After the relationship with Suzan, I had a great need for contact. I looked for support from different people and that helped. And I quickly let my eye fall on other women again. In recent years, also before Susan, I have had many obsessive crushes. Sometimes with several people at once. I really needed it, because I felt so much pain. Women were a fairly safe haven for me, and moreover (just as I always wanted to impress my mother) I still wanted to impress them, even though I found that I can’t do that very well now, because of my softness, and great vulnerability, and because I just feel bad and have so many limitations. Sometimes I thought: now I have had therapy for so long, maybe they like me now, and I saw women being nice to me, as a sign that they liked me. I have long since let go of this idea, because it just doesn’t work like that. What stuck with me after Susan was the fact that she found me passive, even though she was just as passive herself. And on the RIC I received a jokey remark from team leader Steven, saying he thought I was a ‘vegetable’. This hurt me very much. And it may have sounded harmless, but I have so much inner intensity that little things have a big effect on me.
I decided to ask Rina if I could go and work at the office of the activity center. And this was possible. But I did look down on this work, and I discussed this in an intermediate conversation with my therapist at the RIC, Mira. Rina was there too. I told her that I wanted to do all kinds of things in my life (I mentioned all kinds of nice professions) but that I was obstructed in my mind. It was like a prison. Out of necessity I had to lower my demands, and so I did. I would just go work at the office activity and we would see.
At the office activity, Alfred became my supervisor. The work was very simple: most people were folding, or stacking, and Mike, he was stapling. I felt perfectly comfortable in the office, because there were few demands, and no pressure on me. So I was very cheerful. And I immediately got an angry reaction from Mike (whose mother had just died, which I had no idea about) because of this. This, of course, had a great effect on me and stayed in my head for days.
Alfred knew that I was good with computers, so he usually had something more challenging for me than folding and stacking, such as designing things, making booklets, editing a movie and so on. He did often ask too much of me, in my opinion, but I didn’t dare say much. I worked very hard, and every time I did, I got a concerned comment. He was sometimes too demanding, in my opinion, and too concerned.
In the meantime I had also become very involved with photography. I regularly photographed concerts of choirs and music societies in the neighborhood. And I also started taking pictures for a magazine of the mental health facility. At the RIC they encouraged every form of activity, and they always stressed: you mustn’t avoid your fears. Usually I would say something like, “Well, I’m afraid of having a stroke, so should you give me a stroke to overcome my fear? Or, “I’m afraid of being hit, should you hit me so that I overcome my fear?” What I wanted to indicate with this is that all my fears could be traced back to a very big fear of real and actual danger! And that I had dealt with this fear in the clinic, by fighting it, and now it could no longer be overcome, because of what had happened in the part-time therapy. But at the RIC they saw my increased activity and they rewarded that.
At the activity center I felt more and more at ease and started to make rather jolly remarks now and then, also to colleagues. In an evaluation with Alfred (where Rina was also present) I received a critical remark about this from him. “We have to do something with that!” he thought. “Maybe we should make it a goal!” This again worked traumatically on me. It didn’t stop there! It felt to me as if yet another of my qualities was not allowed, while I needed that very quality so badly to stay afloat. I went backwards a bit, the other person became more powerful in my head. Fortunately, I was able to talk to Alfred about this and he understood that I couldn’t do much with his remark and that it was better to just let me be a little freer. This incident gave me a terrible bang, and I became a lot more passive again.
It became increasingly clear to me that I was slowly deteriorating in terms of my feelings, due to very small incidents, which would mean nothing to a healthy person. This is very frightening. The obsessions with women became worse and worse: they started to bother me. Even physical complaints. If my obsessions were to bother me now and I was forced to let them go bit by bit out of survival, while I actually need them so badly to feel reasonable, then I was in a very bad state. And now it’s true, that they have gradually disappeared: I have given up the struggle to impress women. But that makes me a lot more depressed and very tired, because, as I said, women were a safe haven for me.
The incident with Alfred made me realize, that it is better if I don’t undertake too many new things. My fear cannot be overcome by doing a lot, and that is exactly what I predicted. Every time I take steps, I become extra sensitive to the reactions, and I get it back ten times as hard. So I’ll just have to live like a vegetable. I am just too vulnerable to undertake all kinds of things outside the structure. The chance of further damage is too great. I have to think of myself. And I also made this clear to Rina, when she said again that I shouldn’t avoid things. In that respect, Anke, my therapist at the clinic, was right when she talked about Dick, the vegetable, who couldn’t be helped because of his defense mechanism. He had to start living in as structured a way as possible in order not to be damaged further, and I am doing the same now. So now I try to find a balance between ‘distraction’ from the bad feelings and ‘take heed of myself’ as much as possible, and what helps with this are my regular visits to the RIC, and my regular activities, such as the office work, an occasional photo assignment, and for an old music teacher of mine I also do some odd jobs musically.
