katallison | (no subject)

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I think I've got the hook for my dS Sekrit Santa story figured out. This pleases me. I also have a thing sketched out for the new flashfiction, which is likewise pleasing. (The having-it-sketched-out part, that is; I make no promises about the pleasingness of the story.)

And yesterday was great fun;

lapillus,

jackiekjono and I got to have dinner with

heres_luck, who was in town for a job interview. Those of you who've met her don't need telling this, but my god, h_l is one scary-smart, funny, delightful person, and I would be thrilled to death if it worked out for her to move here.

I am clinging to these Happy Thoughts and brandishing them around in my brain like they were Galadriel's fucking light-thingie, as a weapon against the pervasive bleakness that has set up camp in my psyche the past couple of weeks. This is probably in part election-related, but also feels biochemical or something. Damn. I spent some time today flipping through the list of mental health providers that my insurance covers; unfortunately, all the ones that I would consider going to (e.g., in which I have some degree of trust) are also clinics that have people on staff whom I know professionally, and that just feels ooogie to me.

It strikes me that it's been ten years now since I've been in therapy, which is the longest non-therapized interlude of my adult life, and I realize that the biggest question I have about possible re-entry into that cloistered confessional space of self-disclosure is -- to what extent do I come out about my involvement in fandom, fanfiction writing, slash? That's a large and important part of my inner life--it's where I have most of my friendships, and spend most of my free time--but I find I'm very reluctant to bring it up with anyone who's not already at least passingly conversant with this whole world. Which would, probably, include most therapists.

So my question of the day, for those of you on the friendslist who have simultaneously been involved in fandom and therapy -- how have you handled this? Full disclosure? The partial kind of "Oh, I write stuff" approach one might use with non-fan friends? Concealment? How has it affected the work you've done with your therapist?

(ETA: Feel free to log out and reply anonymously, if that feels more comfortable.)

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My therapist knows about my slash habit. We're seven years into this therapeutic relationship and I trust her pretty implicitly. It felt weird at first to come out to her about it, but she's pretty unflappable, which is good.

I don't know that she gets it, per se, but she roundly approves of it making me happy, so that's Of the Good.

I tell them and I explain what it is...but with the caveat that I have spent almost as much time involved in other, non-slash or -fan communities over the years.

Just so you know, the current definition of Internet "addiction" is 2+ hours a day, I think. So we are all screwed.

Oh, man. I am addicted enough for six people.

Me too! Jesus, who knew?

I had two brushes with student psych services while I was still in school, and one more serious attempt at therapy since then. The first two times I didn't discuss it (there was so much talking about my mom to do!) but this most recent time, I just laid it out. Which, yes, resulted in having to give my therapist homework in the form of a couple of essays on slash, but she got the idea and it helped to just have that out there and be able to talk about it - like you said, it's an important part of my inner life, so I figured it ought to be said.

Do you know Dvorah Simon? ("Devo" from highlander fandom.) She's been to a few escapades.

You might want to broach the subject with her since she is a therapist *and* a fan. ;)

I'm a full disclosure kinda gal, and I never considered not telling my shrink about my involvement in fandom, particularly as it's so central to many of the issues I needed to talk about.

Maybe this is because I live in the land of the fruits, nuts, and flakes, but it took only a few minutes to explain to her what I meant by it, why it was important to me, and where she could go for further info if need be. Most shrinks may be mundanes, but they're not ignorant about subcultures. It's got to be less wacky than coming out to your shrink as a transvestite or heavy SM player or something.

It almost seems weirder since most shrinks are going to know what those things ARE, and I'll bet slash is not in their vocabularies . . .

Well, weirder in terms of having to explain it. But I'd think that being a media fan or fanfiction author is a less embarassing thing to admit for most people. And I'm sure shrinks have the word "geek" in their vocabularies. (:

I've never been to individual therapy, but the mister and I have started couples therapy.

(In the immortal words of Fraser: "More fun than a barrel of monkeys.")

Anyways, I haven't decided whether or not to tell about the slash thing. I have a feeling that it will come up. The therapist is a man, though, and that weirds me out.

