Harriet M. Welch

Today I brought a printout of the conversation I had in my head last week to my t appointment. I gave J the background story – about my son, and his medical situation and the tests he needs and the blood test success story and the barium x-ray not so successful story. I told him about my son’s anxieties and phobias. Then he read the conversation with the voice in my head (VIMH).

While he was reading I was looking around. I noticed the Purell. When he was done I told him that he can use the Purell. Since I mentioned it three weeks ago he hasn’t used it when I come in. He said he can’t use it today and showed me two open blisters he had on his hands. He said he used it yesterday and Ouch! I said, but seriously, its fine that you use the Purell, I didn’t mean to make you stop using it. He said, it’s only been three weeks since you said anything, and I said, “And you haven’t used it in front of me since then.” He said he only uses it about twice a day, and wouldn’t you know since I am the first person he sees in the morning he has been doing paperwork and typing and feels his hands might be germy. I said, “So it has nothing to do with me, and the fact that I emanate germs and you have to disinfect when I walk in? Maybe you need a spray version of it so that you can get all the germs I give off.” He said, “Well, I do disinfect the couch before you come in.” And I said, “And after, too, I hope.”

Then we talked about the VIMH. He said it’s great that I wrote that all out, and that I gave this voice an entity. He said he knew about someone with an eating disorder, and she gave it a name. I said, “Ed?” He said, no that would be too obvious. “Nigel.” (??)

But giving the disorder a name had some purpose; I can’t remember what it is now. He said I should give the VIMH a name. I’ve been thinking about that, it would scare me to give it a name. It would have too much power if it had a name, wouldn’t it?

He said obviously no matter what I do, this voice will tell me it’s not enough. What if I see a turtle crossing the road and pick it up and put it in the grass and even give it a little bowl of water. The voice would say, what about all of the other turtles, why aren’t you taking care of them?

That reminded me of an article I read about a jellyfish. J and I had talked about jellyfish a few weeks ago. I asked if he heard about the big jellyfish in New Hampshire. He hadn’t. So I told him the story. A 40 pound jellyfish wandered in the water of New Hampshire, where this type of jellyfish doesn’t usually venture. It somehow died and broke apart, but the jellyfish tentacles can still sting even when they are not attached to the jellyfish body. That morning in New Hampshire 150 people got stung by the tentacles and five people had to go to the hospital.

So that was a little tangent.

Back to the VIMH. He talked about the validity of the real me vs the VIMH. He asked which one is more valid, and I said, “Logically, or which do I believe?” He thinks the real me is correct more often than the voice. We talked about times when the voice might be good, like if you have the impulse to do something bad or wrong and the voice tells you not to. But generally, the voice is incorrect, and operating out of lack of objective evidence.

He told me about the id, ego and super ego of Freud, and what each one does. He said my super ego is very harsh.

He asked what I ultimately decided – who is right, me or the voice? I said that I posted this on my blog and everyone says it is ok that I felt good about myself when I helped my son, and that I did help him. But I said that of course they all said that, they had to. They aren’t going to post mean things to me on my own blog. He went over the whole thing with me and told me that I did a good job and I should feel good about it. He asked if I think EMTs feel bad when they help people. It’s not like they sit around saying, “I hope we have a few good car accidents today.” I said, “Maybe they do. If they don’t have accidents they can lose their jobs.”

I told J that no matter what anyone said to me, I didn’t believe that I made things better for my son until I actually asked him and he said that the things I did were helpful.

I asked him how the voice got in my head, and he asked me how long it has been there. I have no idea. I asked what the voice gets out of saying mean things to me. I was thinking that it’s hard to be good all the time, there is so much pressure. But J was telling me about how it’s easy to get into a pattern of what you know, it is comfortable. Even if it is abusive. For example if a child is abused she may end up marrying someone abusive, because that is what she knows. I was confused about this part and what it had to do with the voice.

I asked him how to get the voice out of my head. I told him that I want to kill it. He asked what I meant by kill. Silence. I don’t think I answered.

He said rather than get rid of it, I need to make the “me” louder and the voice quieter. I asked how I do that. I’m drawing a blank here. I don’t know what happened. I don’t think I got an answer. I don’t think J knows the answer, and this happens week after week. He tells me I need to do something, but he doesn’t tell me how. I would like to make the VIMH quieter, but how?

He said it is like a bully, and it is very harsh and it has been making me feel bad about myself for a long time. And he told me how to stand up to a bully, but I can’t remember that now. He said I am smarter and stronger than the bully, and I said I don’t think I am, but he says I am.

He also asked me how my son was after the blood test and I told him how talkative he was, and how he is planning on taking some classes at the community college. This led to a whole discussion about how I am being supportive of him and making him feel good about himself, and how I can continue doing this. I told him that my husband made my son feel bad because he said to him, “Are you really going to go to classes? Are you really going to do your work?” And I thought it was a stupid thing to say, because my son finally got the motivation to think about school, it’s not like we are pushing him into it. And I think we need to be supportive and positive, and my husband was being very negative. J asked if I said anything to my husband about this, and I said no. He suggested talking to my husband and telling him we need to be united and present a supportive front. I told him it sounded very patronizing to me. I wouldn’t like it if he talked to me that way. I don’t plan to talk to my husband about this. Unfortunately my son now knows not to talk his father about his plans, because he’ll just be shot down. But the thought of talking to my husband as though he is a child isn’t appealing to me either.

