, but so worth it.

Level 3:  Buy something and return it about five minutes later.  This is very practical for those folks who enjoy a good waste time and mild to medium humiliation.

Level 4:  Call for a cab, then cancel about five minutes later.  Once again, very useful, especially for those suburbanites who only have a car in their driveway to look classy.  Also a nice way to get a date with a disgruntled Yellow Cab dispatcher, I'd imagine.

Level 5:  Talk your way out of a speeding ticket.  Simple enough.

Level 6:  Stand on on a poorly lit South Side corner in a latex catsuit.  I suggested the latex to my therapist, being very well-educated on the prominence of venereal disease in the modern world.  What could be safer than being covered from head to toe in a condom?

I'm not going to go into all of them.  But to give a brief summary of the rest of the program, I eventually practice diplomacy with a neo-Nazi, die in a snuff film, and cross the river Styx.  I can't remember Level 10, though.  Probably because there are only nine circles of hell.

This approach could help you or ruin you, but mostly ruin you.  After ten weeks of hierarchy therapy, your neurons are so shot, so damaged that you can not even muster the strength to be anxious.  This may sound like psychological heaven, but in the end the only social interaction you engage in is performed in a quasi-catatonic state with a completely narcissistic coat rack.

My socially inept comrades, do not waste your shitty insurance on therapy.  Do not fork out your ridiculous deductible to simply be humiliated, maimed, and tortured by a dominating hussy - unless you're into that kind of thing.  Take my advice, the wisdom of a veteran, a survivor of therapeutic brutality.  Anxiety is an uncomfortable part of life for every creature on this planet and I believe the healthiest thing to do is accept this fact, this inevitability of sentient existence.  The alternative is far worse.