Category Archive

I walked into therapy the other day with a horrible black cloud over my head. I’d had yet another shitty day at my should-be-great-but-is-really-shitty job, I’d missed the turn on a one-way street getting there, my shoulders were all tight and very sore, blah blah blah. I was just feeling really foul. I wanted this to be my last appointment because I knew I’d get there and she’d say “so, what’s on your agenda today?” and I knew I’d have nothing to say and I knew I’d have wasted an hour of my life, and $170.

The session started out slowly, and I was expecting it to head where I had expected it to head, but gah, you know what? It got better.

She talked me through my gloomy thoughts and I ended up leaving feeling lighter and bouncier and happier about the thing that, 50 minutes earlier, made me want to smash a pot-plant at the wall of her rooms (I didn’t, it’s ok).

I hate that I am dependant on my therapist to talk through the shitness of the things in my life that shit me and cause me to be shitty. Urgh. How horrible is that?

Shit. Despite all the online soul-searching I’ve been doing this year… despite the fact half the comments on this post are from bloggers I’ve been reading in order to figure out what I want to do with my life (eg here and here) and all that jazz… why has it taken so long for me to find this…???

In order to jump-start passionate living again you might have to…

• Stop being an (unnecessarily) “responsible” person
• Quit projects that are no longer relevant
• Be happy with a less than permanently clean home

 In order to come alive, you might have to…

• Pursue an occupation that doesn’t put your insanely expensive degree to use
• Move back in with your parents
• Work a low-status, low-paying job in order to make time for your new endeavor
• Come to terms with your messy home
• Completely and utterly ignore your parent’s and friend’s expectations of you

If you really want to live passionately, you’ll need to consider leaving nearly everything you’re not passionate about.  To live passionately you may have to quit your job, sell your home, rent a small apartment, and live simply for a while.

To get off the treadmill you’ll have to realize that your high IQ does not obligate you to work 80-hour weeks in high-status professional career.  Your high IQ also doesn’t obligate you to get a Ph.D., or to put on any other golden handcuffs.

Fark. I might just not have to go back to fricking “Therapy” anymore.

And maybe I need to sit down for a while sometime soon and start thinking about WHY I need apply for the Rhodes Scholarship before I start filling out the application form that is sitting on my desk right now. (Although, the whole “push the pause button” thing was what I “learned” in “Therapy” last week so maybe I should keep going.)

In a way, I want to go to Oxford to study something that I’m passionate about, that probably definitely won’t lead me into a high-status, high-paying career… but on the other hand, do I really want to go through yet another cattle-show of an interview process and another two years of brain-straining graduate studies? What if the path I’m on right now is my life’s calling?

Gawd it would be nice to be less neurotic, wouldn’t it?

Aw!! I was rather hesitant about writing to Bossy, because she usually gives “no-holds-bared” responses that is “the sort of advice friends and relatives are too polite to give”. I was a bit worried I’d end up on “Fruitcake Friday” so in a way, I was, in a way, glad when her response to my email didn’t show up on those days.

Even her profile photo make her look kinda scary!

But then, when she did respond, she was really nice to me!!!

So were (most) of the commenters.  I had the urge to reply back to every single one, because they took the time to write to me, but there are over 100!! So I might write straight to Bossy with an update and thank everyone in that.

It’s amazing how nice I felt reading about not being the only one who’s gone through periods like this. Intellectually, I know I’m not that special, duh, but sometimes when you’re in the depths of a Doona Day, the intellectual part is so battered by the traumatized emo part that it retreats to higher ground, and it feels like it’s just you on the plain.

(Where did that wanky analogy come from? Shite, I need to get out more.)

I’ve emailed the link to the post to my psychologist so that I can talk about Bossy’s suggestions in more detail at my session tomorrow.

M read the post too, and we chatted about it over the weekend.  I wrote to her a while ago, the day after M and I were both in tears, and the situation has definitely calmed down since then, so that was probably a good thing — we were able to talk about it in a really rational way.

I’m really glad that I wrote to her, and started writing things in this blog.  It’s great to get things off my chest and as well as get feedback from an objective viewpoint.  Thank you Bossy, and Bossy Bloggers, I really appreciate your time.

Yesterday was harder than I thought it was going to be.

After all the time I’ve spent thinking about my Issues,  I didn’t really have much to say actually.  I even kinda didn’t want to talk to her, but maybe I was just pissed off because I had to throw my plastic down before I was allowed to do the session?

I had to do a Suicide Contract because my psychoanalysis report said I was at “High Risk”.  When I tried to explain that was exaggerated cause the weekend before I did the testy thing hadn’t exactly been a high-point, she took a little while to remember the note in the report that warned some of the data might be skewed because I’m unhinged. 

Which seems to kinda defeat the purpose of this test as a diagnostic tool, but whatever.

