homeworks, or not

[cimorene]

I forgot to mention my last homework from Dr Who Looks Like Steve Buscemi (a friend of mine has taken a rather powerful personal dislike to him and keeps calling him Dr-And-He-SO-Doesn't-Look-Like-Steve-Buscemi!, with an offended air, so I feel the need to clarify in the spirit of full disclosure and no false advertising that you'd hardly mistake him for him in the street or anything; it's not a doppelganger effect, more a family resemblance, like Steve Buscemi's less knobbly brother or cousin or something).

Anyway, we're still waiting around to get me into actual twice-a-week therapy with a therapist - Dr. Dignified wrote the prescription and all, but therapists are rather overbooked around here, and I continue chatting about the stuff with Dr. WLLSB in the meanwhile. So my last homeworks were

1. To try to make eye contact with every single person I walk past on the street up to 100, and keep track of how I do.


2. To walk through the university campus regularly until I no longer get anxious upon approaching it.

This might seem ridiculous to people who aren't, in the case of #1, socially anxious, or in the case of #2, highly avoidant as their primary anxiety-coping mechanism, but historically the only way I have had to stave off stress-filled breakdowns and anxiety attacks ("They're not anxiety attacks, they're just attacks of acute anxiety!"™Bitchy Psychologist Lady) is Not Thinking About It until the associative panic dissipates with time. Anyway, I've been avoiding #1 for the past twelve days, but I finally felt prepared today and I am currently at 5 (successful Eye Contacts Made!) for 11 (attempts/passers by). It was a weirdly tranquil walk, only encountering 11 people who weren't wearing sunglasses and not a single other dog. I'm still avoiding #2, even though I bargained Dr. WLLSB down to trips through the campus at times when nobody to speak of would be there. Maybe tomorrow.

Comments

[dreamnnightmare.livejournal.com]

it's great to be at 5/11, because next time you can probably do a lot better. So what are the times you can go through campus? Sunday morning during church? 6:30 in the morning? that crepuscular time that migrates through the year?

[cimness.livejournal.com]

Hahahah! You don't imagine everyone in the city goes to church at the same time, do you? For that matter, hardly anybody at all GOES to church here, but the ones who do are spread out over several services. Because the campus of Åbo Akademi is adjacent to the archbishop's cathedral, there are a large number of elderly people strolling around in the vicinity Sunday morning and up through the early afternoon. Those people don't bother me, though, because they aren't associated with the university.

Actually, weekends or any evening are the times when I find it less intimidating to go there. Classes outside of normal working hours are relatively rare. The place is no longer swarming with students after 5 or 6 in the evening.