Harriet M. Welch

Today was my meeting with Mr. IRS Seal. We had scheduled to meet at 9:30am. I was worried about what to wear, but I did manage to find something. Not business-y, but a few steps up from jeans and a t-shirt. My navigation system said it would take 30 minutes to get there, but he is in the city and it was rush hour, so I allowed an hour. At around 9:15am I knew I was going to be late. There was so much traffic and I wasn’t moving very fast. I hate that feeling of knowing I’m going to be late and not being able to do anything about it. I got to his office at 9:45 and rang his buzzer and he let me up.

I said, “I’m sorry I’m late.” He said, “In my head you’re not late.” In his calendar he wrote that I would be there at 9:30, but in his head he thought our meeting was at 10:30. So he didn’t know I was late. Whew.

And guess what he was wearing? Jeans! And sneakers. And a dark green shirt, untucked. And the piece de resistance – bright yellow elastic bands around his ankles. He rides his bike to work and those elastics prevent the jeans from getting caught in the gears. I have no idea why he doesn’t take them off when he gets to work, maybe he thinks he’ll lose them.

So far so good.

We talked for a while, and he is extremely nice. His name is Brian, by the way, so no more Mr. IRS Seal. He is a little younger than me I think, but he has two little kids. He lives 10 minutes away from his office, which is why he can bike to work. I bullshitted my way through a little speech about the kinds of things I do, and tried to make it seem like I knew what I was talking about. Which actually I did kind of know what I was talking about. I told him that can I organize anything including financial papers, but I have no idea about anything financial, so whatever is on the page is greek to me. He asked me questions like, “What would your perfect client look like?” I asked him if he charges a referral fee. I don’t know how I came up with that question, but it sounded professional. He said there would be no referral fee, as a matter of fact he thinks he should pay me to take care of these clients!

We got into a little discussion of how he ended up where he is. He used to be in the corporate tax world, he actually worked for a large accounting firm, and it happens to be the one that my brother-in-law works for, and he knows my brother-in-law. For a big city, it’s a small world. He went out on his own three years ago. He said that a year ago he went through his client list, and decided to get rid of the clients who he felt didn’t value the work he was doing with them, and the clients who didn’t seem interested in putting work in on their end. I loved him at this point. Wow, a man with values. He left the corporate world, bikes to work, wears jeans, chooses his clients based on his values and not the bottom line. What kind of financial advisor wears jeans? The kind I’d like to have if I had a financial advisor.

I gave him a bunch of cards, and we’ll see if any of his clients call me. He said that if they do, he and I could talk about what I can do to be sure the client has what he needs in order to best serve the client. I told him what I charge, which isn’t much and made me feel somewhat unprofessional, but I did say that most people are not willing to pay a lot for my services, and I’m not in it for the money, but for the ability to help people.

I have a good feeling about this guy, I never expected to meet anyone like this who does financial work for a living. He is definitely an NF personality, my kind of guy.

J asked what we are talking about. I said, well, whatever. He said he would like to talk about my email from three weeks ago, since last week I talked about wanting to talk about that. Unless something happened this week that I would prefer to talk about. I said nothing happened this week, but in his email to me last week he said he wanted to talk about my thoughts that he is sick of me and frustrated with me. He said he didn’t remember what was in his email to me last week. I said, well, you said you wanted to discuss this particular item, and the reason I wrote about it was because I thought I did a good job reframing my thoughts and I wanted to let you know that. But then you said you wanted to discuss it and it made me anxious all week and I was wondering why you chose that item as something to discuss. He really couldn’t remember any of this, so he went to his computer to see what he had written. He claims that this particular item stood out for him because it was larger than the other items since I wrote it in list form rather than paragraph form. Oh.

How could I get so anxious about something, and he doesn’t remember saying it at all?