If you find the male therapist thing bugs you, you should probably request that you also try a female one to see which you both prefer. Friends of mine in couples therapy have faced this issue, and it's important that you feel comfortable with whomever you choose.

Oh, I talked about it a lot with my therapist - I started out with the standard 'writer's group but online' analogy and went from there. I mean, she knows it's about other people's characters, she knows why I've chosen that, and aside from a little, "why not write original stuff" at the beginning, it hasn't been odd or uncomfortable. In fact, when I was nominated for an award way back when, she asked me for the link so she could see what the fuss was about.

Until I met

lizyjn, all my therapist knew was that I wrote erotica, not about slash. Once it was clear to me that E and I were for real, I went for full disclosure. I've been working with this particular therapist off and on for 15 years, so it didn't feel particularly risky.

What would be the point of not telling the therapist?

Even if his wife is the president of the RIAA, it's not like he could rat you out or anything.

Therapy is like Vegas.

I'm with Jackie. It's a part of your life, and if it comes up, you should talk about it and explain it. I mean, threapists hear all kinds of shit, and this isn't odd. It's a broad activity that a lot of people do, more than I ever thought. I think sometimes the role fandom plays in my life or what I'm doing in fandom at any given moment is part of my psyche, and so it's critical to my state of psychological being. Trying to say "Oh, I just do that for fun" isn't enough; we use these stages to think out sociological and cultural ideas.

As for slash, well, I'm of the mind that slash is just another form of erotica and therefore is perfectly healthy. I don't know if I'd be sitting down to a chat about the finer points of fisting in the Oz fandom with my shrink, but I'd definitely mention the whole involvement (with slash, not fisting. Fisting is the black sheep of slash, along with mpreg.).

Talking out of my ass here, you know, but I mean it.

Also, please tell me who it is in your user pic. It's gotten to ther point where my brain automatically assumes that's what you look like.

Good rule of thumb: If you are nervous about bringing up a certain part of your life to your therapist, it should probably be the fist thing you mention.

I mean the FIRST thing you mention. Oops. : )

It also makes a nice litmus test. If he jumps out of his chair screaming
"YOU PERV!!!!!!" at the top of his lungs, you may want to consider finding a different therapist. Best to get these things out of the way in the first session.

I had a shrink for a while who gave me prayer books and was openly Born Again. Seriously, there were religious plaques all over her walls. When I meantioned slash and explained it, she didn't bat an eye. It was awesome.

How cool is that!

Even cooler that some of the prayer books she gave me were helpful. The Prayer of Jebez in particular, and I usually confine myself to CS Lewis for my religion kick.

I'm a big fan of the Christians. Falwell and Robertson give everybody else a bad name.

Don't forget Oral Roberts.

It wouldn't have occurred to me not to talk about my slash writing, especially because writing is so near and dear to my heart, not to mention a big part of my self-identity.

I've only just started therapy, so we're still in the beginning phase, so there's much more important life issues to talk about. On the whole, I feel that my slash is actually a very healthy outlet for me, and I think the therapist agrees....

I've been in multi-times-a-week therapy for years and years and years ... I discovered fandom while I was with my current therapist who I've been seeing for 5 years, and who's a man. It took me a few months of making tentative forays before I really "came out" - and even then, it's taken many sessions of attempting to explain (not that he demands explanations - it's my desire for him to really "get it" that motivates me).

I'm not sure if it would have been easier or harder to go through that process when I myself was already fully immersed in fandom - as it was, I was "discovering" it, going to my first cons, meeting my first fellow fans, contemporaneously with telling him about it. I was nervous at first, but it became obvious to me very quickly that if I didn't tell him about it I'd be cheating myself - as more and more of my life came to involve fandom in some way or another, it would have taken active duplicity on my part to conceal it from him.

I have no idea (nor should I, imo) what my therapist personally thinks about fandom. With me, though, he acts unfailingly interested and respectful and open-minded, and he definitely thinks it's been a great thing for me, personally; fandom's been an amazing experience for me, in terms of connections and relationships ....

The bottom line, though, is that fandom is such an enormous and important and precious part of my life that I think my therapy would be, if not useless, entirely eviscerated if I kept my fannish habits from my therapist. I feel like I have an obligation - partly to him, but mostly to myself - to be as honest as I possibly can about myself - otherwise what's the point? And if I can't trust him with this, if I felt I couldn't bring it into the therapy room, I'd probably want to find a new therapist.

