<p>There is a strangely comforting humiliation to the act of confession, to admitting to the one on the other side of that screen just how long it has been since you engaged with your sins so directly, so honestly. You kneel on that delightfully familiar kneeler, the same you knelt on in high school, the same you knelt on when you got home from your failed venture out of state. You fold your hands, you nearly rest your nose against them, doing your best to smell only your scent and that of the cedar before you, not the priest, not the feline who was in there before you. You admit your deeds and the words roll off your tongue with the aspartame tang of your shortcomings.</p>
<p>For a while, when I was getting my psych degree, I stopped going to confession. I will admit that there was a brief time during those studies that I thought I understood quite a bit more than I actually do. I knew enough to be dangerous. I thought, “Ah yes, if confession is the catharsis of letting go of an internal stressor, I needn’t go to confession, so long as I have that regular release of spiritual energy!”</p>
<p>But while confession certainly involves catharsis, that’s not its sole purpose. I got my catharsis from the class trip to a junk yard where we were given goggles and sledge hammers and let at a stack of cars, from letting a friend talk me into driving up into the mountains so that I could shoot his pistol, even from visiting a batting cage.</p>
<p>But it wasn’t the right catharsis.</p>
<p>I never felt like I was handling my sins when the bat made contact with the ball, and even when the ball hit me instead of the bat, I still had not served penance. I wasn’t shooting my guilt, not blasting away my unworthiness before God. I was just panting and yelping like an idiot in a fenced-in enclosure. I was just tasting cordite on the air, not the clean, cool flavor of the act of contrition.</p>
<p>I lacked the post-catharsis cleansing, and so I went back to confession. I lacked the flavor of it.</p>
<p>It is not anything so grand as synaesthesia. I don’t think that voicing my sins actually tastes like an artificial sweetness, one so sweet that it hurts your teeth despite the implicit promise that it not do that. It’s not an actual flavor in my mouth, just this sense so strong that that is how sin must taste, that is how confession must taste.</p>
<p>Thinking back, this has always been the case for me, at least when talking about anything of such dire import. </p>
<p>I remember the night I decided to leave St John’s. I remember leaving the library and walking to the quad, taking the long way home to put off walking alongside traffic on the road. I remember praying as I looked up to the stars, and then as I sat on the grass, and then I remembered that same tang of confession in my mouth as I said to myself, “I don’t want to be here.”</p>
<p>I tasted that again today, still taste it.</p>
<p>“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned,” is when the taste started. “It has been three weeks since my last confession.”</p>
<p>Citrusy-sweet words from a clumsy mouth.</p>
<p>“I have felt desire towards someone…”</p>
<p>Sweet, gritty, leaving the tongue feeling a little too dry.</p>
<p>”…who I am not sure feels the same towards me…”</p>
<p>Salivary glands working overtime.</p>
<p>”…and it is taking a toll on me. I can’t think of anything else.”</p>
<p>And then, with a few words, the taste beginning to lessen, the words of your priest: “Are these thoughts adulterous in nature?”</p>
<p>“No, Father. She is not married.”</p>
<p>“Do they stem from lust?”</p>
<p>I frowned down at my paws. “I don’t think so. It is an overwhelming need to be with her, even just romantically.”</p>
<p>“Like you need to possess her? Keep her?”</p>
<p>“Perhaps. Certainly to an extent.”</p>
<p>“And what have you done to address these thoughts?”</p>
<p>The crushing weight of my iniquity sliding from the back of my neck to rest on my shoulders. I shrug weakly. “I have been praying for understanding, but Father, I don’t want to rid myself of them. I want to fulfill them. I want to be good to her, I want her to be happy. I just also want to be a part of that.”</p>
<p>“I see.”</p>
<p>“So maybe it is a form of jealousy, or perhaps envy. I’m yearning for something I can’t have.”</p>
<p>“You can’t have that fulfillment?”</p>
<p>“No I just…” I fumbled for words before coming up with, “It just feels like I can’t have that, like it’s out of reach.”</p>
<p>There was silence on the other side of the screen. Words failed me, then. The tang on my lips was starting to fade, so perhaps I had voiced all I could.</p>
<p>“For these and all my past sins, I ask pardon of God, penance, and absolution from you, Father.”</p>