We did discuss how when someone makes a comment or remark to me I tend to believe it and think that they are judging me and then I hold onto these thoughts and this leads to feeling bad about myself. We’ve had this conversation before, about 99 times before. What it comes down to is knowing something intellectually, but not being able to feel it. I asked him how I do this. He doesn’t know. He tried to come up with an answer. He said if I think logically about things eventually the logic will win out. That kind of sucks as an answer, but maybe that’s the way things work.

Then he asked me if he could tell me about a personal situation he encountered last week, that had to do with this type of logical thinking. I said sure, I’m always happy to talk about the other person rather than myself. He told me his story, and we talked about it for a while, and it was so much better than talking about myself. I wish we could talk about him every week. He was still talking about it when I got up to leave.

I didn’t tell him about the cutting, or the suicidal ideation, or the constant feeling of hating myself. Maybe I’ll tell him that next week.

I talked to my sister yesterday, and she told me that the reason my mother doesn’t want to come to lunch with us on Friday is because she doesn’t want to drive an hour to my house with my sister’s friend because she doesn’t feel comfortable with her. I didn’t quite believe that. I talked to my mother today and she said she isn’t meet us on Friday because we “young girls” don’t need an “old lady” like her hanging out with us. I told her that we would enjoy having an old lady like her with us. I said, “I thought you didn’t feel comfortable driving here with L.” She said, “No, I never said that, that’s not a problem.”

My aunt called me and told me that my mother called her and told her she isn’t going to my cousin’s wedding. My aunt says she doesn’t believe the reason my mother gave, she wishes she knew the true reason why my mother isn’t going. I know the true reason, but I’m not telling my aunt. I don’t want to get caught in the middle between the two of them.

Then I had to call my insurance company. We switched to a new provider on January 1st, and I checked my claims online and saw that they didn’t pay for my last three therapy sessions. So I called them and they said I needed to get these pre-authorized. They said they could do that on the phone, but they needed to ask me a couple of questions, that I didn’t have to answer if I didn’t want to. The first was if in the last two months I have drank too much or taken drugs. The second was if in the last week I felt like hurting myself. Huh? Who the hell would answer yes to these questions? And if you choose not to answer isn’t that just like answering yes? I lied. Well, the first question I told the truth, I haven’t drank too much or taken drugs. Not illegal drugs anyway. And prescribed drugs are ok, I’m assuming. But I did lie about the second question.

Everybody lies, and you never know who is lying, and who is telling the truth, and what the truth really is. That’s life.

I told my husband that I hate this new insurance company and they would only approve 10 visits of therapy, and then the therapist has to apply for more visits for me. Huh? I’m not going to ask him to do that. I told my husband that they were asking me intrusive questions that were none of their business and we are just going to pay out of pocket once the 10 visits are up. With the amount of money we spend on insurance every year (we pay for our own insurance) I don’t feel like I have to justify my therapy to them. So there.

Tomorrow morning is my meeting with Mr. IRS Seal. I don’t know what to wear. All of my business-y type clothes are too big. I’m anxious about the meeting, and I’m anxious about what to wear.

I’m still cutting. It’s like a compulsion now, I have to do this almost every day. I wrote that post yesterday about thinking rationally and logically about what is going on, but once again, although I know these things intellectually, I can’t feel them. I can’t feel better about myself. It’s just really hard.

I would like to end the pity party. I am going to think rationally about what is happening here, process my thoughts and figure out what is logic and what is my irrational thinking. I think that a lot of my feelings of unworthiness and stupidity this week resulted from my therapy session and email exchange with my therapist, J, last week, as well as from my upcoming meeting with Mr. IRS Seal. I am not happy that therapy has this much importance in my life that it can cause these strong feelings and lead to a ruined week. Six full days of crap, feeling like a loser, cutting, isolation, crying, etc. How can a mere 45 minute session cause this? I went into my session last week with the intention of talking about my suspicions that my therapist was searching for specific words on my blog. I was unable to come right out and say what I wanted to say, and thus I never got an answer or the information that I was looking for. I also spent the whole session thinking about what I wasn’t talking about, and none of the session actually talking about anything productive. I got very frustrated and I could feel J’s frustration as well, although he would probably never admit it.

