The following is entirely my own opinion–however, I do believe I am correct in my opinion.

Looking for a therapist is a difficult thing. You’re looking for somebody that you can build a trust relationship with that can help you with your most difficult struggles, your most embedded thoughts, and your deepest feelings.

Knowing who to trust is really difficult if you have a history of being subject to untrustworthy people and have not been taught how to deal with such individuals.

One of the things I have noticed with some people on my facebook friends list is that they give Reasons X/Y/Z why they do not start looking for a therapist, and then say that self-therapy is the way to go.

For me, there is a considerable gap in their credibility.

The gap comes from a combination of my own experience with therapy and what I’ve observed about these people.

Throughout my adult life, I have spent considerable time and resources in therapy, looking for the right combination. All told, I have seen 6 therapists prior to finding my current therapist. They weren’t all entirely bad, but they were all more or less not very helpful in my goal of seeking healing and self-knowledge. The first 3 were sought out in my 20s and I ended up spending a lot more time and money with them before figuring out that they were not helping me (my family was also a tremendous impediment to self-knowledge). For the latter 3, I had access to FDR and was able to spend less time and resources on them because I had been doing some work on my own and had gained a little in the way of self-knowledge… but I still needed a good therapist, even after two and a half years of being around FDR.

From my own experience in therapy (almost at 10 months as of the time of this writing), I have experienced tremendous growth and am incredibly more relaxed and free to pursue my own life goals with the burdens of history lightened or removed. The depth of the work I am doing with my therapist, and the degree to which she is able to help me maintain presence in the sessions, is something that I just know I could never do on my own… and the main reason I know this is because I had not done this on my own.

Don’t believe my own self-reporting on my level of relaxation–ask my friends if I’m a better person to spend time around.

I believe that self-therapy ought to be a backup strategy if a professional therapist is not available… and by “not available,” I mean that you would be choosing between food and therapy, or you’re living in a country where finding a therapist in your native language is impossible, or some other extremity not covered here.

I also have absolutely no respect for the position that all therapists are corrupt, because this is simply not true. Either you have to explain how several people at FDR and elsewhere have found good therapists that they have found invaluable, or you have to admit that your standard of freedom from corruption is impossibly high.

Now, perhaps most therapists are corrupt… and this may well be true. Certainly the fact that I have spent significant time with 7 therapists throughout my adult life is a strong indicator of this fact, but I would hesitate to apply “corrupt” to every single one of them.

It so happens that I agree with Daniel Mackler on the point that many (if not most) therapists have unresolved issues from their own histories, but this is far from a reason to not seek out a therapist. I experienced this with 2 of the last 3 therapists that I saw prior to this one, and while it sucked, I got back on the horse eventually and found a good one.

Regarding religion and politics, the best therapist is one for which these things don’t matter. I don’t know what my therapist believes or how she votes (though I can take some educated guesses on these points), but the moral principles within the session are universal, logic and empiricism rule the day, and the art of the relationship is entirely open for exploration and discovery.

Be on the watch for absolute language which condemns everyone.

My particular absolutism was that any therapist I went to would reject me out of hand. The result of this was that I rejected all therapists out-of-hand… putting the onus on others for something I am doing myself is projection.

This is still something I struggle with, but I bring it up with my therapist, because it is a part of me that is self-rejecting, or is rejecting another part of me.

To sum up, my opinion on self-therapy is that it is a backup strategy to be employed if you are in an extremity where there are simply no other options. It is not to be relied upon as a primary strategy if you have not already spent time in therapy.

The effectiveness of self-therapy is severely limited until you have gained enough self-knowledge.

Today I attended my first-ever filming! I’ve been around cameras before, but more on the crew side of things (it was for an amateur wrestling league in northern New Jersey).

I was an extra–I almost had a line, too, but i didn’t quite speak up when I could have and thus lost the hustle… next time, I don’t think I will let that slip away from me.

More to come, watch this space (if you’re into that sort of thing ).

… just about every author that ever existed, apparently.

One of my friends posted a link to I Write Like and it seemed interesting as I’ve done enough writing of my own to have stuff to check out… but there’s not any consistency in the results. I suppose that this may be the case for most people, but check out the list:

Public posts on this blog:
My webhosting post and “You Are Not Google’s Customer” were like Cory Doctorow… my post on religion (“Nailed!”) was like Mary Shelley… “Sad Little Miss Little Sally Conformity” was like James Fenimore Cooper…

Private journal entries:
Stephen King
H.P. Lovecraft
David Foster Wallace
J.K. Rowling (dream entry)
William Shakespeare

My first two posts @ FDR
Dan Brown
Isaac Asimov

The 3 linked in my bio:
Isaac Asimov (Letter to Joy)
Kurt Vonnegut (Kalap)
David Foster Wallace (Three Years)

I’ve read some of those authors, but certainly not all of them, so I don’t know what bits match and what bits don’t, nor do I really know how it’s trying to match things up. I know it’s just a toy but, well, that game kind of sucked for me.