So although we did a lot of talking today, I don’t feel that anything is resolved. This is continually happening. I know I need to change, and what needs to change, but I don’t know how to do it. And J doesn’t seem to be able to tell me how either. I’m starting to think “What’s the point?”

Tags: husband, son, therapy, vimh

This might be kind of disjointed. When I got to the office, J’s car wasn’t there, which got me feeling anxious that he wasn’t there. But he was. I said, “You’re car isn’t here.” He said it was in the shop.

So he started by saying, “Last week.” That was it. He wanted to know if I wanted to talk about the email I sent him. He said it was on his computer monitor right then and should he print it out. So he did.

I asked J if he thought I was too needy. He said I’m not and why would I think that. I mentioned the emails I send and asking him to leave me a voice mail. He said that isn’t needy, and that everyone has needs.

And about that voice mail, he was pleased I asked him to do that, not because it made him happy or made him feel needed, but because I was being resourceful and he was glad about that. He asked how I liked the response to his email, and I said it was fine. I told him that I wrote on my blog that emails from t’s are always unsatisfying, because they don’t do therapy via email. He asked what kind of response I would have liked to get and I said I don’t think that the email I would have liked would actually have been one I liked, because if he had gotten into everything I wrote about his response would be too open to misinterpretation. And what he wrote was not at all misinterpretable, so it was perfect.

We went into, again, how I thought he didn’t tell me about his vacation because he was angry or frustrated with me, and he said that actually he feels our therapy has been going much better lately, and we have been communicating better, that I seem more relaxed and talkative. I told him I drink a Red Bull Energy Shot 10 minutes before each session and it makes me more talkative.

He said he doesn’t know why for sure he didn’t tell me about the vacation, because it was an unconscious thing. But he is fairly sure it had something to do with me having been at the beach, and him thinking about running into “customers” while he was there and it would be uncomfortable, more for them than for him, he said, and also how I was telling him about the 13 year old boy who died in my neighborhood and how one of his other “customers” told him the same thing and I felt uneasy that perhaps someone from my neighborhood is his client. He was saying that all of these things brought up in him some uneasiness about crossing lines (not me crossing lines, just lines being crossed unintentionally). I was thinking I totally don’t buy this theory, but whatever.

Then he said that when we were talking about the boy who died he was wondering if he disclosed too much. I told him that I even gave him an out, I said, “Are you sure it wasn’t me who told you?” And he said, “I can’t lie.” I said, “Sure you can, there are times when it would be fine. Besides you have lied before.” He said, “When?” I said, “I don’t want to rehash that.” I’m still not ready to deal with the lying about the blog issue. I wonder if I ever will be.

Then we talked about the part of the email where I wrote about how great it is that he was willing to go along with my index cards experiment and he asked why I thought that was important to me. And I said it meant he was accepting of my weird methods of doing therapy and he said it’s not weird. I asked how many people have ever come in with a script for him and he said no one, but people come in with artwork, and pictures, and things, and 5 people have brought their dogs. I can’t see bringing my dog to therapy, she would probably pee on his rug. So then he talked about the bell curve again.

He also mentioned how sometimes I say I am or I do something “weird” and he tries to tell me it’s not “weird” and then I feel minimized or invalidated. And I said that was true. It’s kind of a paradox, on the one hand I want to be “normal” (whatever that is) and on the other hand I know I am not normal, or usual, in certain ways and rather than deny that and tell me that I am something I am not, I guess I would rather acknowledge it. But it puts him in a difficult position of not knowing which way to go at any given time.

Then we moved on to feeling worthwhile/worthless and he asked when I feel worthwhile. I thought a bit, then said “When I feel needed.” (Later on in the day I thought about this in regards to my son’s current situation, but I’ll write more about that later.) I want to feel needed, but I don’t want to feel needy.

He told me that lots of his clients email him, and it takes about 2 minutes to read an email, and he considers my degree of emailing intermittent and certainly not too much. He said one client would email him really long emails, and she would say that she didn’t expect a reply, she just needed to get everything out, like a journal. I asked if that was too much, and he said no. He said he’s only really had one client who abused the emails. I asked how I would know if I am abusing it and he said he would tell me.

I told him how I thought when I sent the email last week that I really shouldn’t send it, that I should just print it out and bring it this week, since I knew he wouldn’t totally respond via email anyway. And that I felt too needy sending it. He asked why I sent it then. I couldn’t even answer that. He said because I was responding to the need within myself to let him know how I felt at that moment, that waiting a week would not have been appropriate for me at that time and that was good. I said, “But I didn’t think about your needs, maybe you didn’t need to get an email right then. I pictured you seeing my name pop up and saying ‘Oh God, it’s that Harriet again’”. He said, “Is that what I said?” I said, “Yes and you rolled your eyes too.” He said that isn’t what he said or thought at all.