I guess I also kinda lied about how far I went with my ’suicidal thoughts’ two weekends ago.  I took 3 sleeping pills cause I was totally stressed out over stuff and I wanted to do was sleep so I would stop crying and carrying on, and the regular “calming” dose (half a tablet) wasn’t working.   I told her that bit.  I didn’t tell her that I took the 22 pills I had left in the packet and looked at them and thought about taking all of them.  Obviously I didn’t take them, cause I’m not that clichéd, but I did have the blister sheets in my hand before I eventually drifted off. 

So yeah.  I semi-seriously thought about it.  I called M the moment I woke up and told him all about it, so it all passed blah blah blah.

Anyway, I agreed to not act on any further thoughts before my next appointment with her, to make an emergency appointment if I need to, and to get in touch with M or Little Brother.

The next part of the session was where I sat there fiddling with my hair lackies and couldn’t think of what to say.

Awkward.

It was easy with my last psychologist, Dr S, cause he treated Little Brother and he knew exactly what was up with my family and he Got me pretty quickly.  So I’m struggling trying to open up with Dr H.  M reminded me that since I’m in for like 2 years of counselling, it doesn’t matter that it’s going slow, and maybe he’s right.

Dr H made an interesting observation though.  That my voice gets all tight and throaty when I’m talking about stuff I don’t feel like talking about, and that I get all curt and polite, and I sort of hunch up on the couch.  She’s right.  I could feelmy throat being all tight and constricted.  I hadn’t noticed that before.   But I definitely do it, I know I’m all curt when I speak to Father now.  Cause I don’t want to let my guard down.  And because it’s a massive struggle for me to talk about something things without bursting into tears, and I guess I try to block the crying and weeping with my throat.

Then when I was talking about something I was reasonably ok with (my academic achievements), my voice got deeper, more relaxed, less restricted, and I was more animated with hand gestures etc.

Discovery re self: I blather a lot, but I never actually say what I want or needto say.  Like in this blog.  I’ve been doing posts on superficial shit like organisation and sleep and money but I have yet to talk about my childhood, I didn’t even mention what happened the weekend before last when I considered suicide and nor did I comment on the weird sad/guilty/messed-up feelings I got when Father emailed me last week, trying to be helpful and it ended with me saying “Please don’t start this. I don’t have the time.”

I do want to talk about these things, I’ve hinted at the dodgy childhood thing a few times, but yeah, I find excuses to not write about them.

Homework for week: Read online therapy article on “Mindfulness” and observe the way my voice is when I’m talking and keep a note of what I’m talking about when I notice these voice changes.

Whoa.

So last week my psychologist Dr H tells me that she thinks there’s more to my problems than just depression, right, so she got me to do a psychological assessment, which is basically 300+ questions which are either “false”, “somewhat true”, “mostly true” or “very true” about yourself.

We went through the results and while some of it was exaggerated, most of it was spot on and there was much shoulder-sagging and a few tears.

The Good: I don’t have any problems with drug and alcohol abuse (although the computer-generated diagnosis said my responses on that were so strong that I might be lying, hah), delusions, multiple personality issues, etc.

The Bad: I have a highly inflated ego (duh) but it is probably just to compensation for my horrible self-esteem.  I think this is pretty accurate.  I can once remember describing myself as a megalomanic with an inferiority complex.

The Ugly: I have lots of depression (duh x 2).  And I feel I have no support network. 

Which I really do feel, even though I have M, I know, but I have always felt that I (or more acurately, my ‘problem’, which has taken over my life in the last 12+ months) was just a burden on him.  And I can’t use him as a therapist; he’s meant to be my partner.  And I’m doing a lousy job at partnering him back (more on that later).  But I have never had a really close friend who I shared everything with.  Well, maybe there was L, but I have just lost the same contact we used to have and I feel like I can’t just dump this on her now.

In the end, the my diagnosis is Major Depression (duh x 3) with kinda isolated moments of mania (which explains the ‘drive’ to achieve crazy things like double-honours etc, cause what normal person would even consider something like that) and Somatization Disorder which is a

condition of many physical complaints (including four pain symptoms, two gastrointestinal symptoms, one sexual symptom, and one pseudoneurological symptom) which cannot be fully explained by a known general medical condition. [ref]

Fair. Very fair.

Hrm, according to The Bible Wikipedia, this particular condition was is antiquatedly known as hysteria.

Roight.

So I saw an interesting book in the waiting room before my first psychologist appointment today: They F*** You Up: How to Survive Family Life by Oliver James. A quick scan of the blurb showed it’s about learning how to deal with your past in order to fix your present. Sounds perfect. Here’s an exerpt from Amazon.com.

This poem is quoted after the dedication (”To my mum and dad, the principle cause of this book“):

This Be The Verse

They fuck you up, your mum and dad
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.