Then I wrote him an email full of everything I should have said in session, and in the previous session as well, when I also did not say what I wanted to say. The words are in me, the feelings are in me, the thoughts are in me. I don’t know how to get them out orally. This is making me feel like I am a helpless loser. Yes, I can express myself in writing, but that is not how therapy is supposed to be. Didn’t someone, maybe Freud, call therapy the “talking cure”? Not the “sit in silence during your session and then send your therapist a three page email that he has to read on his personal time cure”. But my therapist says that he doesn’t mind the emails, that he likes them because if I am not expressing myself in the session, how else will he know what I’m thinking? So I have to believe that it is ok for me to send these emails, because he says it is. I know there are other people who have therapists who don’t do email. So if J says it is ok, then it must be ok. It’s me who has a problem with it, not him.

Facts:

It is difficult for me to express myself in my therapy sessions
J says he welcomes email
I can write about my thoughts and feelings better than I can talk about them
It is ok to do therapy in a variety of ways, one size doesn’t fit all

This is going well.

I am also feeling badly because of all of things in my email J chose #4 as the item he says he wants to discuss. I feel badly because first of all, that was the one item in the email that I thought I was doing well with. I wrote about it to tell him that “Look, I did something good!” I also feel badly because just last week we had a discussion about my previous email and how there were things I thought that were important in that email, and he chose not to discuss them, he chose another item that I didn’t think was particularly important. So we had a discussion about how I should be the one to determine what is important, and here he is again making a decision about what he wants to discuss. Why couldn’t he say in the email, “You raise some good points here, what would you like to talk about from this email next week?”

Facts:

I wrote an email expressing my concerns, as well as a couple of things that I think I am doing well as a result of therapy
J said that I did a good job of expressing myself in my email
He did reconfirm one of the items that I thought I was getting better at, and said that he would like to continue working on that
He did say that he would like to talk about this email next week
He said he specifically wants to discuss item #4

I’m not sure these facts are making me feel much better about this particular situation.

As for Mr. IRS Seal, I am comparing myself with him and seeing that I come up short. He is a professional financial advisor, and that is something I have no idea how to do, therefore my conclusion is that he is better than me, smarter than me, more professional than me. However, I am good at what I do, I have had many clients who think I am some kind of goddess for helping them get their stuff organized and getting them set up with systems that help them in their daily lives. I have to remember this.

Facts:

Mr. IRS Seal is a professional financial planner
I am a professional organizer
He helps his clients do things that they can’t do alone
I help my clients do things that they can’t do alone
I am perfectly capable of sitting down to have a conversation with him in order to figure out how I can best help his clients because this is what I do with my other clients

As for my mother, well that just happened yesterday, so it didn’t have an impact on my week until yesterday. But to think logically about this we have these facts:

My sister was passing on information that may or may not be true
My mother is really not enjoyable to spend time with
This is a great way for me to out of doing something that isn’t enjoyable
Rather than feeling hurt that she doesn’t want to spend time with me, I can feel relieved that I don’t have to spend time with her

This is going well. If I can just keep remembering these things it would be helpful. I would like to be a person who doesn’t have all of these thoughts, who doesn’t ruminate on things, who lets things just slide, who doesn’t let crazy thoughts ruin her week, who doesn’t have to go through this complex mental process in order to get through negative thinking patterns. I know there are people like that – I know a lot of them. They don’t go through all of this. Frankly, it is tiring, it is mentally draining, and do I really end up in a better place after the process is over?

Sure, I have analyzed these situations and come up with logical facts and I see how my thinking can be skewed. Intellectually I have come to some positive conclusions. Am I feeling better? I still have to work on convincing myself for some reason. Why do feelings trump logic? Something is wrong with that.

Last night I had a dream kind of experience, you know when you are not really asleep and not really awake? I had an image of a movie projector in my head, and the film was going around and around and around. And then a really big scissor appeared and cut the film. It immediately stopped going around. That film is the thoughts in my head, and the scissor is the tool I need to make them stop.

