Harriet M. Welch

Yesterday when J asked me about when I feel worthwhile, I thought a bit and then said, “When I feel needed.” And I had been thinking about how I do feel needed right now, due to my son’s medical issues.

I thought if I was dead the following would not have happened:

1. No one would have told the doctor about A’s needle phobia and that any blood that had to be drawn would have to be done in one session, because it would be highly unlikely that he would do this more than once
2. No one would have asked the doctor if he could take some Xanax before the blood test
3. No one would have had any Xanax, or even would have known the proper dosage (well, I did need a little help with that)
4. No one would have thought to use the lidocaine cream
5. No one would have called the lab to see if they had anyone experienced in dealing with needle phobias and to see if it was ok to use the lidocaine cream and how to use it
6. No one would have called the doctor’s office to prescribe the lidocaine cream
7. No one would have known how to apply the cream, with the plastic wrap and the tape (the generic version doesn’t come with the handy plastic cover sheets with tape built right in)
8. No one would have asked the technician if she could do the blood test with my son lying down
9. No one would have known when to stop him from saying, “Wait, I’m not ready” and to take control and say, “You’ll never be ready. Take a deep breath and lay down.”

Was this helpful to him? I don’t know. Maybe he would have done the blood test just fine without those things. But I felt needed. And then you know what?

I felt guilty. My son is having medical problems, he feels like shit, and I am feeling good about myself because he needs me. How awful is that? It’s actually shameful.

And, frankly, maybe instead of helping him, I actually made the whole thing worse. By making such a big deal out of his anxiety maybe I was making him MORE anxious, instead of doing things to lessen his anxiety.

Maybe if I was dead, and my husband had to handle this, he would have just showed up at the lab, and sent my son in, and he would have had the same result in the end – two tubes of blood.

I just want to know why I can’t feel good about anything. What is it about me that makes me feel like I can’t like myself, that I can’t feel proud of myself, that I can’t feel like I’ve done something right?

If it had been someone else in my situation I would have praised them for being so empathetic and caring towards their child. But, here I am, concluding that I have made things worse. I really don’t understand the way my mind works, and why this happens.

Tags: guilt, shame, son

When I arrived I told J that it is was my daughter’s graduation day, so I guess he thought that meant that I wanted to talk about it. I let him talk for about 5 minutes then I told him I didn’t want to talk about it anymore. He asked about other graduation festivities coming up and how I was feeling about those and I didn’t want to talk about that, but I let him talk about it for about 5 minutes then I said I didn’t want to talk about that anymore.

He brought up how we have talking in previous weeks about how I feel in regard to others, and he mentioned the Mississippi people. So I used that opportunity to tell him that I went to the party and I brought the cake even though it was ugly. He said that was good. I told him that the reason I brought the ugly cake was because I didn’t want to disappoint him and make him think that I wasn’t benefiting from his work. He asked me if that was a healthy attitude. That the whole reason I went and brought the cake was so as not to disappoint either the people who invited me or him. He seemed to be trying to figure this out himself, so I just let him to do that. I told him that sure it would nice to get an invitation to something, say yes, and go, rather than agonize about it for a week or two, but I am not at that stage of development, and yet I went. He thought it was good, that despite my misgivings I went and I brought the ugly cake. I even said to him, “I thought you would think I did a good thing” because he was questioning my motivation. And then he said he did think it was good.

This went on for a while and I got that feeling that I always get when I want to be talking about something else but I don’t know how to start. So finally I just said, “There are some things I wanted to talk about. But I don’t know if I can.” And he said, “So what are we going to do?” Frankly I kind of wish he would be more helpful in getting me to talk about difficult things, but his attitude is, well if I can’t say it, then we just do nothing. I’m not sure what he can do, but isn’t that why he is trained?

So I told him that I wrote out scenarios of the three things I wanted to talk about and would he mind reading them. He read them, and I said that I believe that there is a common theme, and he asked me what that would be. I told him I thought it was shame, but maybe not. I asked what he thought. He said that he can’t tell me what I am feeling, but he didn’t sense shame in these stories. That they were three instances of me being minimized or made to feel badly about myself. I explained why I thought I felt shame in each of the situations.

He looked them over again a few times and did come to conclude that either “I feel bad about myself”, “I am not good enough”, or “I can’t do anything right.”