Besides which - I want to talk about it, about what it means to me, how it affects me, how it's changed me, what it means to have found that I Am Not Alone. I'd feel deprived if I couldn't. So for me it's Full Disclosure. I occasionally even bring in printouts of my LJ posts or comments or emails, if I think something I've said bears on something we're working on, or helps me explain/understand something about myself. I couldn't imagine it any other way.

All this is imo, of course - people differ, obviously, and perhaps the purpose behind your therapy makes a difference - if you go into therapy to deal with a limited, specific issue maybe you don't feel the need to disclose everything or trust your therapist the same way. I don't know, because my therapy isn't limited like that in any way.

Also, my experience may be different because I'd already been with my therapist a few years and trusted him implicitly. I have a feeling that with a new therapist I'd wait a bit before bringing it up, get to know and trust him/her first.

Sorry for babbling .... but good luck, and I'd be very interested to know what you end up deciding to do; if you're so inclined, keep us updated!

I just refer to it as, "I write. And some of it is erotica. And some of that is same-sex erotica. I put it up on the internet for friends to read." Not sure it's had any affect on my therapy, really. I already confessed I have a kinky bent.

unfortunately, all the ones that I would consider going to (e.g., in which I have some degree of trust) are also clinics that have people on staff whom I know professionally, and that just feels ooogie to me.

I work in mental health and am a consumer myself, so this has certainly been a dilemma for me when looking for supports. Don't really have lots of great suggestions to offer--just wanted to sympathise. (I finally decided I had to grit my teeth through the weirdness and see a therapist I trusted, despite knowing her on a professional level. And actually, it's been totally fine.)

As for the fanfic/slash question, I think it would be okay to talk about it, as soon as it felt okay to do so. On a strange obsession scale, slash would score pretty low, really. And besides, your therapist may well be a fan her/himself--I know several who are!

(er--hello, by the way. I don't know you, but I very much admire your writing. And this was an excellent question!)

I'm, as you could probably guess, for full disclosure. Fandom and fan writing a sources both of great joy and satisfaction for you as well as occasional great frustration. I think that leaving them out discussions of your emotional life is unhelpful at best, especially since not feeling able to write seems to be part of the symptoms. Or causes. Or something related, in any case. I'm also with Jackie in getting it out of the way fast as a compatiblity test. I mean, do really want to work with someone who can't deal with you on that level? really?

My experience is that therapists tend to manage to be at least politely interested and not run away in horror. Even when presented with the evidence (I handed her a tape of vids).

Actually, a tape of YOUR vids could only lend an air of respectability to her idea of fandom. There's something about work done really, really WELL that makes even a blank-slate observer think more highly of it. :)

*Blush*

Although, frankly, I think that the same could just as easily if not more so be said of Kat's writing.

Well, yeah! I guess I thought that went without saying. :)

You know, I was thinking back, and I'm afraid I'd terminated therapy by the time I got involved in fandom. (Hey, I was married twelve years and in therapy after for seven, so I figure it evened out, more or less.)

I'm not entirely sure how I'd handle it now, though, and in your shoes, I think I might approach it from the subject of your friends and connections and then how you became connected once you're feeling comfortable with the therapist and feel that they have some insight into who you are.

I never "came out" completely to any of the therapists I've seen. The closest I've come is the old "online writing group" hedge. Which, I'm sure is more indicitave of my deeply closed and secretive nature than it says anything about any of these therapists. I just wasn't ready.

I am absolutely positive that my "choice" of non-disclosure was a poor one. If/when (almost definitely a 'when') I go back to therapy in the future, I'm going to make myself spill. 'Cause otherwise (as has been noted here), what's the point?

I spoke about my writing during therapy because what was preoccupying me in my stories was connected to or at least reflecting in some fashion what was preoccupying me outside of them. My writing was saying things I wasn't able to articulate in other contexts, so it was a useful, helpful point for discussion. But I think I talked about the themes in my writing instead of going through my stories in detail, which worked fine since I felt fairly comfortable interpreting my own stuff bec., well, am not a subtle person and it just wasn't all that hard. Heh.

