“Sleepless” Chapter 6 “Proactive Psychotherapy”

High Performance Thought

Oakland, California February 2020

A coworker of mine from my atrocious fine dining job in San Francisco had recommended I see a therapist In September of 2019.

She was the type of girl to list all of her mental illnesses, “generational curses,” and astrology breakdowns in both her instagram and her assortment of dating apps. There was also the fact that she suddenly declared herself “non-binary” and shared some article of an obese Indian woman in Philadelphia stating that Western society had to be destroyed in order to end fat-phobia. This was likely due to the fact that she herself was obese.

However, I had internalized what Georges St. Pierre called the “white belt mentality in all things,” as he had defined in his autobiographical text, “The Way of the Fight.” He believed he could learn something from anyone including the homeless man on the street.

It’s hard to argue with the greatest mixed martial artist of all time.

“I see the weight you carry,” she said.

This was true. I hadn’t been the same since I had gotten back from New York.

It did however, feel like I was carrying less of a load in 2018, yet it felt far heavier.

Something about my time in Gotham broke my back both literally and spiritually.

It was an astute observation she made, and having the white belt mentality in mind, I took her advice.

She recommended I find a “holistic therapist” that wouldn’t immediately prescribe me drugs, to which I also agreed.

I found a website of holistic therapists in the East Bay Area to choose from, and I said no to purely 250 of them solely based on their appearance.

Mentally ill people should not be allowed to work as therapists.

For some of the ones who did look somewhat normal, their bio discussed things like “unlearning toxic masculinity” and “sex therapy.”

I finally found a silver haired and silver bearded man with decent enough physiognomy that said he would likely be alright.

His bio stated he was previously a divorce attorney and that he had been practicing meditation every day for 30 years.

In my mind, he was the closest thing I’d find to what I’m looking for: a man who can detach and visualize abstract thought while remaining grounded and objective. His background telegraphed this to me at least.

I sat in his office on the sixth floor of an old limestone Downtown Oakland building, with my rucksack planted next to me, holding shin guards and Muay Thai gloves made by Triumph United, sourdough bread, and some books I was neglecting at the time.

It was a grey couch, with a large window holding the Oakland sun in frame to my left, and across from it sat my therapist in his chair.

“So I know Celine is visiting in two weeks now.”

“Yeah, she was supposed to be here for Valentine’s Day, but it was just too expensive at the time.”

“I see. Are you excited for her visit?”

“Im as excited as I can be I suppose.”

“What makes you say that?”

“I don’t really know how it’s going to go. I would like it to go well, but there’s a part of me that wants to tell her to not come at all. There’s a part of me that wants to just take those days off to go to New York to be with the guys who were actually there for me in that time, not stay here with the woman who put me in that situation in the first place. I also just feel like there’s a route I can take after two years now where I can finally get back to being myself.”

“Then why are you still with her?”

“What happened in New York was nothing short of catastrophic, but I can’t help but think that’s how she felt when she came to visit me in San Francisco back in 2015. I think in a lot of ways that broke her for good. I’m really hoping that isn’t the case. But if I want her to move passed the pain from San Francisco, I’m going to move passed the pain from New York.”

“Do you think she can actually move passed it?”

“I honestly don’t know, but I won’t know unless she comes here, hence going through with the visit.”

“Do you think you can actually move past New York?”

“Yeah, I can.”

“But how do you actually FEEL about her visit?”

“I mean, if it wasn’t for what happened in San Francisco, I would have completely ended the relationship right then and there. I still almost did. I remember when I saw her off at the airport, she apparently turned back to look at me, expecting I was watching her until she was out of sight. But I walked away immediately after seeing her off, and apparently that made her sad. A big part of me wishes I did break up with her right then and there, but I felt like I owed her another shot. I told her we’re going to retrace our steps in San Francisco from when she visited five years ago. If that goes well, then maybe we could be healed and move forward, which I suppose I’d feel good about.”

“So it sounds like you can move on if she can move on?”

“Yeah, essentially.”

“Okay. And what about the fighting? Do you still not want her to see you train?”

“I mean she probably still won’t. Me not wanting her to see me train has less to do about sight and more to do with the fact that I try to separate fighting from the rest of my life. But the fact of the matter is whether she saw me train of not, she’d have to accept it, or we wouldn’t work. That would just be it.”

“This is a lot more positive than the last time you spoke about this. This feels a lot more confident and grounded Arthur.”

“I mean yeah, it’s just the way it is. I can’t destroy parts of myself or suffocate them like I did before. No one is worth that.”

“Well, Arthur, it sounds to me like…well, like you’re okay.”

“Really?”

“Well…yeah, I mean, you seem well-adjusted, you’re integrating all of these parts of yourself really well. Do you feel like you’re okay?”

The question posed to me felt bizarre.

Was I okay?

Well, truth be told, I didn’t know. On paper, I supposed I was fine. Injury free. More social than usual, ingratiated in an Oakland hospitality scene that I was finding increasingly endearing. I was making well over six thousand dollars a month to work thirty hours a week. I was about to replace my San Franciscan horrendous fine dining job with one at a new cocktail bar opening up in downtown Oakland, three blocks from my other job in Oakland. I was ready to prepare for the 2020 IKF World Classic Tournament. But something was off. Something was strange. Something was missing.

“I suppose I am okay, I just don’t really fully feel right,” I responded.

“Compared to what?” my therapist responded.

That questions was a different kind of peculiar.

From May of 2017 to around May of 2018 felt like a much happier, much more fulfilling time. But when I detached to look at my circumstances then and my circumstances in February of 2020, it was clear that I was in better standing when sitting on that therapist’s couch. I had even brought this up to him in the past. He had asked if I had ever truly felt fulfilled, and the same time came up. I was indeed fulfilled. Life was hard, but I was in overwhelming joy between my time of singleness being focussed on training and being an inquirer in the Orthodox Faith. Despite not having a singular person to look after and care for and love, I found myself simply being a better person, a person with a higher standard of morality, with vitality, and with a zeal to help others in any way I can. I felt more selfish in 2020. There was less spark of life. There was less truth. There was just material reality being taken care of. When I described this time to my therapist in the past, he seemed genuinely intrigued but unequipped to comment due to being irreligious. His highest good was in people “relating to their experience” in a more positive way. I suppose I had done that, and to him this was a victory. Having gone over all of this in my mind once more I responded, “nothing I suppose, I guess I am okay after all.”

“Well then Arthur, what do you want to do now? It’s up to you.”

High IQ conversations were hard to come by both in bars and martial arts gyms. To be able to speak at a level that most around me weren’t capable of left me feeling somewhat insane. It was never about loneliness; loneliness in many ways suited me. But to have no one to speak in such a way left many of my thoughts isolated and eventually lost and forgotten. This was worth its weight in gold. Several weeks prior, my therapist had given me reading material on “flow states in high level athletic performance.” I was his first client as a psychotherapist, and he was keen on me being his first client in sports psychology. This was a wonderful icing on the cake of what would now be proactive psychotherapy that greatly excited me.

“Well, at this point, since I’m okay now, I’d like to focus more on sports psychology. If anything in real life outside of training comes up, then I suppose we can address that as well. But now that we’ve gotten past all my initial afflictions, I think that’s a great place to start.”

My therapist smiled.

“Well that’s cool Arthur. This is very exciting.”

I left that session thinking more often than usual.

I couldn’t leave it alone. I couldn’t stop picking at the scab in my brain that told me I wasn’t actually okay. That it was all a facade.

The brain was working just fine.

The soul however, was a distant question entirely.