So he asked me some questions about those things and we talked a little about it, but didn’t really go into anything very deeply. It was somewhat unsatisfying.

He suggested family counseling for my husband, my son, and I and I said I didn’t think that would work because the two of them won’t talk. But I’m going to suggest it to my husband. He is probably tired of spending money on my son, we just got an $800 invoice from the transition counselor, on top of the $500 deposit we already paid him. $1300 for four meetings. And my husband is already angry at me because I spent too much money last month and we are having a graduation party for my daughter on Sunday which will cost a lot.

I think I may wait a couple of week before I mention it.

And then a weird thing happened. J said, “I watched Hoarders.” I said, “What?” Turns out he thought I had suggested he watch it, but I didn’t. He confused me with someone else. He said, “But you do watch something on A&E?” And I said, “No.” Rather than express my dismay that he mixed me up with another client, I started to talk about Hoarders, which I have watched once. I told him that I thought it was sad. He told me about the episode he watched on Saturday.

What I am left with after this session is not the important stuff we talked about, but the fact that he didn’t ask me if I went to the Mississippi party after we spent all of last session talking about whether or not I should go, and that he confused me with another client.

Then I told him I would not be here next Tuesday because I am taking my daughter to her college orientation. He didn’t offer to reschedule, but in the past I have never wanted to reschedule, so I can’t fault him for that. We only ever rescheduled once and that was because I was going to miss a session and he was going to miss one also and he didn’t want me to go three weeks between sessions. But I kind of wish he had asked me if I wanted to reschedule. And please don’t tell me that he is not a mind reader, I know this. I am not finding fault with him, I am finding fault with me.

Tags: cake, daughter, husband, shame, son, therapy

The cake didn’t come out very good. I don’t like the way it looks. The frosting isn’t fluffy enough, and therefore not thick enough. I’m so tempted to throw it away and either leave work and spend the day making a new one, or just not go. Or buy one at a bakery and lie and say I made it.

But I’m trying to accept that this cake is good enough. It’s hard because the cake has been built up to be this super extraordinary masterpiece due to all the talk of it on facebook. And they saw the pictures of the one I made for Mother’s Day, which looked really beautiful. This one looks somewhat sad.

I’m really trying. It would normally be impossible for me to show up at a party, especially with people I hardly know, with anything less than perfect. But I’m really trying to believe that it is good enough and that they don’t really care.

Tags: anxiety, cake, good enough

A couple of days ago I brought my prescriptions for klonopin and Xanax into Walgreens to have them filled. I told them that I did not want these submitted to insurance and she wrote “Cash” on the papers.

I had done this before, and it didn’t go well. They still submitted them to my insurance, however they discovered their mistake and unsubmitted them. However I had checked my insurance claims online and saw what they did. When I confronted them with this the pharmacist denied having sent it to my insurance. I told her that I saw it with my own eyes on the website, but she continued to deny it. I then called my insurance right in front of her, and they confirmed that yes the pharmacy had sent it in, but then unsubmitted. She couldn’t deny it anymore and told me that they had made an error, realized it and then unsubmitted. Why she couldn’t admit that in the beginning is a mystery.

Today I checked my claims online and I see that once again they have submitted these two prescriptions to my insurance company. I don’t know why I am such a stupid person. Why would I think there would be a different ending to this situation when this exact thing has happened before?

In the future I will be taking my prescriptions to a different pharmacy; I will not give them any insurance information so that they can’t submit it at all.

And in case you are wondering why I don’t want these submitted to my insurance company, it is because first of all they are incredibly cheap meds – less than $15 each for a month’s supply (which is probably why people get addicted to benzos), and I don’t want anything on my records that I take these meds.

I can’t believe how stupid I am, I always surprise myself, don’t I?

Tags: medication

Do you know what I am going to do in Mississippi? No one will know me. I can be whoever I want.

I am not bringing any makeup. Not even mascara. I am not bringing any hair products (yes, I will bring shampoo and conditioner, and a comb and brush, but no uv protection spray, no curl serum, no shine serum, no straightening serum….)

I will wear my buffs and baseball caps and have a ponytail every day.