He asked me if I thought about what we talked about last week with the trash and the recycling. I had no idea what he was talking about. He asked me if I had a hard time doing that. I said it is really hard, then I said, “What are you talking about?” And he explained how I hold on to things, like holding onto trash and how I need to take it out once or twice a week. I said, “Are you sure you were talking to me about that?” I have no recollection of this whatsoever. He said we talked about it in the last 5 minutes of our session last week. I swear we didn’t. But he went over it again. I can’t remember what it is I am supposed to recycle. He asked if I pick up trash in the street, and I said no. We talked about picking up trash from our own yards, or if there is some trash and there is a trashcan right there, and setting limits on what trash we pick up and what we leave alone. This whole metaphor is really confusing to me, and I swear we didn’t talk about it last week. I know he must be confusing me with someone else.

But it all comes down to stopping my thoughts about myself from getting out of control. If I am angry with someone I should stop the thoughts there and not let them move on to “Oh there must be something wrong with me” or “This must somehow be my fault.” Like with his vacation, I was angry at him, but then I turned it around and made myself into the bad person. I told him about how I get angry with my daughter when she leaves her stuff around, and then I decide it’s my fault, because either I raised her wrong, or I am not worthy of respect. And this can go back and forth and never get resolved. I told him about the time last month when I was moving her stuff in the garage and I was angry that she left it all there, and I broke the glass bottle and picked up a piece of broken glass and cut myself. He seemed to take that pretty well actually.

The problem is he is always telling me these things to do, and they make perfect sense, but I don’t know how. How do I stop at being angry and not let it become my problem, or that there is something wrong with me? I need more instruction on this part of the process. He can give me all the metaphors in the world, but I just don’t know how to do it.

I think that was it for today! Maybe I’ll think of more, in which case I’ll write it tomorrow. It’s late.

Tags: email, therapy, vacation, weird

Yesterday, of course, I was processing my t session all day and night. I just had a feeling that it wasn’t a simple mistake that J forgot to tell me about his vacation, although it is perfectly valid that maybe it was just a mistake. So I sent him an email. It went like this:

I don’t mean to rehash this subject about why you didn’t tell me about your vacation, because I do realize that a mistake is sometimes just a mistake. But I can’t help but think about an email you sent me back in May when you were frustrated and you said, “I was not angry. I was frustrated because I want you to benefit from my work and that did not happen yesterday.”

I have been thinking about this since you wrote it, and I wonder if you think I’m not benefiting from your work in general, not just on that day and if it frustrates you. I sometimes wonder myself, since I don’t really see big leaps in progress, and I also complain a lot.

I also was thinking about when I was in Mississippi. Do you remember when I sent you an email asking you to leave me a voice mail message? I got a feeling that my request made you happy. It was like I was finally asking you for something, which is somewhat comparable to actually admitting that I needed something from you. I know everyone likes to feel needed, and maybe that request made you feel like I was benefiting from your work.

(By the way, I really like that voice mail message and I still listen to it.)

Although it may not seem that I am benefiting from your work, I obviously keep showing up so I hope you know I am getting something out of it. I’m getting more talkative, don’t you think?

So I do want to thank you today for:

-participating in my experiment. I’m not exactly sure what it accomplished, if anything, but I think it did lead to a good discussion and enabled me to get started talking which is the most difficult part for me. I know of other people’s therapists who don’t want to go outside of the box like you do, and I really appreciate that you do.
-asking me if I felt that you understood what I was saying.
-asking me if I felt that you were validating my feelings.
-tolerating my out of the ordinary methods of getting my thoughts out – ie; the index cards, emails, collages, slide shows, etc.

I also have been thinking about if I can improve my feelings of unworthiness. It’s kind of like that chicken and egg conundrum. You said I have to use logic, and I have to let feelings disperse like your dog’s mud in the water in the pool. But I kind of feel that in order to make that work I have to have stronger feelings of self value first. It is very difficult, and it feels like we always come back to the same problem, and I’m starting to feel like it will never change.

I think if I think more highly of myself, then little things like you not telling me about your vacation won’t bother me. But I think what you are saying is that if I don’t let things like that bother me I will think more highly of myself. I don’t even want to write any more about this, but maybe we can talk more about it sometime. It’s very hard for me to talk about though.

But I don’t want you to think that I am not benefiting from your work, and I don’t want you to dread Tuesdays at 11am. And if that ever happens, I hope you will tell me. Thanks J

See what I was getting at here? I was worried that if he thinks I’m not benefitting from his work, he won’t be happy and he won’t treat me well. I suppose this is something I should talk about in therapy. Does anyone else want to make their t happy?

In our session yesterday I happened to mention that I have been avoiding people in order to avoid my sensitive self from being hurt. He said that I can’t avoid conflict.

In the afternoon I got an email from two really good friends – I’ve been friends with one of them for over 25 years and the other for 20 years. They wanted to go out to dinner tomorrow night. Normally I would ignore the email, or say I couldn’t make it. But I thought J would be happy if I went. So I said I would. I even told them in the email that they could ask about my son (last time I warned them ahead of time not to ask) because he is having some health issues that I am anxious about. I thought that would make J even happier. Is this is silly reason to do something, because I think it will make my t happy? Or does it not matter, whatever it takes me to stop isolating is ok?

