Chapter 86

Have you ever seen a psychologist? Or how about a psychotherapist? Before this recent ordeal, I never thought I would be the kind of person who needed it. Although Universities and Colleges had since normalized talking to health care professionals about mental health, I never thought I would be one of those seeking aid. However, in light of my recent mental breakdown, I thought it may be worth the while. I didn’t even really have to search for shrink, my mom had been visiting one for a bit of time now and gave me a recommendation. 

Yes, that’s right. My mom was seeing a psychologist. Why did she do this? It wasn’t because she thought she needed help. I think she may have been slightly too egotistical to think about it in that sense. She visited the shrink mainly because she had benefits from her work as a lecturer at the university. “It was free so why waste it?” she used to say. 

Now it was my turn. I decided to see the same one. In fact, my mom told me that I could still use her insurance for it too since I was still covered. The psychologist worked at a small office in one of the several high skyscrapers at Sheppard and Yonge. I walked into the building and after a quick search, found her office on the middle floors of the building. When I got to the floor, I spoke with a secretary, then sat down in the waiting area. 

I was unfamiliar with this setting. I was now a patient… of a psychologist too… I’ve only known the vibe of being a patient in regards to the context of optometry clinics. This was an office of a different kind. In a strange twist, the office felt less comforting than all the optometry clinics I’ve been in as well. The office wasn’t owned by the psychologist. This was one of those office for rent kind of deals where you, as a professional, would rent a room in the office to practice in. You usually didn’t have a lease and more importantly, you didn’t have staff. The secretary for the day was just that, a day hire, she came with the rented room. 

This works for chiropractors and I suppose psychologists too. Optometrists though? We need equipment. Big equipment too. Hence we don’t really have the option of moving around a lot. But it also meant that when we did find an office to work in, we got staff that we hired or knew of and chatted a lot with and oftentimes, we got along with our neighbors in the commercial real estate area. Optometry clinics have roots and they run deep. We had to be part of the community and take part in it. We weren’t in this up and go attitude kind of deal. All I’m saying is, this was not the vibe I was hoping for at a psychologist’s office. It was cold. 

When the psychologist finally got around to me, I had almost dozed off. The waiting area was pretty empty and so was the floor. With the exception of the shared secretary for the space and one or two people waiting for another person, it was really quiet. The building’s space, being a rental of sorts, was actually not that occupied. This meant that the rooms that you can see from the waiting area were empty and not lit. The psychologist’s room did luckily feel a bit different from this. Her room looked like an ikea catalog. Warm with lots of fluff on the sofa. I was unsure if she chose this room or had set it up herself but it was clean at least. Oh and definitely much better than the waiting area. 

After we entered the room, she signaled for me to sit on the couch while she sat across from me in a chair. There was no table separating us so it didn’t feel like I was at a principal’s office. It also seemed kind of lax by the lighting and surroundings. I felt comfortable. After shuffling around a bit, she brought a notepad and we started our session. She made a quick introduction and then gave me the generic question of asking “What’s wrong?”

In my mind, healthcare professionals are fixers. We fix things. Something in your body not working optimally? Well… Let me re-tune it until it works. Psychologists though? They’re a different breed. What are they here to fix? I had no idea. I only had a basis of how things went by watching TV and that didn’t quite feel like it translates well into real life. Soooo with that said, what do I say? What’s wrong? I’m not entirely sure…Not knowing, I decided to answer as if I was writing a test. I objectively told her what was going on. 

“I failed a course for the second time in my life and though it won’t screw up my career or anything, I am really concerned on why I let it happen considering I had so many opportunities to prevent it from happening.”

I thought that cleared it up but the psychologist seemed unconvinced. She looked at me and seemed to ease me on to share more. Without even talking, her unassuming look motioned me to keep going. 

“I… think… a part of the reason as to why it happened the way it did may have initially been triggered by an incident having to deal with my parents?”

I honestly wasn’t really sure about anything but I thought I would tell her something involving 

parents since most psychologists tended to go there at some point.