The clothing regulations say “pants/shorts must not be tight fitting. Any form of clothing that is tight fitting is not allowed.” I don’t even know what that means! I tend to wear somewhat form fitting clothing because it makes me look less fat. Are my clothes tight? I don’t even know.

I have some jean shorts that are from 10 pounds ago, they are definitely not tight. I’ll bring those. I have a pair of khaki shorts that don’t seem tight. My jeans are somewhat tight, but they are all I have. If anyone says anything about them I can run out to Walmart (ack!) and buy some bigger jeans.

So I’ll be a makeup-less, ponytailed, baggy clothing chick for a week. Sounds comfortable, low maintenance and different. But it sounds scary. I’m almost 50 and I need to make myself look the best I can look! It’s hard to change that. I don’t want to be one of those slovenly matronly women who have “let themselves go.”

But no one knows me there, and I’ll probably never see them again. So it’s ok. I hope.

Tags: body image, self esteem, weight

I decided to be a big girl and write back to my T about why he didn’t respond to my email. The new guy I’m working for gets and sends TONS of emails. When he sends an email to someone and they don’t respond he sends another one saying something like, “Hey, I sent you an email and you didn’t respond. What’s up?” He doesn’t obsess about whether he might have said something that hurt their feelings, or maybe they are angry at him, and he doesn’t apologize for something that he probably didn’t even do. So I took a page from his book and wrote J asking why he didn’t respond. Of course, I did do the whole apologizing routine, I’m sorry if I said something that might have been out of line, of course whatever happened is my fault, etc.

He wrote me back saying that he did respond to my email, in his head. Too bad I’m not a mind reader. He apologized and said that I was glad that I sent a follow up email. And he said that my verbal expression perhaps does not always convey my feelings and anxiety about being misunderstood gets in the way of expressing myself directly and I allow people to not get what I’m saying because of worry about offending them. Him included. And he said he wasn’t blaming me, that miscommunication goes two ways, but self-criticism and worry get in my way.

As for the other email I was supposed to send, telling one of the women I work for that I didn’t have time to work for her this week. Well! Not only did I NOT send her an email saying I didn’t have time to work, I DID send her an email telling her I do have time to work. I’ll be going over there this afternoon for a couple of hours.

After I sent the email I felt a somewhat huge weight being lifted off of my shoulders. On the other hand, I now have to work on a Saturday afternoon when I have other things to do. I’m thinking it’s all J’s fault that I couldn’t send the email that I intended to send. We had talked about this for at least 10 or 15 minutes last week, and I thought I finally got him to understand why I was having difficulty with this. But then when I was leaving he asked if I would like to send him the email to look at. I asked if he would send it on to her, and he said he couldn’t do that. Of course. But how will him looking at the email help me? I thought I had clarified for him that the problem wasn’t writing the email, it was sending the email. So his comment negated that whole discussion and left me feeling misunderstood. Therefore to spite him, I didn’t send the email that we discussed. So there. Of course, I just screwed myself and not him.

I also had another insight. Perhaps I don’t want to say no to people who ask me to help them because if I do say no they might find someone else to help them, and then it will be apparent to me that I am not invaluable to these people. I think I have a strong need to feel wanted and needed and like I am doing something of value, and if they can just find someone else, or if they can just check Google instead of asking me, well, where does that leave me? Just a nobody. I think that is black and white thinking – I’m either invaluable or I’m a nobody. I should find a way to be comfortable with being somewhere in the middle.

Tags: communication, email, misunderstood

What am I thinking about? More and more, as things with the job settle down. My boss was out of town all week, so I was more flexible about when I could work and I could do more from home. Still a lot of work, and also working for the old clients, but at least I wasn’t so structured with time constraints. He’s coming back today, and then leaving again Wednesday for a few days, so it should be a fairly peaceful week. At least I’m getting more time to run.

My mother left me a voice mail yesterday morning and I haven’t called her back. I can’t deal with her right now, I’m mothered out. I feel bad complaining about my mother, because she is really a good person and we’ve always had a good relationship despite her difficult personality, and despite my issues, which I’m sure she would also describe as a difficult personality. I know plenty of people whose mothers have passed away, or who have mothers who abused them as children, and I am lucky to have my mother in my life. So I complain, but I do feel bad about it.

