I had this great therapist. I respected him so much. After about 18 months of work together and after my blogging kept tripping me up and stopping me from getting along with my various communities, he said to me, “I don’t think you want to change.”
I was up for making incremental change, but my therapist encouraged me to go for deep change, the kind of change that would require me to stop doing things I love doing, such as infuriating people. I typically do this in one of my periodic bouts of grandiosity when I’m sure I’m just so much smarter than everybody else, and not just smart, but damn courageous too, and now I’m going to tell the truth, no matter what the cost to me.
My therapist wanted me to have what I said I wanted — at least a normal level of human connection. I wanted to be able to walk into a room, into a shul, and to feel welcome. I wanted to have friends. I wanted to be able to walk around my community and to run into people who were glad to see me. I said that’s what I wanted. I said I didn’t want any tension with my Alexander Technique community. I wanted to be a good teacher. I wanted less unnecessary tension in my most important relationships.