Update on Mr. IRS Seal (and thank you, Lissy, for providing him with that moniker, hopefully I won’t accidentally call him Mr. IRS Seal, or I will be very embarrassed!) I emailed him back and faked the whole professional I know what I’m doing thing and said I’d be happy to meet with him. He sent me back an email saying his week might be very busy, but he won’t know until Monday, and he went into more detail about the types of services he provides. I emailed him back saying he could just email me next week and we can schedule something. It seems kind of nebulous right now, which is fine.

I’m so glad email was invented. I hate talking on the phone and if I had to call him, I probably never would have. Apparently Ray Tomlinson invented email in 1971, so thank you Ray.

Today was my 10 mile run. I didn’t write about it this week because I’m sure you are all sick of hearing about it! I had originally thought it was supposed to be two weeks ago, but I looked at the schedule wrong. Then last week the run was canceled, and as our coach explained today it wasn’t necessarily because of the cold but the trail was covered with ice and snow from a brief snow we had last Friday, and it’s been so cold that it didn’t melt off. So today was the day. I had to get up at 5:30am because our run was at 7am and it takes me 45 minutes to get there. Yes, I drive 45 minutes to run, but it’s just once a week. And it’s a great place to run with great people so it’s worth it. I don’t think I could run these long distances alone.

So I woke up at 5am because I couldn’t sleep, and actually I also woke up at 4am, and I think I woke up at 1am too, but I could be confusing that with another night. It was a really nice morning and we got to see the sun rise over the river. There were 5 of us in my pace group and we talked the whole way which made the time and distance go pretty easily. Now I’m officially in the double digit club.

One of the women in my group today is training for an Ironman Triathlon, and she told me about a local sprint triathlon that has a swim portion that is only 250 meters and it’s in a pool. Then the 12 mile bike, and 5K run. I think I can do 250 meters, and being in a pool is much better than the ocean or a lake. Although last year the pool temperature was 68 degrees on the day of the race. Yikes!

I don’t know, it’s something to think about. It’s on Mother’s Day, three days after my birthday. I don’t want to plan that far ahead. I’ll be moving up to the next age group – and they write your age on the back of your calf. That’s kind of ego deflating, especially when the 65 or 70 year olds pass you. A pipe dream I guess.

My running club is planning a duathlon which is run – bike – run. That sounds more doable, but they haven’t figured out distances yet. For now I’m just thinking about my race in April, and then we’ll see.

I noticed in my bucket list update yesterday that for the items I completed I considered them “complete”, but for the items I did not complete I considered them “failures”. Poor choice of words, but typical of me. So I need to change “complete” to “success” or change “failure” to “incomplete”. And maybe I’ll change #1 to unsure, thanks to your comments.

I went to see my new client yesterday. I met with her and her husband, and they are both very nice, and intelligent, and just overwhelmed with stuff they don’t have time or energy to do. I felt badly for her, as she had told me she is suffering from depression. She is actually a lawyer, but hasn’t been able to work for a long time due to her mental health issues. Her emotions were really close to the surface, and she started to cry a few times as we talked. Her husband runs, so we talked about that too. She asked me if she could put my info out on an email list that she is on for moms in her neighborhood (it’s a big neighborhood – they live in the city), and I said sure.

Within a couple of hours I got an email from a financial planner/accountant saying that he saw her post. He was wondering if he could meet with me to talk about referring clients to me so that I can work in conjunction with him in helping them get organized prior to them meeting with him, because he just handles the financial planning aspect, and people frequently can’t get their information together and therefore can’t take advantage of his services, or he can’t help them because they don’t have the correct information.