<p>A soft hum on the other side of the screen, that soft noise the priest always makes when considering penance. And then, “Alright, my son. Say five Our Fathers for your penance. I also want you think on who it is that you’re envious of, or what you are jealous of. Ask yourself who it is that you are hurting in these situations as you pray.”</p>
<p>The weight on my shoulders slid down and off of me. “Thank you, Father.”</p>
<p>That was Wednesday, and coming on Friday evening, now, I still do not know the root of my jealousy. I waffle still.</p>
<p>Sometimes, it feels like envy. It feels like I’m craving something that I cannot have, something that is being kept from me in some form or another. By whom? Who would possibly be keeping me from Kay? Kay herself? God? Myself? I cannot begin to place any sort of blame on any one source.</p>
<p>Other times, however, I recognize that there is nothing keeping me from ‘having’ Dee, and that perhaps I am simply jealous of something that I do not yet have, but see myself having in the future.</p>
<p>And other times still, both words fail, and I’m left simply with yearning.</p>
<p>I’m left with yearning, and I know that the only one who I am hurting in these situations is me.</p>
<hr/>
<p>I see a client with obsessive compulsive disorder. She has a tendency to pick at her fur and skin, some troubles with physical affection that make her feel ‘gross’, a fear of driving that leads her to worry that someone has been struck by the car, and a sort of external claustrophobia that leads her to struggle with the idea of closed-in spaces such as cabinets and cupboards, which we suspect stems from some early childhood abuse.</p>
<p>She also struggles with relationship-rightness with her husband. She worries constantly that he might not be, in some way, okay. It’s not that she thinks he might not love her, or that she might not be good for him, but that if there is anything wrong in his life in any way, that she must address it. It goes beyond simply needing to comfort him, and well into the territory of her world falling apart should anything be wrong that she cannot address.<supid="fnref:codependence"><aclass="footnote-ref"href="#fn:codependence">1</a></sup> It did not matter what that wrongness might be. Often, the wrongness would be unnameable, ineffable, hypothetical.</p>
<p>When I brought this up with Jeremy during one of our sessions a few months ago, speaking specifically to the stress that I felt in masking around someone who existed in such a high state of activation at all times, he asked if I had greater trouble masking around those who experienced strong egodystonic symptoms and feelings than those who experienced strong egosyntonic symptoms.</p>
<p>At the time, I explained it thus. Those egodystonic disorders, the ones that impede upon the patient’s life, brushing their fur the wrong way and leaving them in discomfort or pain, often lead to high-stress situations where I find myself struggling with the task of expressing appropriate emotions, engaging that visible sort of empathy that helps so much with patients and which I feel I must constantly practice. I find myself wanting to disengage in order to protect myself. Avert my eyes. Cross my arms. Close myself off from the stressors before me.</p>
<p>Egosyntonic symptoms, where detrimental feelings, symptoms, or thoughts do not disturb the patient’s sense of identity, are far easier for me to mask around. It feels much more natural for me to try and engage with a patient with visible empathy if my goal is to try and help them understand that a behavior might be damaging to themselves or others. At that point, masking is a tool in my kit.</p>
<p>I suspect that this habit may stem from my connection with the church. If an individual sins, knows that it is a sin, and struggles with that, it is far more uncomfortable than if an individual sins, does not consider it a sin, and cannot see the spiritual consequences that they might thus face. With the former, I struggle to mask because it is their goal, their work, their job to find their way back to the path, but with the latter, with the sinner from outside the church, they must be met with empathy, for they know not what they do.</p>
<p>This ties in quite neatly with my reasons for steering away from ministry: my instincts were in direct opposition to much of my training. Parishioners were to be treated with the greatest empathy while the sinners from outside were to be shunned and set aside.</p>
<p>Yet are not parishioners blessed with the knowledge of the path that is before them? And are not the sinners ignorant of the path all the more deserving of our attention and care for that?</p>
<p>Ah well.</p>
<p>All this to say that I am starting to come to the conclusion that limerence is the egodystonic form of attraction.</p>
<p>I suspect there must be some similarity to addiction here; the overwhelming pungency of limerence is not pleasant. It is a thing that must be maintained, just as a high-functioning addiction must be maintained. One must have that drink at the end of the day. It feels bad to drink it, it feels bad after, it feels bad to <em>need</em> it in order to maintain a functional life.</p>