I also got into the self worth issue and how to improve that situation; trying to understand how to change and seeing it from two different viewpoints – the chicken vs the egg. And I tried to show some appreciation for things he did yesterday and in general.

J emailed me back today. I always find his emails unsatisfying, but I understand the nature of this method of communication. He can’t do therapy via email. I pour out my thoughts and feelings and he responds, “Thank you for sharing.” Well, his was more like this:

Thank you for sharing your feelings and your viewpoint. I, too, think that you are making progress. You have been more talkative and more open and you seem relatively more relaxed during our meetings. I am glad to hear that the “outside the box” stuff is valuable to you. In general, I am game for whatever works. We can discuss more next week (and I think we should continue to look at these issues).

This was nice because he used somewhat normal language. But it doesn’t really respond to the meat of my email, does it? But we can discuss it more next week. I was thinking next week I might want to discuss my anxiety about my son’s health issues, since he is having his tests next week. Is it worth it to talk about anxiety in therapy? There’s not much that can be done about it. Can it possibly be that I have reached the point where I have too much to discuss in therapy? How can that be? Must be the Red Bull Energy Shots.

Tags: email, therapy

I was glad I had my index cards today, because it is always so hard to get started when there has been a break in therapy. We started with some insurance stuff, and got that out of the way. Then I asked J if he would mind participating in an experiment, and I told him I wrote a script with my part on pink cards and his part on blue cards. And then we can do the script with him saying what he would normally say.

He wanted to know what I was testing and I tried to assure him that this isn’t a test; that I know he doesn’t like to be tested. But I thought by writing it out it might clarify for me the kinds of things that I would want him to say to me.

So we started, and he did really well, he read exactly what was on the cards. Then we tried it without the cards, and what happened was what I thought would happen. He said he was influenced by what I wrote on the cards and couldn’t really respond off the cuff since he had read what I had written. But he did admit that there were certain things he would not have said like, “so that I knew I had screwed up.”

So basically the experiment didn’t really accomplish much except to get us on the path to a good discussion about how I felt when he told me he wouldn’t be here because he was going on vacation. He tried to get me to figure out why I think he thinks I’m too unimportant to tell about his vacation. He asked if I was angry, and at first I was angry, but then I decided that he did give me one week’s notice, so I didn’t have any right to be angry. That is when I realized that I am just not important enough for him to tell me. Especially when he sent me the email saying “I usually give more notice. That is how I traditionally handle the issue.” That made me feel even more like I’m obviously not important enough to tell.

By the way I asked who wrote his emails, and he said he did. I gave him a look that said, “I don’t believe you.” He said he was writing on his blackberry and that is why it might have seemed different. I told him that it was not because of the blackberry; that he writes differently than he talks. I said that I think I write just like I talk and he said that is totally untrue, I write much differently than I talk. I don’t think I do!

I asked if he forgot to tell anyone else about the vacation. He said that he has some clients (he called them ADHD college students) who he schedules with every week, they don’t have a consistent day and time for their appointment, so he didn’t count them. But no one else has complained about him not telling them, so he is assuming either he didn’t forget to tell anyone, or I am the only one who has complained about the lack of more notice.

He did say he was driving back from vacation at 6am yesterday morning and knowing he had an 11am appointment, but thinking that maybe he had a 10am appointment and he hadn’t printed out his schedule, and he was getting anxious about it. But it turned out he didn’t have a 10am appointment. And when he first started in private practice he would put up a sign on the door giving his vacation schedule because he was so nervous about forgetting to tell anyone. I told him he should restart that practice.

He also said he was 70% sure when I got there today I would want to talk about this issue, but he was thinking that maybe either something else came up for me in the last two weeks, or I just decided it was a mistake and moved on. Nope.

Then I kind of turned the conversation around and asked him if maybe he unconsciously on purpose didn’t tell me about his upcoming vacation. He asked what would be the benefit for him not to tell me. (I never understand that question. Why is it necessarily a benefit?) I told him that if it was me who unconsciously forgot to tell him I wouldn’t be there, it would most likely be because I was mad at him, or hurt by him, or thinking he was angry at me. So maybe he was feeling one of those things towards me. I asked him if he was in therapy, and he said he is not right now, but has been. He said he plans to do this work for 30 more years, and will be in therapy on and off, but right now is not. He said he doesn’t believe that he is feeling anything towards me that would cause him to unconsciously not tell me, and I told him maybe he should do some more thinking about that.

He suggested that maybe it was a boundary issue, because two weeks ago when this happened I was telling him that I was leaving for the beach that day. And he knew he was leaving for the beach the next week, so maybe he didn’t want me to feel uncomfortable that he would be at the beach too. But, I said, I went to a different beach than you did and a different week. He said he didn’t know what beach I was going to, and I said I knew what beach he goes to (because he has a sticker on his car, and official license plates for that beach). He said, maybe it is like when I told him about the boy who died in my neighborhood and he had another client who told him about the same boy, and it made me uncomfortable that someone from my neighborhood might also be his client. I don’t really go for this theory; that he didn’t tell me he was going to the beach because it might make me uncomfortable to know that he would be going to the beach a week later.