And of course I’ve been thinking about therapy, and what issues to deal with, and the fact that I am growing resentful of therapy and of J. It just seems like I bring up important issues, well they seem important to me, and they never get resolved, or they get put on the back burner, or ignored. And it is hard for me to resurrect things that I believe J feels are boring, or unimportant, because of my lack of assertiveness and low self-esteem. And now it seems like there is the proverbial “elephant in the room” which is the horrible place I was in just last month, when I was truly suicidal, and hating myself, and wanting to drive into trees, and take overdoses of prescription medicine that I continue to hoard. Is this a topic not worth talking about? How is it possible to just move on?

And have I really moved on, or am I just currently distracted? I feel like I am teetering on the edge here, and it would be so easy to slip back into that place. I mean, I just got a job, and that is good, but it certainly isn’t going to save me from all of my deep seated problems. And I still find myself distrustful of J after the blog incident, which was also never resolved (my fault though, not his). I tend to hang onto things, and I can’t move on. I just don’t know.

Tags: mother, trust, work

Thank you everyone for your input regarding Parrot T. One thing I forgot to mention is the life sized stuffed gorilla sitting in a chair in her waiting room. How could I forget that? And there is a sign around his/her neck saying “I Give Hugs.” OK, that is just creepy.

I think what I’ve decided is that everything that J is too much of, Parrot T is not enough of. There has a be happy medium, and if I am going with the extremes I’d rather stay with J. But I haven’t reached a definitive conclusion yet. Maybe I’ll talk to J about it next week.

I started my job today. Took the IQ test. See if you know the answer to this:

Ten people are at a meeting and at the end of the meeting everyone shakes hands. How many handshakes are there?

And do you know what philology means? I didn’t! I do now though.

I worked from 8:30 until 2 for R. Then went and got lunch (he lives in a great nearby city with lots of cool places to eat and shop). Then went over to the college consultant and got in an hour’s worth of work before her student showed up. Then did errands, picked up food for my son, and got home at 6:30PM. Yikes, is this what it is like to work? It takes all day! And I have work to do at home too.

So I mentioned the pressure I am feeling about the new job. R seems to think I am perfect, even though he knows intellectually that it is not so. But he keeps praising me for my questions, my answers to his questions, things I write, etc. We spent a good amount of time together this morning and he is very easy to be with and easy to work with. The other day in an email to me he said, “you have a very gentle and personable persona.” He offered to send a personal letter from me to an organization that he is on the executive board of; I had a complaint about this organization in regard to my daughter. I wrote the letter, sent it to him, and he told me, “Wow! Letters like this are not easy to write. Too often they end up as rants, and lose their effectiveness. I believe you have struck exactly the correct balance between personal motivation, irritation and constructive input. Very well done.”

Today he called the college consultant, I had given him her phone number as a reference. He asked her a question something like after she had known me for 9 months what was it about me that she discovered was a negative, or something she didn’t like. She said she still hasn’t discovered any negatives about me after three years!

I’m not saying this to brag, although it sounds like I am so I’m sorry about that. I just am feeling my perfectionist tendencies starting to get out of control, my fear of being “found out” and what will happen when people find out I’m a fraud?

I was thinking that of course I have faults. But my faults usually don’t affect the people for whom I work, as a matter of fact they are an asset to my clients and employers. These faults that are positives on the outside and make me seem competent and perfect are the ones that cause me all of this internal angst. That’s an insight, isn’t it?

Tags: parrot, perfection, work

So I’m sure you are all anxiously awaiting my recap of my session with Parrot T.  Not!  If anyone is interested here you go.

Her office is in her home.  I got there a few minutes early and she had told me to park behind her in the driveway, due to the snow in the street, however there was another car in the driveway.  I was a little early, so I drove around the neighborhood.  I got back at 11:58am (my appointment was at noon) and the car was still in the driveway, so I parked in the street.  The snow was fairly well cleared away anyway.  I went to her door and she said to push the buzzer, which I did, and then the door buzzed and I went in.  There was a little waiting room with a couch, chairs, tv, books, radio, etc.  I heard a very loud noise, like a cartoon on a tv, or even children talking really loudly.  I thought maybe her children were home from school or something.

