[Omkazn]

Hello, my name is Yang Li and i am new to the forum.

I would like to share with this community a personal story, a story of growth that happened to me that literally changed my life and then crashed down all around me.

Currently i am a College Sophmore attending a brand new University, and this life changing moment occurred during my freshman year approximately one and half years ago. When i first went to college, i went in feeling very inadequate and underachieving. I felt very much like i had let my parents down and had failed them. I come from a very overachieving perfectionist family, as are the norm in traditional Chinese cultures. Attending the university that i did made me feel very much less than compared to my friends around me or relatives back home. Compared to them, my life is very easy and many needs that i have are easily fulfilled (money, cars, cell phones, computers). All throughout my life my parents constantly scolded me, disparaged me, berated me for my lackluster performance in school, never was my performance good enough for them. Up to the point when i went to college, i had accepted this fact and had decided that i would try a different approach, try a new system of doing things so that my grades would somehow improve. I got into college with a 3.0 average. According to most chinese, this is considered a failing grade, worthy of the greatest disdain. So i went to college, and upon my parent's suggestion, to go see a therapist, to see if he could help me achieve a better GPA. So i went in and i remember the first words out of my mouth were "How do i transfer out of here in two years to a more presitigious university?" I followed this general line of questioning until this therapist, who is called Dr.Paul basically asked me, why, what is the purpose of needing to transfer, why do you want to leave this university, you just got here. From that first session, he basically asked me to just look around, experience this new campus, and live life on a more moment to moment basis, after all he said, you will be transfering in two years, why the hurry. For some reason, i trusted this man, could be b/c he wasn't my parents, or that his attitude was loving and non-judgemental, or it could be his un-orthodoxed style, and that i had nothing to lose by following his direction. All of which were things i had never experienced in a personal interaction my entire life. I also justified it by saying to myself that i could blame him if anything went wrong, since seeing him was first suggested by my parents anyway.

The next three months is nothing short of a complete transformation. Following his advice of just living life moment by moment, i made friends like i never did before, i suddenly was aware of things i had no idea existed, I changed from a introverted, shy, low-self-esteemed judgemental boy to a extroverted, happy, alive, confident man. And the greatest part of it all was it was effortless, i did nothing that was intensive like you'd think of when you think of studying hard for a test. It was nothing like that at all. I changed from who i was to someone new effortlessly. It seemed as if my previous context of life was suddenly being expanded. It felt as if i had superimposed a new context like steve has said about life that fit more congruently with my purpose which i also discovered for the first time. I realized that I loved being with people that i hungered for their interaction and that i had a uncanny ability to almost sense feelings in others, like i knew what they felt when they felt it. It was an incredible feeling of awareness and power. Suddenly the prospect of transfering schools was ridiculous and a whole cauldron of possibilities opened up before me. Suddenly the road to success had changed b/c the definition of success itself changed, and i had discovered that change and the methods that could lead me there. I ended that first semester of college with the highest GPA i had ever gotten in my entire life of 3.7. I was shocked, my friends were shocked, my parents were for once quiet. It was a truly empowering, good feeling. you can imagine going from a person who felt constantly judged and disparaged to feeling adulation and admiration from those around him, it truly was a eye-opening experience.

But as soon as these good things were happening to me, it vanished. After my first semester of college, my counselor told me he couldn't see me anymore, he said the school only allowed a certain number of sessions, and since we had already seen that amount, it was over. At first i was not concerned, i felt high as a kite and felt as if i could handle the world so the fact that he couldn't see me didn't even register on my radar until the second semester came. The seeds of doubt creeped in slowly. It began with a broad question like "will i be the same man without Dr.Paul?" then it went to more specific doubts like "Will i still be able to maintain the same GPA?" Pretty soon these questions started to pop up incessantly until i literally was thinking about Dr.Paul not being here on a almost constant basis. These doubtful thoughts gave me a ton of anxiety and "popped" me out of living life moment by moment. My grades dropped by a hefty 0.5 GPA points and i lapsed into a huge depression which only got worse as my life deteriorated around me and so I begged him to come back and help me, but coincidently he moved out of our university and went to work somewhere else. And ever since then i've been trying, consulting therapists, 6, 7, 8 to try to reclaim that "magic" i had felt, that transformation of thought, awareness and action. But i've been since then partially successful, however nowhere near the level of potential i had lived during that first semester.

My question to members of this board and steve and erin, is what are your insights or possible perspectives on what happened to me? What do you guys believe could be the cause of my sudden doubt, my subsequent depression. I've been exhausting myself to figure out why this happened to me, many therapists have said its because of my dependency on him, or that i have a co-dependency disorder, or that i have low self-esteem. Others have said its because of abuse suffered at the hands of my parents, or perhaps i have a narcisstic personality, the list is endless all with varying degree of truth. But i feel that what i touched upon during that first semester of college was none of these. I've read countless books on spirituality, child-abuse, self-help books. All of them have a sliver of truth and validity, but none seems to be as complete as it was the work with this first counselor. I've all about given up on this quest as i have not come any closer to my answer. It seems what i seek is not something that i can be achieved by quantity, but rather quality and so i seek some quality advice, perspectives from the smart people of this board.