He said while he was at the beach the other day he suddenly got a feeling: “What if I run into a client here?” I said that he must run into clients occasionally and he said surprisingly he doesn’t, and also it would be different at the beach. I said, “Yeah, in your bathing suit.” And he said, he didn’t even think of that, he was thinking more of being with his family and a client being with their family. I don’t know, you’d think this thought would have crossed his mind sooner than this week considering he’s been in practice for 10 years or so.

So we continued on with the discussion of me thinking I’m not deserving of getting respect or information, of thinking I’m worthless. I said it happens with others too, outside of therapy. Like when my kids leave a mess in the house, at first I get angry, then I decide I’m not even worthy of them picking up their stuff. I asked him how to get over this and he didn’t really have an answer. He put his head in his hands and didn’t talk. I asked him to think about when he learned about this in school, or to give me the book on it. This is always so frustrating for me. He did say logic, to always try and see the logic, but that has not been working.

I also brought up how I’m too sensitive and he admitted that I am sensitive in the “technical” sense. Not in the negative sense of being “too sensitive” but of being sensitive of my feelings; he said I’m mindful of my feelings. And again, how I hold on to negative things. And we talked about a situation like this one, where I could talk about it, or I could try to forget about it. That it is hard for me to forget about situations when I feel hurt, but how does it help to talk about it? How has this conversation helped me? I still don’t know why he didn’t tell me about the vacation, but I think it helped that he was willing to talk about it. In the therapy scenario one can talk about things like this, it doesn’t really fly in real life. I mean, I can say to someone, “You hurt my feelings when you did or said xyz” but it’s rare that I would have a 45 minute discussion delving into the nuts and bolts of it.

It always seems to come back to the same thing. And there doesn’t seem to be a solution. But I feel good about our discussion, and how much I talked. (Want to know my secret? Ten minutes before the session began I drank a Red Bull energy shot. I was unsure about doing this, because I am always so anxious in my sessions, but it seemed to turn my bad anxiety into good anxiety. This is will be a weekly thing, definitely.)

Afterward, of course I process the whole thing in my head. And what I have come up with is something J wrote to me back in May when we had the blow up during my birthday week. And he said he is frustrated because he doesn’t believe that I am benefiting from his work. And I also thought about when I was in Mississippi in April and I emailed him asking him to leave me a voice mail message on my cell phone. I got the feeling that he was really happy about this.

I have been thinking that J needs to feel like he is doing important work, like he is needed. Everyone needs this, but I think there is a fine line between being needed and having someone get too attached. And over the last month or so he has been frustrated by my lack of benefit of his work. This is all purely speculation on my part. But I think about the voice mail message, and the other time when I told him about the Word document I keep on my computer in which I write down all of the good things people say or write about me, and how he got this really big smile on his face when I told him that. And I want him to feel good about our work together. I know I am not responsible for his feelings, but we are both human beings, and if it makes him happy to work with me I think our work will be better. I want him to be happy, I don’t want him to dread his Tuesdays at 11am.

I’m writing him an email with some of these thoughts. To thank him for being so open minded with me, and accepting my “alternate” ways of doing therapy – email, collages, scripts, slide shows. I know there are many other therapists who don’t think outside the box like he does. He is really very tolerant of my methods. I do want him to know that I appreciate him, and what he does for me, and how he puts up with me.

I also want to explore more about getting over this feeling of being unworthy. I am reading a book – The Undervalued Self Restore Your Love/Power Balance, Transform the Inner Voice That Holds You Back, and Find Your True Self-Worth. I like this author, she wrote the books about being Highly Sensitive. I don’t know why I’ll get more out of books than out of therapy, but I keep reading them.

The thing is, it’s like the chicken and egg conundrum. I asked J how I can feel that I am more important, that I am a deserving person? And he said that it’s not that I need to feel more important, it’s that I should not feel that I am not important. Like I need to stop hanging on to the negative things. But I don’t think I can stop hanging on to the negative things until I feel more worthy and more deserving, then the negative things won’t bother me as much. Right now I keep trying to DO things, such as volunteer work, to feel better about myself, but that isn’t working. I need to get to the core of the problem, to really resolve what is wrong, so that I can actually like myself. Then, I think, when negative things happen, like J forgetting to tell me about his vacation, I won’t let it get to me. That seems to make more sense to me, but I don’t know how to do it. And he doesn’t seem to know how to do it either.

J told me that his neighbor invited J’s dog to swim in his pool, but J said his dog was very muddy and he didn’t think it would be a good idea. But the neighbor said his pool holds 17,000 gallons of water and a little mud won’t hurt it. So J brought the dog over and she jumped into the pool and he watched as the mud dispersed and disappeared. And that is what I need to have happen when I get oversensitive. I need to have these bad things disperse and disappear, like the mud in the water in the pool.

Tags: therapy

Went to the gynecologist today. I told him about my experiment with taking the last week off of the pill packs and the emotional upheaval and he said it is fine for me to stay on the b/c pills for another year or two and never take another week off. He said around age 52 is the cut off, but then I can start hormone replacement. Eh, I’m not planning that far ahead. I just am glad I can continue on the pills and not take any more weeks off.