<p>Similarly, this crush, if that’s all it is anymore, requires of me a constant level of maintenance. I have to feed it fantasies, have to pour into it energy. I have to dream, both at night and during the day. I have to imagine the feeling of our fingers intertwining.</p>
<p>It is a negative part of my life in both its concrete and emotional effects. It feels perilously close to sin.</p>
<p>I think that’s why I sought out confession. What was it the priest had said? <em>Ask yourself who it is that you are hurting in these situations.</em></p>
<p>I remember the surety of knowledge after that, that the only one I was hurting through these struggles was myself. And now I have better language for that, that this pain is egodystonia. Limerence is something that rankles with my identity, as negative a part of my life as it is.</p>
<p>Liking someone isn’t a sin. It cannot be, must not be. But here I am, wallowing in my own pain, and that is where I veer close to sin.</p>
<p>Why must we Catholics wrap our every action up in shame? There must be some root for some bad thing in my life. If I am depressed, it must be for some reason, for something that I have done, yes? If I struggle this much for liking someone, clearly there must be something shameful about that, yes? That sense of dread, that sour, ashen taste in the mouth, that is a sign from God that we have strayed from the path he has set before us, yes?</p>
<p>I’m a <em>therapist</em>. I should <em>not</em> be thinking this way. It’s not just wrong, but it bears the weight of hypocrisy.</p>
<p>Even as a Christian, there is little enough reason for me to think this way. I have read my Ecclesiastes. I have read my Job. I have buried myself in those words, in Job’s speeches and of those of his friends’. I have dug through the arguments on theodicy, I have written my essays, taken my tests on the reasons for bad things happening to good people, how not every terrible experience has its roots in sin. I <em>know</em> these things. </p>
<p>At least, I thought I did.</p>
<p>I don’t know. I’m spinning my wheels, talking in circles. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know where to go from here. To name a feeling may be to understand it, but understanding has gotten me nowhere, has purchased me nothing but a deeper ache in my gut, and now I must feed my desires all over again.</p>
<hr/>
<p>Often times, when I work with a therapist, we converse quite freely and with essentially no friction. I do not know whether that’s a thing that therapist-clients engender, necessarily. I’ve had my fair share of clients who were incredibly easy to talk with. Not that they’re likeable, or at least not only because of that, but that our sessions — me and those clients, and me and my therapists — tend to move forward with a sense of purpose.</p>
<p>In my clients’ case, these ones in particular are there for a purpose. To get better, to understand their trauma, to do the work. Not just take a pill (as I am not a prescribing doctor) or do the meditation and be cured of depression, but to really understand it, unravel it, and wind it back up into something neater than before.</p>
<p>In my case, I am here to do the job of improving myself and Jeremy is here to do his job of guiding me along that path.</p>
<p>My path of improvement, as I suspect must be the case with many of my colleagues, is to cope better with the process of taking on others emotions. A good therapist has to have empathy, after all, and I do try to be a good therapist. We don’t simply let emotions slide off of us in order to be some impartial observer, we have to feel a little bit of what our clients are feeling as well in order to truly work with them.</p>
<p>So it is that most often, I work through processing the residual trauma of the past two weeks’ clientele with Jeremy. Sometimes we’ll get onto something that goes a bit deeper, digs further into the past, though perhaps less often than he would like.</p>
<p>Lately, though, we’ve been spending more time talking about Kay and, along with that, the friction between us has grown.</p>
<p>I started to feel it in earnest today, and, being the good little therapist that I am, I took a step back and examined my feelings and brought that up with Jeremy: “I feel a little sore that I’m being pushed on this.”</p>
<p>Every time I get all therapist back at him, he smiles, which I think I secretly enjoy. He replied, “Why is that, do you think?”</p>
<p>“I think I worry that this isn’t real work.”</p>
<p>“How would sorting out your emotions not be real work? I think that was one of your stated goals.”</p>
<p>“Maybe it just doesn’t feel like a real problem. It feels like a very intense emotion that I’m not feeling for any particular reason.”</p>
