The strangest part was noticing the change not during the session, but at home. Someone close to me made the kind of comment that usually sets me off, but this time I just didn't. I responded calmly, and it didn't even occur to me that I'd normally have reacted differently in a situation like that. The funniest part was watching how that person reacted. They behaved as if my usual flare-up had happened. But it hadn't! It felt a little odd to observe their reaction almost as if from the outside. It took me a while to realize: this was exactly what we had been working on in therapy.
I was aware of my exhaustion and loss of motivation. Nothing interested me anymore. We found tension in my shoulders and neck; it had been there for so many years that I had stopped noticing it. The first thing that changed was my sleep: I started sleeping more deeply and waking up without the usual heaviness. Then I noticed that I catch the tension when it's just beginning, not when my head already aches, a dull irritation sets in, and I withdraw into myself the way I always do. It turned out there's no need to fight it. You can simply stop it before it gets there.
The most unexpected change had to do with intimacy. I had long known that in situations like that I was more of an observer than a participant. I thought it was just part of my personality. It turned out that when I get turned on, my breath catches and my thighs tense. And the reaction was so habitual that I simply never noticed it. We didn't do anything special "about it"; we just managed to find that holding pattern, discover that it had formed back in childhood, and release it. And then I caught myself feeling so much more vividly in an intimate moment. It happened on its own, very naturally. I didn't even realize right away that I was no longer observing from the sidelines. And not just present, but actually running the show!
I had been in psychotherapy for several years and read countless books. I knew everything about myself: why I react the way I do and how I was supposed to do things differently. My therapist and I didn't just work through the causes. Under his guidance, I trained new responses by role-playing the situations I wanted to handle differently. It worked, but responding the right way still took enormous effort and concentration.
At the very first diagnostic session, it became clear that my body was telling a different story: I talk about calm and control, yet my shoulders are raised, my belly is clenched, my jaw is tense, and my breathing is shallow. After working through those blocks, the changes came on their own. I no longer need to control my reactions through willpower. The right responses come naturally, without effort. Being the person you want to be turned out to be surprisingly simple. All I had to do was stop being someone else.