I love my gynecologist. I’ve been seeing him since before my son was born, and he is now 20. He is really handsome and about 15 years older than me. Wait, let me google him and check that. Hold on….

OK, he graduated college in 1968. Assuming he was 21 then he would be 63 now. I wish he was my therapist instead of gynecologist. Oh well, then I probably wouldn’t love him as much. I ran into him at the grocery store once, and before he saw me I made a beeline for the exit. That’s kind of ick – seeing one’s gynecologist out on the free range. Every year I ask him if he is going to retire and every year he says no. So far he’s been truthful.

Also every year he tries to give me a sample pack of b/c pills. But I normally take the generic kind and he tries to give me a sample of the non-generic kind. I have told him the non-generic kind gives me migraines and he says, “They are the same!” And I always say, “They are NOT the same!” We go through this every year. I always win, because I say, “You’ve never taken them!” I also tell him I don’t feel comfortable taking samples because I am sure that he has patients who cannot afford b/c pills, and with my insurance they are so damn cheap. So I tell him to save them for those patients.

I have excellent gynecological health, so I only see him once a year. So sad.

Tomorrow is back to therapy. Meh.

I have written up the script on index cards for J. My part in pink, his in blue. I’d like to video our session, or record it. But I would never do that.

I’ve been feeling down for the last few days. Tomorrow my daughter is turning 18 and tonight she had 5 friends over and I made a nice dinner for them. We did the same thing last year. Here’s some food pics. I made the chocolate trifle, I know you guys love that! If we ever all got together I would definitely make one for you.

I made shrimp, two kinds of orzo, and the trifle. I didn’t make the bread, I bought that. Doing all of this cheered me up a little.

So here is the final version of the script, thank you to everyone who helped me to write it:

Me: I wanted to talk about how I felt two weeks ago when you told me as I was walking out the door that you wouldn’t be here the next week.

J: OK. What type of feelings did that bring up for you? Again, I apologize for not letting you know earlier. I’m glad you wrote me before I left so that I knew I had screwed up.

Me: I’m hesitant to mention it because a couple of months ago you forgot to answer an email, and when I brought it up in our session I thought you got defensive because your response was, “How many times have I NOT forgotten to return your emails?”

J: Perhaps my comment did seem defensive and more focused on my feelings than on yours. I said that because I wanted to remind you that I am only human. I make mistakes too. But I can see how you might have heard that as being defensive. Do you think I’ll be defensive in our discussion of the vacation?

Me: I thought you got defensive, and maybe you were just trying to point out the truth of the situation. And that was the truth. But I wanted to talk about how I felt, and when you said that it made me feel worse, like I am expecting too much and that I am too critical.

J: So when I responded that way you thought I didn’t want to hear about your feelings?

Me: Yes, and now because of that I’m not sure if I should talk about how I felt two weeks ago because I don’t want to be petty; you did give me a week’s notice.

J: It isn’t petty to want to discuss how you felt about a situation or circumstance. That is what we do in therapy – discuss our feelings and reactions to events. Would you like to share now, how it affected you when I announced I’d be gone last week, and it was a surprise to you to hear this?

Me: I felt like I didn’t matter when you told me at the last minute that you were going on vacation. Usually you would tell me further in advance, and I thought maybe it was a last minute decision but the way you asked me made it seem like it wasn’t. You didn’t say, “Don’t forget I won’t be here next week”, you said, “Did I tell you I won’t be here next week?” which made me think that you knew the week before that you wouldn’t be here and you just didn’t tell me. And that brought up the usual feelings I get of being unimportant, without value, worthless, etc.

J: So you felt like I didn’t tell you in advance because you are not important enough to keep informed? I’m sorry that the result of my mistake is that you feel bad about yourself. Tell me more about how you felt when you realized I’d be gone and I hadn’t told you earlier.

I’m hoping we can do this conversation my way, and then repeat it with J saying the things he would really say. I’ll be sure to report back tomorrow.

Tags: daughter, emotions, food, therapy

I had a terrible time sleeping last night. Weird (not bad) dreams, and I kept waking up. And you know what, I can’t remember whether or not I took klonopin before I went to bed. That doesn’t mean I didn’t, but since I don’t remember doing it, perhaps I didn’t. And that could explain the poor sleep. Aah. Addicted to klonopin again, sigh.

And I put in for a refill on my rx a week ago, and it still isn’t ready. Which means either the pharmacy isn’t following up with my pdoc, or my pdoc isn’t calling it in. Tomorrow I need to follow up on this. I do have a stash, but don’t want to be cutting into the stash.

I’m getting anxious about therapy on Tuesday. I haven’t been in two weeks, which was kind of nice. I wish I could let go of things. I have been thinking about that long email I sent J in January, summarizing my life and my therapy over the last year, and how we really spent basically one session talking about it. I really wish we could have spent more time on that. There was so much in there, so much material, and it is all still relevant. I still think about that, how maybe if we could talk about it more it would be helpful. But I’d never mention it. I’ve had the urge to read my blog from back in January and February, but I’m afraid of getting depressed.