I am currently in the process of migrating my websites off of Bluehost. I’ve gotten all of the content off and serving elsewhere… the only thing remaining is to get my email serving and then I will be canceling their service. [Edit: this was finished later the same night.]

Why have I decided to switch?

I signed up with Bluehost in April 2008 because I was looking for something inexpensive and reliable, and at the time, Bluehost certainly fit the bill. I saw several positive reviews and thought that it would be a good way to spend my money. I had been hosting my sites off of my home ISP connection and that was proving to be problematic, especially when more then 3 or 4 people were attempting to access it simultaneously.

For most of the first two years, I was actually quite happy with the service. There was little downtime, and I ended up using them for a handful of relatively low-traffic websites as well as an email provider.

I don’t have objective analyses or numbers but over the past 4-6 months, the quality of hosting with Bluehost began to decline. I began to get messages about DNS lookup failures, and more recently, authentication failures for my mail services. I would see errors in the logs about the MySQL server “going away,” and memory errors or execution time limits that seemed to be increasing in frequency.

I chalked it up to “cheap hosting” and kept on keeping on, because, hey, cheap is cheap, and I wasn’t having any major problems nor data corruption, and these were annoyances–though the authentication errors indicated to me that they were having more serious problems.

And then they had a disaster. According to reports from people who were able to get through to customer service at the time, Bluehost’s datacenter in Provo, Utah experienced an emergency shutdown situation due to an imminent transformer failure, affecting 50% of their customers.

However, when services went down at around 8:30pm MDT on September 16, 2010, there was no notice. There was no notice on their main site, on the server status page (which said that all services were up and running with no problems), on their helpdesk page, nor anywhere else obvious. They did not comment on the forum thread that was opened regarding the downtime, and they disabled their live chat with not a word about what was going on.

Actual explanations about what was going on started to appear around 11pm, which was about the time that their help center main page was updated with a notice indicating that services would be restored around 1am Friday (September 17th).

It was also at about this time that somebody at Bluehost started submitting updates via their Twitter account.

While I definitely have sympathy for the techies and customer service reps who got thrown into the shitter, having to deal with this disaster and a large number of very unhappy customers, I have a serious problem with the way Bluehost handled the situation during and after the incident.

You see, I’m a techie myself. I know that, sometimes, everything just plain goes to fucking shit and there is no happy ending despite how hard you work to get things up and running. However, I also know that even if everything is going to shit, you still need to try to please your customers.

My problem with Bluehost isn’t the downtime. Shit happens! My problem with Bluehost is their handling of their customers. As above, there was no mention of the disaster or the downtime anywhere on their site for two and a half hours.

Mull that one over.

In an age where you have smart phones, remote access, VPN, SSH, VOIP, and all kinds of other technologies, Bluehost, a web hosting company, did not update their main page regarding a disaster that affected 50% of their “millions of domains” being hosted by their customers.

That just makes me angry. It tells me that, whatever else is going on, I as a customer am not being considered in their list of priorities. That my confidence in their ability to communicate with me is not important to them.

It probably never has been just good enough to provide a service if you have poor customer service, but it is certainly nowhere near good enough now.

And this is not a subtle or esoteric aspect of customer service… this is Customer Service 101! If I were managing customer service at Bluehost that night, I would have thought, “Total service outage for 50% of our customers and the first two places they will go are the main site and the server status page. We better stick a message up there.”

And it’s not like it would have been particularly embarrassing for them to talk about what was going on, so that makes their silence even more inexplicable.

I posted something on twitter about my displeasure with the situation, and Bluehost responded:

I retweeted: Sigh… #bluehost is STILL down. No formal explanation or apology. Case study in how NOT to do business in the social media age. (https://twitter.com/YuriArtibise/status/24754337216)

They replied: @jamesapyrich We’ve been back up for hours and have made several explanations, such as http://bit.ly/9Lw2cr. Is your site not working? (https://twitter.com/bluehost/status/24821147691)

I replied: @bluehost my complaint is not the downtime. my complaint is the lack of communication for 2.5 hrs from the start of downtime… (https://twitter.com/jamesapyrich/status/24828517137)
@bluehost i have yet to see this point addressed; perhaps i’ve missed it (https://twitter.com/jamesapyrich/status/24828536688)

Their response: @jamesapyrich We definitely should have communicated faster. Primary cause was the timing, those with twitter access had already gone home. (https://twitter.com/bluehost/status/24828732356)

Talk about missing the point.

