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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.