I was thinking of doing another one of those summaries, for the first 6 months of this year. A lot of stuff would be the same, so I guess it would be like talking about that last email. The thing about J is, though, he wants me to make observations in the present, rather than look back on things. It’s really hard for me to do that though. Like I could go through my whole session and not notice or feel things, but as soon as I leave I start processing everything that we said and then I start to feel things about what went on. This is a habit of mine outside of therapy also. I do agree that it would be helpful to observe things in the moment and deal with them as they happen. How do I do that?

Tags: feelings, medication, therapy

A blog friend and I came up with this crazy idea when I mentioned I was hesitant to talk to J about something because I wasn’t sure I would like his response. The last time I tried to talk to him about my feelings about something similar, I got a response that I felt was defensive. Of course, I could have been perceiving it wrong, as I frequently do.

So we decided to write a script. I would write mine and t’s lines on cards, and I would read my lines, then he would read the ones I wrote for him.

I thought after we did this little exercise we could do it again, but this time with him saying what he would really say.

The problem is, because I hate to admit I have needs, I don’t know what my needs are. So I have all of my lines written, but I don’t know what I want him to say in return. That’s where I need your help. Those of you who are therapists, or have good or even Wonder!! Therapists (I’m jealous, seriously) could tell me what would be a good thing for a t to say to you in response to these things.

I suppose every client needs different things from their t, right? But I’d love to get a variety of responses so that I can further define what it is that I think I need and what would be helpful to me. Even if everyone who answers gives me a different response I think it would be so helpful.

So here is the script, and if you can come up with a line or two for t, please post in comments. Thank you so much!

Me: I wanted to talk about how I felt two weeks ago when you told me as I was walking out the door that you wouldn’t be here the next week.

T line #1:

Me: I’m hesitant to mention it because a couple of months ago you forgot to answer an email, and when I brought it up in our session I thought you got defensive because your response was, “How many times have I NOT forgotten to return your emails?”

T line #2:

Me: I thought you got defensive, but maybe you were just trying to point out the truth of the situation. And that was the truth. But I wanted to talk about how I felt, and when you said that it made me feel worse, like I am expecting too much and that I am too critical.

T line #3:

Me: So now I wanted to talk about how I felt two weeks ago and I’m not sure if I should because I don’t want to be petty.

T line #4:

Me: But I felt like I didn’t matter when you told me at the last minute that you were going on vacation. Usually you would tell me further in advance, and I thought maybe it was a last minute decision but the way you asked me made it seem like it wasn’t. You didn’t say, “Don’t forget I won’t be here next week”, you said, “Did I tell you I won’t be here next week?” which made me think that you knew the week before that you wouldn’t be here and you just didn’t tell me. And that brought up the usual feelings I get of being unimportant, without value, worthless, etc.

T line #5:

Tags: feelings, therapy

Yes, I did it. And she answered the damn phone. What is with these therapists – why aren’t they with clients? I wanted to just leave a message, but she answered, so I had to talk to her.

I told her about my therapy and why I am looking for possibly someone new.

She told me that ethically she cannot see me if I am seeing another t. She wanted to know if he knew I was calling her, and I said no, but I did tell her about the experience with parrot T and how I did tell J about that. She wanted to know what I didn’t like about parrot T and I told her everything. I explained that I thought maybe someone halfway between J and parrot T on the weirdness bell curve would be nice. I told her that J is great, he is nice, he lets me write to him via email because I communicate so much better in writing than in talking “As you can probably tell.” She replied, “No I would not guess that, you seem to be doing very well.”

She answered all of my questions. Her fee is more than J’s (since I get the good customer discount from him), but her sessions are longer, 50 minutes. She would be able to give me a standing appointment every week. She practices psychodynamic/eclectic therapy and uses “modern” techniques, whatever that is. She believes the relationship between the therapist and the client is important, and she is involved in the process.

I wasn’t crazy about her voice, and it sounded like she might have been eating something, but maybe she was just swallowing weird. She is definitely not an INFJ.

She said if I told J that I was going to interview another t and if he is ok with it she would be fine with meeting me for a consultation, but she won’t do therapy until I finish with J. I told her that I don’t know if it’s the therapy, it it’s me, or if it’s J that is the problem, but I am hesitant to start with someone knew. First, due to my trust issues, it could take me a year to tell a new t about my problems. Then in a year and a half I could be back here at the same exact place, but with a different t.

She said it would be good for me to talk to J about me being stuck in the therapy and how we can work it out. She wanted to know if we have talked about that, and I wasn’t sure really. He has told me I am stuck, but I don’t know if he told me what to do about it. I think that he thinks that just talking week after week will cause something to change in me.

So that was that. I do feel something though. I feel like I want to talk to J about what we are doing, where we are going, how we are getting there. More nuts and bolts I suppose. I keep thinking of “Good Will Hunting” (which I watch often) and how when Robin William’s character (Sean) tells Matt Damon’s character (Will) “It’s not your fault” Will believes him. And it changes his life. How did those two characters get to that place where Will could believe Sean? I would like to get a place like that, where I could believe J.