Their followup has been just as disappointing, frankly… it is almost as if they’re not even aware of the fact that the problem is their lack of customer service.

If I did this in my job–was unavailable at a point where our systems were down, finally appeared 2.5 hours later, and gave no explanation to my absence nor offered some sort of apology–I would either be fired or be treading on very thin ice.

That kind of approach (for lack of a better term) to customer service and communication is a serious liability.

Don’t support this kind of customer service.

[Edit] – if you’re looking to upgrade to a VPS (not for everyone), try linode. They’ve got some nice bundles and if you use that link to become a customer, I get a bonus.

The Bomb in the Brain – an Introduction

For more, visit fdrurl.com/bib

In sifting through some of the accumulation that’s just never been addressed, I happened across a strap of leather tied in a loop with a little knot at one end that secured a rather large nail.

This was an idea that somebody at Calvin College came up with, ostensibly around Good Friday, to remind us college students that we ought to be a tad bit more pious.

I’m not sure if that nail is meant to be a historically accurate replica of a crucifixion nail or if it’s just ugly-looking enough that it serves its purpose for tender modern minds–I’m not familiar with building supplies or Iron Age execution devices to know the difference… and neither does it particularly matter.

I don’t have any particular reason to keep it anymore, but it’s interesting that I kept it at all. It tells me quite a lot about how desperate I was to continue belief that I would hold on to a worthless trinket.

I think I must have seen it at some point over the past 10 years as it was located in a box with items that I know were repackaged at some point. As with so many of the items in those boxes I’ve been carting around, I would pick it up, sigh (externally or internally), and place it back in the box with the thought, “I will deal with this, later.”

To be clear, I am done with anything resembling personal religion. It’s not possible to believe in something that doesn’t exist, and my standards for truth involve empiricism and logic, not tradition or hysteria or other such things…

But the nail is a symbol of more than a bygone religiosity. There is a stack of paper 2 inches high of journal entries I have written over the years–and this stack is only what I’ve consolidated so far. The majority of that writing took place while I was in college, especially at Calvin, and throughout that writing is interwoven a relationship with “the Lord” most of the time, less frequently “Jesus” or “the Spirit”. I haven’t looked over them in detail in quite some time, and there are some pages that I’m sure I haven’t seen since the pen left the paper.

There is a sense of guilt and shame around those pages. I could destroy them, just as I’ve destroyed lots of other things… and if I were to discard them, I would destroy them, as they are nobody’s business but my own. I suppose it’s that the memories of those writings, with phrases catching my eye, evoke within me the feelings I had at the time, which were despair, shame, guilt, isolation, and depression… and, for the most part, those are the feelings that I am dealing with now in therapy.

These feelings and experiences certainly did not originate at Calvin; I had been experiencing them for years prior. It just so happened that being separated from my overbearing father allowed me to connect with my real experience of life, such as it was.

It is no surprise that he was so opposed to me living outside of his house. As with many other things, I doubt it was a conscious decision on his part. It was, in its most simplest form, the fear of being outed as an abuser. It certainly wasn’t care or concern about my well-being.

So, I look at this nail, and I look at those journal entries, and I reexperience those old feelings… and while I did experience them, I do not believe that they belong to me. I do not believe that the despair, guilt, shame, and depression I experienced were my actual feelings any more than the relationship I wrote about with god was real.

What would I as a young adult have to feel guilty about or ashamed of? My worst crimes in my life to that point were shouting at people and being late to class–the latter being almost a thing of identity, the former being rare as I spent little time interacting with others.

The things I felt the most guilt and shame around were things that I should have been able to appreciate, enjoy, and celebrate: sexuality; creative skills; lack of faith; skepticism; relaxation.

These are simply not organically shameful things. Organically shameful things include things like murder, rape, assault, lies, and corruption. Those are things you should feel shame for, and they are also things which people strive to avoid feeling shame for.

Given the degree to which I felt guilt and shame, despair and depression were inevitable, and I am lucky that I did not succumb to depression’s ultimate goal. I don’t actually know what kept me going all those years except for possibly a fear of immediate physical pain, or a lifetime of paralysis if I was unsuccessful.

I will offer a slight correction regarding despair here that just occurred to me. Given the evidence I had at the time, despair was entirely appropriate. It was not until I was introduced to a new experience of life that I was able to question my despair, for though it had not taken root in an immediate demise, it had ground me to a stop such that movement was unnecessary and undesired.

I have since begun to move again… and I no longer need this nail.

Sad little miss little Sally Conformity
So afraid to offend; to stop and take a stand
Spineless, gutless, cannot draw the moral bead
Will side with the snipers, hiding in their nest

Sad little sick little Sally Conformity
In your quest to not offend, you offend, and greatly
You lacquer your subservience with a veneer of civility
And place yourself in the middle until it’s time to choose sides

Sad little lickspittle Sally Conformity
Shining the jackboots ’til your mouth’s almost dry
Wagging your tongue, counseling the reasonable to “have reason”
Shove that tongue back in your asp.