– Philip Larkin

That pretty much sums up most of what Dr H and I spoke about.  She was very impressed at how clearly I expressed everything that’s been going on from day x in response to her question “So why have you come to see me?”

I told her it’s because I’ve been in and out of various counseling sessions for a good part of my youth, so I have it rehearsed.

Found this on BoingBoing:

Sidewalk Psychiatry encourages self-evaluation in transit by posing critical questions on the pavements of New York City. Now your daily ponderings and emotional problems can be prodded and treated on the go - and, best of all, it’s free of charge!

And who said graffiti wasn’t constructive? I’d save heaps in shrink bills if we had that kinda thing here.

Image: Candy Chang

Humph. So have Mondayistis and SAD on one day.  How unfortunate!  Suppose it’s not surprising to feel miserable when it starts raining outside when one feels miserable when it’s sunny outside, but whatever.

But I have decided not to let the arrival of autumn get to me.  I put on my new AA wrap dressand made the effort to put makeup on.   It made me late for the bus (well, the early bus, since I was trying to get to work early to do work I was not motivated enough to do last week) but it felt good to preen.  I’ve really gotten into beauty stuff these days, from reading beauty blogs and magazines to playing with all the craploads of makeup I’ve collected over the years, and more recently, on my Retail Therapy binges.

I also put on the mimco scarf I bought after my first counselling session last year. Dr S asked me to imagine a little girl, sitting alone on a set of swings in a park. She was crying, but won’t respond when I try to talk to her. What would I give her to comfort her? My answer was a scarf. 

Dr S said that was an interesting choice. Why did I give it to her? Because I thought she might be cold (it was cold and windy on the day in question), and scarves are good when it’s cold.  Apparently the little girl was supposed to be me (obviously), and my imputation of coldness was supposed to show how I felt… ie unprotected from the elements of life. The

My project for the week was to go and get myself a scarf. Not any scarf, not the first one I saw, but one that I was drawn to and just really wanted. So I got a pretty trendy, lambswool/chashmere pink and grey number that had little silver thread knitted through. It’s hot. I love it. And was my little security blanket last winter; I’m bringing it out for battle again this year.

I struggled to get out of bed this morning.  I eventually hauled ass to work, but was, of course, late.  My un-used muscles are screeching and whining after the fitness assessment I went to yesterday (so that I can compare the results after bootcamp), but I had a distinct feeling that my reluctance to crawl out from under the covers had little to do with being tired.

I slept fine, and for 8+ hours at that. I do not have any (obvious, to the outside viewer) stress in my life right now. I had a lovely Chinese-takeaway-and-DVD-cuddled-up-in-bed date with M last night.

But I didn’t want to get up.

And this is a very familiar feeling.  It feels just like when I didn’t want to get out of bed in the first half of last year, before I went to see a doctor (other than my mother).  Those doona days when it felt like the only way you could be happy was not to let yourself out of the safe coccoon of your sheets and have to interact with the world.

I got up to turn the snooze off, but jumped back in bed and checked my mobile gmail.  I had an email from my cousin asking if my mother was ok, because cousin hadn’t heard from mother and when that happened it meant that something was up with my mother.  So I rang home and got the typical, guarded, ”yes of course, everything is fine” response, which, I have only just realised in the last few weeks, my mother has been giving me for over 20 years, during which time everything has not been fine in our family.  I will try to get out all my family issues here eventually, but oh, where do I start?

Anyhow, I was (eventually) on the bus and started doing my Facebook status update via my phone.  I had typed out “is stumbling around in the dark and about to fall into old holes, but feels like she cannot do anything about it” in the status field, but I couldn’t let myself hit the ‘update’ button.  So I changed it, to “is sore and regretting ever signing up for bootcamp”. Update.

I don’t know why I couldn’t say what I really felt.  The whole reason I’m writing this blog is to talk about what’s going on with me, but I am clearly having trouble doing that.  I haven’t told anyone about this, not even my lovely, sweet, caring boyfriend who has been my rock through thick and thin.

Maybe it’s ’cause I’ve always ignored emo status updates from my ‘friends’, and even un-friended someone I barely knew cause I was bored with reading about her whining, and knew I’d being a hypocrite if I whined myself.  Or because I have Facebook ‘friends’ who are merely just acquaintances and probably don’t care nor need to know.

So. I’m tired for no reason.  I’m avoiding people.  I also haven’t felt like eating, am finding no pleasure whatsoever in my glamorous job, blah blah blah, yada yada yada. 

It’s scaring me. But I don’t know what to do.

I guess I should make an appointment to go see my shrink again. I was supposed to see him this month, but it’s such a pain in the ass to get to appointments and stuff now that I’m working full-time. And I’ve got my first appointment with a new psychologist next week, so I feel as if it’d be overkill to go see the first guy. But maybe I do need it, though. I dunno.