I haven’t responded to him yet. This guy is a real professional, with a real business. His email has the official IRS disclosure and confidentiality stuff that people in his profession use, he has a whole bunch of letters after his name, and he seems to think that I am some kind of professional as well – that I might actually know what I am doing. I hate when this happens. I hate not having confidence. I’m avoiding answering him, because I don’t know what to say. My choices are:

Tell him I don’t have time in my schedule to meet with new people, although he’ll know that is not true because he saw the post on the email list

Avoid answering at all

Meet with him and fake the fact that maybe I have no idea what I’m doing, which actually is what I usually end up doing, but it causes a lot of anxiety

I also got another email from someone asking about my services. This one I know I can handle, it’s a woman whose paperwork is in disarray, and she has a small business. I checked out her website, she is belly dancer, but her business is as a Certified Wellness and Sensual Lifestyle Coach. I’ve never heard of that before, but it sounds pretty interesting. I’ll definitely get back to her, dealing with papers in bags and boxes is the kind of stuff I can do.

About the wellbutrin. I really don’t think it’s doing anything, except causing the head buzzing and sleep problems. I woke up the other night at 1am because my head was buzzing so loudly, and I couldn’t get back to sleep. I had the goal of continuing the meds until the end of January, then I’ll re-evaluate. I really wish it was doing something for me, but judging by my emotions lately I don’t think it is.

Happy first day of 2010 everyone. I hope you all had a pleasant New Year’s Eve. My husband and I went out to dinner and then we went to our friends’ house in the neighborhood. There were a few couples there and we drank (a lot) and had dessert and watched the ball drop on TV. I had a bit too much to drink, and didn’t feel well today. Luckily I had no plans for the day.

To update the therapy recap, yesterday I thought of another thing J and I talked about on Tuesday. He asked if I had an alarm system, and I said that I used to have one, but one night the alarm went off in the middle of the night and my husband ran downstairs to see what was wrong. After that I told him that it’s pointless to have an alarm system if he is going to go down and get shot. J said he doesn’t have an alarm system either, and he said I live in a safe neighborhood, I lock the doors, and I have a dog.

I have no idea why we had this conversation.

Yesterday I went to work for a client I’ve only had for a couple of months. In case you don’t know I work as a professional organizer/administrative assistant for people who own their own businesses and need help. I don’t do residential organizing. My new client found me through an organizing referral website that I joined a while ago. Most, actually all, of the calls I’ve gotten through this website have been people looking for residential organizing, which I specifically said I don’t do, but they call anyway. I got the impression that some of them were hoarders, and I don’t feel comfortable working with hoarders because I think they need professional therapeutic help rather than an organizer, and I don’t feel comfortable taking money to organize stuff they can’t get rid of.

So a couple of months ago I got an email with a referral from a woman who is about 45 minutes away from me, and it said she is a psychotherapist needing help with organizing her business. The email said to call her after 8PM. At about 4PM I got a call from her. I figured she was another dead end lead, but when I was talking to her I felt a connection. We talked briefly about her needs and set up an appointment to meet at a diner. I don’t normally like to travel that far for clients, but like I said I felt a connection. When we met and had coffee I definitely felt a bond with her. She said she was interviewing a few organizers, and wanted references and asked about a background check – all very understandable requests. I gave her three references. A couple of days later she emailed me and said she wanted to hire me, that she didn’t interview anyone else, but she felt comfortable with me. We set up a time for me to visit her at home. When I got there I asked if she had talked to my references and she said she hadn’t. I asked if she lost the paper that she had written their phone numbers on, and she said, “How did you know?” The first day that I was there she said she felt comfortable enough with me that she would trust me to be in her home alone, and she gave me a key.

I emailed her with the information on my references, and a few days later she told me that she got gushing reviews by email from them. They apparently raved about me, both as a person and as an organizer/assistant. I said, “Oh well they are very nice people” and she replied, “I don’t think you give yourself enough credit.”

As we worked together over these last few weeks I grew to like her more and more. We talked a bit, but mostly surface stuff. Of course I know more about her than she knows about me because I am working with all of her stuff. She tells me a bit about her life as a therapist, and I ask questions, without being too obvious because I haven’t told her that I am in therapy. Anything that has to do with her clients is off limits to me, which I respect. I work for another therapist, and she spills way too much information about her clients to me, which is particularly bad because we live in the same town and I know some of these people!