She spoke. “Tell me more about your parents and your relationship with them.”

After she spoke, I figured out why mom liked her. She clearly had an accent. I know now that she definitely didn’t speak English as a primary language. My mind wandered for a quick second. I thought psychologists were supposed to be MD’s. I mean…they can prescribe psychoactive medications right? I know of very few Canadian Medical school students who had accents. Was this psychologist the true deal? What’s going on here? 

I shook the thought. Or at least tried to. In my head I was thinking…this is mom’s recommendation…I’m not sure if this person is truly qualified. But I mean…she was charging me $220/45 minutes here and she did have the ability to bill insurance. That must mean she is worth something right? Right?

Well, whatever the case, I’m here now. I’ve committed to giving this a go so whatever happens, I‘ll try and at least give this a chance. 

I told her I had lots of issues with my mom. In any case, you can choose your pick. I got some abandonment issues from the past from both her and dad. I had some impatience issues with mom because I had not grown up with sympathy and I suppose if I dig a bit deeper I would say I also have the run of the mill authority issues with mom as the leader of my family since I didn’t really trust her judgment that much. 

We landed on the authority thing. 

A good place to start as any I figured…

Entry taken from “Mind Games: Psychologist Journal”

I think most people have an issue with authority in their family. No, I don’t mean with the police. I mean with the concept of respecting your elders in general. While I initially thought this was an asian thing, I don’t think so anymore. 

No matter what race you are, the elders of the community will naturally demand authority and respect from the younger members. I think it may have to do with the way we’re raised. I mean, at some point, we needed someone to watch over us because as kids, we can be pretty stupid. But eventually, the elders have to let go. If they don’t, it causes issues. 

Authority over the family and the desire to be the shot caller. What a toxic trait. I remember mom being super hungry for this power. When I was young, I would say that I was used as a punching bag for mom to deal with her own inadequacies. It’s only later on when I realized that mom did try to verbally abuse me for my own benefit. I mean, sure, she belittled how little will I have to keep on task and finish my homework but that’s just her way of forcing me to do homework. I think in truth, all the verbal abuses she spewed at me were her way of controlling me. 

Was it worth it? It’s hard to say. First mom would yell about how horrible our lives were. Then she would tell me that I had to do better in school so I could get out of this familial slump. I mean, it worked? I got guilt tripped. But was this really the best way of going about it? Was the verbal abuse and all that enough justification just to gain control over me? 

At some point, I got disillusioned with everything. I connected the dots that Asian parents don’t want their kids to connect and I started to resent mom for always pushing her will on to me. For my benefit or not, it just pissed me off to hear how crap I was first. I eventually started to ask the question… 

Why must I be the one to redeem our family? Why can’t you do it? 

Why are Asian parents so hard on their kids when they aren’t that hard on themselves? Doesn’t seem fair does it? People usually are lenient on their parents and say that it’s a circumstantial thing. It’s too late for them and they’re now too old. To that I say: Oh yeah? So what? You never said I was too young, why must you complain about being too old?

I don’t think mom and I ever had a sympathetic relationship. Mom ever preached tolerance nor sympathy towards me when I had shortcomings and I think a part of that made me feel unsympathetic towards her. 

In my mind, mom only cared about one thing. It was that I succeeded. There were no excuses. And…since she was the only parent I had when growing up. I felt like I had to succeed. Maybe the recent failing kind of shattered all of that. 

End of entry

Now, before we go any further. You may have noticed that this was a journal entry and NOT a word for word conversation with the shrink. Why is that? Well…Let’s just say this shrink rubbed me the wrong way. To that end, right after our session, I decided to go home and, to the best of my ability, recreate my conversation with her. Then I proceeded to use that as a prompt to keep writing more. 

This was done because in all honesty, aftering speaking with her, it felt vastly inferior to just journaling to myself. I mean, just as an example, after I talked about the sympathy thing, she circled back to the whole Asian parents thing and asked me, pretty much for the rest of the session, to talk more about how I felt about that. 

