The broken refrigerator and its application to triggers

This entry was written after my first day of "therapy", but published well afterwards.

The counselling session opened with mindfulness meditation. (I mentioned I was nervous, he suggested we do a meditation/breathing exercise to get me calmer). That took me by surprise. It was just like Sam Harris' one from the Global Atheist Convention 2012, so I felt a little less weird about it since I'd had experience with that sort of thing before.

I noticed one interesting thing that my counsellor said that I could really relate to as a polyamorist.

He said, "Often when we feel negative emotions our immediate reaction is to run away from them or avoid them. But we would really benefit from looking at the emotions, or confronting them in some way and examining the reasons behind them. It's often just your body and mind trying to warn you about a threat, but in reality there's no threat there."

I almost said to him, "that sounds just like the broken refrigerator analogy for polyamory!". 

But I didn't. I wrote this blog post instead.

Moving out of a small mental apartment

When you live in a tiny apartment, you get used to it and you don't notice how cramped and restricted you are when you don't have much space to move in.

When you move into a bigger house, or go into a huge room, you get this feeling of expansion and freedom.

I think my head may have been like that. It was all small and cramped but I didn't notice. Now all of a sudden, I feel like it's a big, open room.

And I wonder how I didn't notice how small and cramped it was earlier.