We were working together yesterday, going through three boxes of papers and files. I was there for 5 hours, and we took a half hour break to eat and have tea. At one point I asked her if she was familiar with the Myers Briggs test, which of course she is since she is a psychotherapist, and I asked her what type she is. I had a feeling she was similar to me, except I knew that she is a P and I am a J, and I didn’t really know her well enough to know if she is an I or an E. She asked me why I am interested (typical therapist comeback) and I said I was trying to figure out her type. She said she is an ENFP. I said, “I knew it! But I didn’t know if you are an I or and E.” I told her that I am an INFJ, and I recognized some similar characteristics in her, with a major exception being the P/J area.

During the day she said to me, “I really enjoy working with you, you are very easy to be with.” I thanked her and said I feel the same about her. Then I told her that from the first conversation I …. and I couldn’t say the right words. I actually said, “I knew you weren’t like some of the wacky people that have called me before” which isn’t what I wanted to say at all. I wanted to say, “I felt a connection to you, and I enjoy working with you, and I feel what you feel in regards to your environment and how you envision it.” I really need to improve my communication skills. I don’t normally make New Year’s Resolutions, but that could be a good one.

This morning on the Today Show, which I usually avoid because I don’t really understand the point of the show, was the woman from Connecticut who was attacked by a chimp and lost most of her face and both of her hands. This is a tragic story, and I googled this to learn some more. Apparently the attacked woman has been appearing on many shows lately, and at first I thought this was pure sensationalism, but I now think it’s a good thing.

I don’t believe in keeping wild animals in captivity. Dogs and cats, yes. They have been domesticated. There is no way my dog could live in the wild. She wouldn’t even survive a night in the backyard. But wild animals, no. I don’t go to zoos, have I mentioned that before? It was hard when my children were little. Everyone wanted to go to the zoo on playdates, but I don’t do zoos. The zoo in Washington DC makes me cry. Lions and tigers and bears (and elephants and walruses, etc) don’t belong in Washington DC. I have been to the Animal Kingdom in Disneyworld, and I’m somewhat conflicted about that. The animals seemed to have a lot of room to roam around, and were somewhat free and safe.

I don’t know about everyone else, but I had no idea that chimpanzees could be 200 pounds. After doing a bit of research I see that most don’t get bigger than 150 pounds. Perhaps living in captivity and eating human food has led to obesity of pet chimps, making them even more dangerous.

I don’t understand why someone would want to have a chimpanzee as a pet. Sure they look cute on tv. Sometimes they are dressed up and make that funny monkey noise and eat bananas. But they should not be pets.

Coincidentally, or not, Dr. Jane Goodall was on the Daily Show last Thursday. I have been a fan of hers since I worked at the National Geographic Society back in the 80’s. I admire her work, and now that I see her on TV I admire her even more because she doesn’t seem to think aging is an obstacle to her in any way. She did a chimp greeting ritual with Jon Stewart that was quite funny. But the aging thing is another story.

Dr. Goodall says in the wild chimps don’t bite off other creatures’ faces (not that they don’t get aggressive, she is not saying that). They don’t belong in peoples’ homes. I so admire Dr. Goodall, I would love to be like her. To be involved in important work that other people find educational and useful, to be respected, to work towards a peaceful co-existence between animals, people and the earth, to motivate people for change, and to be moderate, gentle, and graceful. I’m going to go to Amazon right now and buy her book to put on my kindle.

I have finally finished the huge PTA project that I have been procrastinating on. I feel like a weight has been lifted from my shoulders. I will never volunteer for anything like this again, never, never, never.