Tags: therapy

Today I did something. I emailed my flying therapist, J (let’s call her JR to differentiate her from my current t, J), who I really love. We talk every once in a while, and whenever I fly anywhere I send her a postcard and she posts it on her website. She runs a travel anxiety therapy group, and does individual therapy for people with travel anxiety. After my trip to Mississippi I sent her a postcard and this is what she posted on her website:

Harriet has changed her life so much since she can fly, and we were very moved to hear about this accomplishment: “Dear JR, I spent the last week of April in Mississippi working with Habitat for Humanity. It was an amazing experience. I flew to New Orleans & drove 2 hours to Gulfport/Ocean Springs. I spent the week with 10 other volunteers building a house for someone who was left homeless after Katrina…I never could have done this if I couldn’t fly. Thanks to you and JW (yes, JR’s partner’s name also begins with J, so I’ll call her JW), I was able to fulfill one of my dreams! Love, Harriet”

Dear Harriet, I hope you’ll always keep in touch with us! It’s such a pleasure to hear about your continual progress. JR

Isn’t that so nice? She and JW ran the group together, and I did individual therapy with JR. But then I graduated from the group because I became a fearless flyer! I might have to go back in for a touch up, though, because in October I have to fly in a small plane and I don’t want to do that.

Anyway! I emailed her today to ask her for a referral to a therapist. Not that I am leaving J, don’t get all worked up. But I’m just keeping my options open, you know? I don’t know why I think things would be different with a different t, after all I’ll still have my therapy difficulties:

Talking
Thinking there is something wrong with me every time the t makes a mistake or forgets something, which is only human
Being afraid of being judged
Being afraid the t will think I am a gross person
Etc….

So I sent her this email:

I hope all is well with you. I have a favor. I’m wondering if you know of any good therapists. I’ve been seeing someone for about a year and a half and I don’t think I’m improving. I think I am getting worse. He is very nice, but something isn’t working and maybe I should try a new person. It really terrifies me to see someone new though, since it took me about a year before I would even talk to him. A couple of months ago I tried a new therapist, and it didn’t work out very well. I only went once, and then returned to my regular therapist.

I’ve been having some problems for a while now, and tried various meds, but I think if I find a good therapist I could get better. I don’t want cognitive behavioral therapy though; I want to go into deeper stuff. I think part of the problem with my current therapy is my therapist likes to work on day to day issues and that to me is just treating the symptoms and not the problems.

I want someone like you or JW. Someone nice and gentle, but also willing to push. Someone intuitive, caring, understanding, not judgmental. Preferably if they can read my mind that would be ideal! (I haven’t found anyone who can do that yet.) It doesn’t matter if they take insurance.

My psychiatrist keeps giving me labels that I deny – anxiety, depression, ocd. I don’t like those.

Any help you can offer, recommendations, etc, would be greatly appreciated. Thank you so much!

And she responded:

Let me think for a bit. Oh, I just thought of someone I like a lot –a psychologist named J (yes, her name begins with J also, so let’s call her JG), PhD. Very warm person, does deeper work. That might be a really good person to try.

I know some other people but they’re just not right in my mind for you. If you try JG (I think she goes by Dr. G), I hope she may be the kind of person and offer the kind of depth you’re looking for.

Have a great summer.

Have you noticed that all of these therapists’ names begin with the letter J? Something is bizarre about this.

Anyway, so now I am looking for that packet I made up when I was interviewing Parrot T. It had a bunch of questions I wanted to ask, as well as a list of everything that I was willing to tell her was wrong with me, because as you all know the first thing they ask you when you see a new t is, “What is it you need help with?” That is a difficult question, so I figured I would just hand over the list of symptoms. Parrot T liked that.

I don’t know if I’ll call her. Maybe. It’s a holiday weekend here in the United States (yes, my friends in the UK, we declared our independence from you around 200 something years ago. Aren’t you glad we did that?) So maybe I’ll call her next week. I’m afraid of another Parrot T experience, but that was just a name I picked out of my insurance company list, and this is a personal recommendation from someone I trust. What do you think?

Tags: flying, therapy

Thank you to everyone who was supportive to me yesterday. To the person who was not I would like you to know that your comments upset me very much and I was very sad for the entire day. But today I took a blog buddy’s advice and emailed J this morning.

It would really help me if you could give me more notice of your absences, like you always have in the past. Well, I know you gave me a week and that is great, I know sometimes things come up. But I found it really hard when you dropped the news on me as I was walking out the door. So maybe earlier in the session next time? I realize it is just me and my over-sensitivity, but still. Thank you.

He responded:

I thought that I had mentioned my absence last week. That is how I traditionally address the issue. If I neglected to inform you last week, I apologize.

I responded:

No, you didn’t. I guess you forgot. These things happen – have fun at the beach.

This brings up a lot of feelings from the past. I always felt like people didn’t pay much attention to me. This is partially my own behavior though. As I have mentioned before both my father and my sister were sick when I was a child, and I took it upon myself to take care of myself and not to bother anyone. So people tended to ignore me knowing I didn’t need them for anything. And I perceived this as forgetting about me.

People continue to do this to me, because of my tendency to be so “independent”. But you know what I really want? I want people to remember me, to care enough about me that they don’t forget about me.

Tags: feelings, therapy