Sad little poor little Sally Conformity
You betray honor and nobility and that to survive
You shall not be punished but your rewards will wear thin
You may find collaboration to be comfortable… so go and have comfort!

But do not pretend that what you do is noble… civil… right… good… honorable… just.

I really notice–feel, even–the quickening darkness of the end of summer.

I have even noticed it this year, and noticed as well the conjunction of depressive-type feelings arising here.

I made the decision to separate in early August, and carried it out by the beginning of September.

I have definitely noticed this pattern before, with depression starting a little before the fall, and dangerously deepening in the thick of winter, with reprieve being granted by the painstaking stretching of daylight, like a old tendon that’s not been moved for ages.

In the past, of course, I had several otherwise well-meaning people attempt to solve this problem for me. (“It sounds like you have Seasonal Affective Disorder. You should buy a sunlamp.”)

I never actually tried the sunlamp, though I did try other suggestions–the vast majority of which, by the way, did nothing to even alleviate symptoms, much less act as a cure.

What I really needed was a listener. I needed to be heard, to express my feelings–happy, sad, angry, afraid. I may still need to address a seasonal affliction, but it was never the highest priority to address.

It’s as if I had internal bleeding and some sort of rare lymph disorder… sure, the lymph disorder may be causing some problems but if the doctors don’t sort out the internal bleeding, I am going to die.

And, of course, this is what happens when you rely on the urban dictionary equivalent of WebMD.

With all that said, I find it really interesting that I’m noticing this minor depression of my mood now. After all, I’ve been in therapy for 8 months now, and while I’m not saying I’m cured, I’ve definitely made tremendous progress in self-knowledge. I’ve also spent nearly three years in non-contact with my family, which has proven to be a very healthy decision.

It could be something historical, something about how school would start in September, or something equally (or more) traumatic that I just don’t remember but is stored in my unconscious memories… or it could be a sensitivity to light! Without knowing more about myself, it’s really not possible for me to draw a conclusion.

Even if I don’t know why this is occurring for me, I can at least take note that it is occurring and be aware of how it affects me–most notably, I can probably expect to have less tolerance for negative stimuli and so can expect to feel frustration and irritation more quickly… and so I can then adjust my environment to help prevent these outcomes. In the past, without that knowledge (and in the more distant past, without any effective power), I would end up grinding down into depression, deeper and deeper, because without the knowledge (and power) I simply could not effect any change, or the change would be random and temporary.

I have been making progress with noticing in the moment when I’m feeling frustrated or irritated; I still end up acting out but I am able to catch it before it goes on for too long.

In therapy, we’ve repeatedly encountered one of my defenses–a part that engages in intellectual analysis. He usually steps in when there’s a question to another part about what their experience is or something else, and just yesterday I got the barest sense of what it was he was defending against–that is, why he has the job he has.

It’s yet to be fully explored but there is a great deal of fear beyond his analysis, almost to the point of terror. It was only when I was in the moment of experiencing the terror that I began to get a real sense of what this part feels like… because before, it didn’t feel any different. I didn’t notice when he came up, and I didn’t really feel any different when my therapist asked him to step aside for the time being (except that he did withdraw).

This makes a tremendous amount of sense, of course… if the body reaches a certain level of intense, constant pain, it will go into shock and shut down, even to the point of going into a coma. This intellectual defense is basically emotional shock.

I’ve finally done it!

I finally got my apartment cleaned!

One of the things I have struggled with lately (at least, somewhat consciously) is the utter lack of “basic” self-management skills. Things like keeping my living area somewhat in order; maintaining cleanliness of my dwelling; certain aspects of hygiene like shaving regularly; getting enough sleep; getting enough exercise; etc.

The reason I put “basic” in quotes, however, is that these skills would be acquired in a safe, nurturing, loving environment, which was simply not what I had. What I do have are fantastic management skills for an environment where the only two options are frustrated, unpredictable rage or massive, guilty depression.

What aptitudes I lack in normal behaviors I make up for in emotional management and projective capacities… all of which were essential for survival where I came from.

To put it another way, it is absolutely not the case that one day I sat down and decided that I preferred the behaviors that led to the lack of “basic” skills I now struggle to attain.

And you may ask, why do I want to gain these skills, or at least recognize and compensate appropriately for them?

It’s all for love and romance!

It’s for the future wifey… the friends I have and will make… the children I will hopefully father one day… for me to get out of my own way so that whoever it is that I am will shine through, because that’s the only real way to live, anyway.

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