I haven’t written in a couple of days. I’m feeling really overwhelmed by the amount of work I have to do. I don’t know why I can’t do the “normal” amount of work that a person does. Maybe if I had a real 9 to 5 job where I go into an office and have structure I would, but the kind of work I do isn’t like that so I procrastinate like crazy. I also have HUGE project for the PTA that I didn’t want to do in the first place, but the president couldn’t find anyone else to do it and asked me to do it again since I did it last year. I am procrastinating on this so badly it’s ridiculous. I am now waking up in the middle of the night freaking out about all of things I need to do that I’m not doing.

I waste so much time on the internet, reading, cutting recipes out of magazines and organizing them, researching food and exercise routines, blah blah blah.

I’m also not happy because I have shin splints in my left leg, I went to the orthopedist Friday and got the news. I need to cut back on my running, he told me I should stop totally for a while. Of course the very next day I went out and ran 8 miles, and I’m still hurting from that. I need to start riding my bike more I guess.

I’m also worried about therapy. Tomorrow is my session and I’m anxious about what to talk about. I woke up at 6am today thinking about this. I don’t know what to talk about, and J will say, “What are we talking about today” and I won’t have anything to say. After a year I thought this would get easier, why isn’t it? And is therapy even helping me? Am I better? How will I know? I know that therapy makes me anxious, so if I didn’t have it in my life that anxiety would be gone. But is it worth it in order to get better? I thought it was, but if I’m not getting better what is the point?

Sorry for rambling and complaining……

So remember this collage? I had given it to J, and he talks about it a lot. He pulls it out of his filing cabinet every once in a while so we can talk about it. He once referred to it as “your beautiful collage.” This collage is actually a slide show, with music, etc. I like to make slideshows. I thought since he liked the collage so much he would appreciate the slideshow, so I put it on a DVD and sent it to him. I could have brought it to our next session, but I didn’t want to watch him watch it. I wanted to post the slideshow here, but I can’t figure out how to do it. And when I put it on youtube they stripped the music, since it’s copyrighted. Oh well.

So I never wrote about my last week of hotline training. The last night was last Thursday and we had a pizza party and watched a movie about cutting. The pizza was going to be an issue for me. I don’t eat pizza – I haven’t in a couple of years I think. I don’t think there is anything wrong with splurging every once in a while, but when you haven’t eaten that type of food in a long time it’s not a good idea to splurge on it during a training session with lots of people. Spending the whole session in the bathroom didn’t seem like a good way to end training.

It turns out that one of guys in the group is a vegan. I love this guy and I’m so lucky because he is going to be my shift partner on the hotline every other week. I went online and found a vegan/vegetarian pizza restaurant 10 minutes from my home. So I picked up pizza for him and me from this place. It was great because my pizza was basically whole wheat crust, veggies and a bit of feta cheese. Nothing greasy or tomato-y to upset my stomach. And no one seemed to think it was strange that he and I were eating our own food, actually they seemed kind of jealous!

Then there was the cutting movie. It was specifically about teens and cutting, and it wasn’t too bad for me to watch. It was kind of nice, to be honest, to hear professionals who know what they are talking about when dealing with cutting. The hard part for me was the discussion afterward. One of the new trainees said, “I get the impression from the movie that if a cutter calls the hotline we don’t call the police immediately?” I thought, “UGH!” Can you imagine, I’m sure some of you can if you SI, calling a hotline because you are thinking about self harm, and all of sudden the police show up? At least the trainers set him straight. And the label “cutter” bothers me as well. Not everyone who self harms cuts.

The discussion was bothering me, and I forced myself to zone out. I ripped off parts of my pizza box, and tore them into little pieces, and made little nonsense origami things out of them. It’s surprising how easy it is to tune everything out.

As for being on the hotline, I don’t feel triggered. I had my first shift Sunday morning, and I was all alone with the telephones for four hours. I felt pretty confident, and I feel like I helped a few people.

Today I had a wonderful surprise. A blogging friend, Ethereal Highway, wrote a post for me! What an incredibly kind, thoughtful person she is. I’ve been writing about how people think it’s odd, or unusual, or just downright weird, that anyone would want to be a crisis hotline volunteer and she wrote a post about her own experience with a hotline. Go check it out.