But your point is that you're wondering whether a therapist who wasn't conversant in fandom could understand fandom friendships and "society" -- and gosh, that's harder. I think I might actually have to test someone for a while and then decide whether I felt comfortable bringing it up -- or maybe I'd just bring it up at visit one and if the therapist didn't seem able to follow or deal, I'd seek out someone else. I know that in the past I have spoken of fandom friends in ways that don't distinguish them from nonfandom friends, and that that's worked, but if there are fandom-specific things you want to discuss, etc. etc. etc.

I've been in therapy with the same person for more than (eeks) ten years now. I wasn't even a slasher when I started seeing her, but she's known about my slash habit almost since I've had one.

I've always tended to use books and movies to talk about relationship issues anyway, so we talk about what I'm watching or reading. In the early days, we started talking about my interest in The X-Files (which was new *G*) and how I'd gone online to meet other fans, and then I told her that I was reading (het) fanfic. We talked a lot about the relationship between Mulder and Scully. When I got serious about reading slash, I already had the fanfic context so I just had to explain slash to her (as much as I possibly could). She's unflappable.

I guess the only way it's really affected my therapy is that it's sometimes confusing when I'm talking excitedly about my fanfiction writing and she thinks we're talking about original fiction. Or vice versa. While she doesn't judge my fanfiction, she does push me to take the risk of writing something I could submit for publication.

And we have had some *great* talks about what it is in slash relationships that I find so appealing -- equality, teamwork, etc. Not to mention the two penises *G*. When I talk about something I'm writing, it's often a jumping off point to talking about something important that I'm trying to work through in my life.

Glad you're looking for someone. My therapist has been a blessing in my life. I hope you find someone who gives you just what you need.

There's a dS sekrit santa??

...

...no. No no no. restraint.

Anbout your main question: I've never been in therapy, but it seems reasonable to me that a therapist gets to hear a lot of things (and if they can't cope with that, should probably have some other profession *G*). So I'd talk about it to whatever extent seems reasonable to you.

fandom and therapy -- how have you handled this?

Told them I'm involved in science-fiction fandom, and told them I write stories which are fannishly "published" - ie, I get no money, but people read them.

When I was in therapy, I wasn't completely candid about my involvement of fandom. Like you, a lot of my best relationships originated through fandom, over a board and livejournal. So when I mentioned that I was going to a gathering of a lot of my friends, I got the concerned, "Are you sure it's okay to go see the crazy internet people." So from there, I scaled it back a little. It's hard enough to do therapy without having to face criticism or--well, it wasn't so much criticism as it was ignorance. And there was enough I could talk about while alluding to my other relationships, or only giving part of the info. Sometimes fandom, and my relationship to it, is just too big to explain. In the end, though, I was comfortable with both the little info that I gave, and the larger info that I kept back.

I'm with justacat and lapillus: full disclosure was my choice when I was in therapy, because it was such an important part of my life. I expect that if you're dealing with a limited issue that doesn't impinge on fandom, it wouldn't hurt not to mention it, but I wasn't; I was talking about my whole life, achievements, social activities, and wow, fandom was pretty important there. (IIRC, I even showed him a copy of my second novel, though he didn't actually read it. Just, "Look! Artifact!") If you feel you can't trust a therapist with such info, I'd seriously question whether that was the right person to work with.

But if you're dealing with stuff truly unrelated to fandom, that would be different, certainly.

As for the professional connections -- ugh, and sympathies. Not being in any kind of related field myself, it's not a problem I had to face, but I know folks who have.

Good luck!

Oh, she knows. But then I'm not what you'd call a naturally discreet and compartmentalized person. I can't think of anything my shrink doesn't know except other people's secrets.

It's been useful, in that my RPGing sometimes gives me a petri dish to play out some dynamics in my head, or a useful alternative, or practice at braver confrontations, or whatever, and I bring that into therapy when it's germane. Otherwise it hasn't mattered much. Except for when I have to fight the urge to use Jossverse metaphors she won't understand, fandom doesn't interact with my issues in any way that another large group brought together by a common imaginative hobby wouldn't.

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