Was this something interesting to talk about? Maybe? I was for me but the thing aws, I was there to get fixed, not to have a discussion. If I wanted to do a deep dive on the Asian parent thing I would write about it at a different time. In fact, I have. Check out Chapter 26 of this blog.

Funny enough, towards the end of the session, she even told me I should think about writing as an exercise in therapy. What an idea!

…

Okay, that’s not fair. She did mean well I’m sure and to her credit, that wasn’t bad advice nor even totally redundant. I was writing small passages here and here when I went to her but as you may have been able to tell from my entries, it was never truly cohesive yet. Her recommendation was that I write something more cohesive. 

Anyhow, after I was done with her and got to journaling by myself, I did end up picking up a few new thoughts. Some of which actually did help me figure things out…at least a bit in part. As for the contents of that? Well…it would serve as the foundation for me to kind of rebuild myself a bit. 

Regardless, while it may seem almost inconsequential, I thought I would just share with you my very brief encounter with the shrink and how inconclusive the entire ordeal felt. If you’re seeking my personal opinion on my encounter with the psychologist… I would say that…”While I’m sure mental health and psychologists are worthwhile to some, I’m not sure they’re the right fit for me.” 

Alright…and if that’s the case… What do I do from here? 

…

I don’t know…

…

But I did have a time limit on everything so I had better get it figured out…

So as the situation stands, here is where we are. I have a little bit of time before the supplementary and I was feeling pretty confident in my ability to pass it. Honestly, the topics weren’t that difficult, I had simply been too exhausted during exams to actually study efficiently. Now that I was given a bit more time, it seemed easy. Though, yes, I did take it seriously. I think I must have put in at least a good 6 hours a day cramming.

Honestly, though, that really wasn’t the main narrative that was going on in my life. The main narrative was my judgment and I suppose my loss of control. I mean, I basically self sabotaged myself for a good 4 months and then got screwed over for it. I saw it coming. I knew it was coming. Yet I let it slide. Was this ego? Was this an issue to do with my family problems back home? Why did my judgment just slip away from me? I knew there was something wrong with me but I couldn’t really figure out what it was. I mean…There was something wrong right? Right??? 

I’ve tried, very briefly, to go the psychologist route but it kind of brought me back to my journaling. Journaling just felt better. I felt like I was getting more off my chest from journaling. Furthermore, journaling was free and can be done at any time. The shrink? She was expensive and also limited in timing too. Writing just felt better. It was therapeutic even before my shrink recommended it and I saw no reason to go back to the psychologist when I had my journal. 

So that was what I did.

In the time before the supplementary, I journaled as much as I could outside of cramming for the test. In the time afterwards, I also journaled as much as I could before I got the results back for the supplementary. I wanted to really figure out what was wrong with me before I headed on to the next term in my schooling. I figured this was important because the next step was clinical rotations. 

Clinical rotations were when fourth year students would go off to various clinics across the world to act as unpaid interns doing eye exams. You were essentially doing eye exams in the real world (for no money but it is what it is) and I really wanted to plant my foot in that world with as little baggage as I could. 

What did I accomplish in this time of frantic journaling? Well…I definitely took a look at some of the baggage I was carrying. It did help to see what I was dragging around and when it comes to mental health issues, I would say that’s half the battle. However, fixing things is a bit more complicated.  

I decided to start small and work from there. I jotted down what happened and a small side note on how it made me feel. Then I worked to zoom out a bit. Okay, each of these events can be traced back to a prior event that led to it. Then I realized that this was beginning to hit a dead end. Sure, it was therapeutic to recall the past and in fact, that was one of the motivations behind the blog, but it didn’t really fix anything. It was fixing symptoms, not curing a disease. Writing about past things helps me accept the past things but it doesn’t really do much to help me understand why the past things are the way they are. I realized then that I had to be more conceptual and work from the most vague downwards.

I started by asking myself a really simple question. 

How do I feel about my life?