<p>He nodded at that. “You mentioned last time that it feels outside your control.”</p>
<p>“At least more so than any other emotion that I’ve worked on before.” I thought for a bit, then added, “Or maybe ‘outside my control’ isn’t quite right. It feels purposeless, in the same way depression might. I like Kay. I think about her a lot. We were pretty good friends for that year, and still are, but this sudden intense desire doesn’t seem to come from anywhere. It just kind of showed up and now it’s slowly taking over.”</p>
<p>“Did you wind up talking to her about this?”</p>
<p>“Not really, no.”</p>
<p>“How come?”</p>
<p>There was a silence as I sifted through my thoughts. Despite their intensity, they were difficult to pin down, as though too much lens flare obscured the exact source. “I find myself thinking often that I don’t want to say anything to her because I don’t want her to feel pressured to reciprocate.”</p>
<p>“That’s her decision, though. Has she had a problem setting boundaries before? With you or in general.”</p>
<p>I laughed. “No, not at all.”</p>
<p>Jeremy grinned, but kept on pushing. “Then is that wholly true?”</p>
<p>“I’m not sure. I just don’t want her to feel obligated to feel the same way about me that I feel about her.”</p>
<p>“Projection, maybe?”</p>
<p>“I’m not convinced it’s <em>that</em> baseless.”</p>
<p>“What is the basis, then? Have you felt pressured into saying yes to someone you didn’t want to say yes to before?” he asked.</p>
<p>“I’m not sure. Perhaps. I know that going into seminary was not originally my idea. I liked it there. I believed. I felt myself faithful enough to wind up on that path. Still, it was my parents’ idea.”</p>
<p>He nodded. “And you felt obligated to go along with the idea?”</p>
<p>“Yes.”</p>
<p>“So perhaps a bit of projection.” He raised a jet paw to forestall my disagreement. “Both things can be true, Dee. It can be projection, and it can also have some truth to it.”</p>
<p>“Alright, I’ll concede to that.”</p>
<p>“Projection in cases like these often stems from a difficulty in being vulnerable.”</p>
<p>I winced.</p>
<p>“I know that being vulnerable isn’t something that comes easy to you. You are an earnest person in general–“</p>
<p>“Sometimes it feels like I have no other choice.”</p>
<p>“–but when it comes to specific situations, you come up against some internal resistance. Have you been able to be vulnerable around Kay before?”</p>
<p>I nodded and recounted our conversation about leaving Saint John’s.</p>
<p>“That sounds like a good bit of forward progress, then. Do you have any other things that you could be vulnerable to her about?”</p>
<p>“How do you mean?”</p>
<p>“Well, if there are a few topics around which you have trouble being vulnerable, perhaps you can work up to them. I still think that it should be an end goal for you to talk to her about your feelings, but that doesn’t have to be something that happens right away. You can practice, first.”</p>
<p>And so now I’m thinking: what more do I have to be vulnerable about? I’m a thirty-year-old coyote with an awkward social manner, a strongly-held sense of faith, and an otherwise simple lifestyle. My past is unremarkable. My future holds no surprises.</p>
<p>Am I really so boring? Do I really have so little to worry about? Am I that privileged? An uncomfortable thought. It makes me feel shallow.</p>
<p>And yet Jeremy is right. The friction surrounding this particular vulnerability is too great for me to overcome just yet, and I am still not convinced that this feeling is real enough that opening up is something that is even worth doing.</p>
<p>Instead, I wonder if the right thing to do is just to focus on being a good friend. I do not know if this is something that I can ignore, <em>per se</em>. That isn’t how limerence works. It is an intrusive thought. It is something that bypasses whatever safeguards one might set up to sidle up next to you, press itself close, and whisper wickedly into your ear: “You need them. Doesn’t matter how, doesn’t matter why, but you need them.”</p>
<p>I don’t know if I can ignore it, but perhaps I can use it as fuel. I can use it as a spark to just continue to be a better friend for her. A better listener, a better support, a better Dee all around. Am I not to practice my emotional literacy? Can I not use this as an opportunity? Transmute limerence into personal growth.</p>
<p>I suspect that their relationship is codependent, as I think that her husband gets as much out of taking care of her as she gets out of him taking the lead. However, I don’t think that it’s abusive or manipulative in anyway, simply that this is the way that their relationship works. If there is any negative aspect to the codependency, that, I suspect, is egosyntonic. <aclass="footnote-backref"href="#fnref:codependence"title="Jump back to footnote 1 in the text">↩</a></p>