Then she comes into the waiting room with the parrot.  The parrot was screaming, “Good bye, goodbye, goodbye, goodbye…”  She said, “Hi, I’m D.  This is Guinevere.  I’ll be with you in a minute, make yourself at home.”  She left, with Guinevere.  I sat and looked around.  There was a little fountain, and an electronic yahtzee game, and a little tray of sand with a little rake and some rocks in it.  There was also a parrot stand with a colorful strand of beads hanging on it.  The furniture was mostly plain, it was comfy though.

Then another woman came into the waiting room, I guess the previous patient.  It was a little past noon by now.  (Hmm, not very strict with boundaries?  Could be an issue for me.)  She said Hi and and I said Hi, and she left.  Then D came back out to get me, showed me where the restroom is, and led me into her office.  She told me which chair to sit in.  Her office is small, and she has a desk that was messy.  Her computer still has Windows XP.  There was another parrot stand with more colorful beads on it.  She said she had to call my insurance company and she could do that while I filled out paperwork, but when I told her what the insurance company told me when I called she said it doesn’t sound like she will need to call after all since I had all of the information.  She was looking for papers on her desk, and it was messy and she couldn’t find them.  She shuffled around for a while, then got the papers and put them on a clipboard and gave them to me to fill out.  She sat and watched me while I did that.

Then I got to ask her my questions, which she answered happily and easily.  She doesn’t do email, but doesn’t mind me bringing in things to read, collages, slideshows, etc.  She said she is quite happy to have other methods of communication like that.  She is 62 years old, and she said, “I bet you didn’t think so,” and she was right, she looked younger.  As for her look, well, it’s nothing like J.  She is a bit overweight, and her clothes are the baggy, flowy kind of look that older heavier women sometimes get into.  She had on a pretty necklace.  I didn’t like her shoes, they were somewhat orthopedic looking.  The clothes were like those loose things from Chico’s.  She has huge boobs, but not in a good way.  She could have used a consultation in a lingerie shop, better undergarments would be an asset for her.

After I asked her my questions I handed her my list of issues.  I left off a few of the biggies off though – cutting, suicidal ideation – and she read it.  She asked me for a brief history of myself, which I gave her.  Purely facts, places, people, etc.  She focused on my anxiety, I guess because it was towards the top of the list, and asked me how it affects me.  I kept getting teary eyed, which is unusual for me because when I’m with J I never feel any emotion.  I talked about my  anxiety history a bit, and then said I don’t think that is my biggest issue.  She asked me what I thought my biggest is, and, again getting teary, I told her that I don’t like myself, I have low self esteem, I don’t think I’m good at anything, not a good wife, mother, friend, etc.

Then she said that the way I just described myself is not how she sees me at all.  She said I come across as very “put together”, and “confident”.  I said I don’t think I am that way at all.  And she again repeated that is what she sees, except she noticed that my hands were a bit shaky.  Hmmm.

We talked a little about my son and how I feel that I made so many mistakes and that is why he is where he is.  She said it can’t be all my fault, I have a husband and my son has some influence on himself.  Well, I said that is what I think.  We talked about faulty beliefs, and my previous experience with therapy for anxiety, and my son’s anxiety and his experience with therapy.  I told her about my new job and how I think my new boss will find out I’m a fraud, and how I’m worried that people will always find out the true me and not like me.  We talked about a lot actually.

I had intrusive thoughts on the list and she asked me to tell her a little about that, but I said I didn’t really want to and she said that was fine.

She asked me what I do when I’m anxious and I told her about breathing, and relaxation and thought stopping and mindfulness.  She told me about someone she works with on her own personal growth and the things she has learned from him.   She asked if I’d heard of grounding exercises and I said I had.  She wanted to know if I would do one and I asked her what it entailed.  She explained it to me, and we tried it.  I had to close my eyes, although she said I could keep them open if I wanted to.  She did it with me and I peeked at one point and she had her eyes closed.  It was all about feet, and feeling them, and them being on the floor and then roots coming out of them into the earth.  I tried to concentrate, but my mind kept wandering.  It was somewhat relaxing though.  I kept tearing up and had to wipe tears away at one point.  When we were done I actually used one of her tissues.  I would never use J’s tissues.

She told me about when she was doing her dissertation and she had to get up and speak in front of a lot of professors and she was very nervous.  She went into the rest room first and did grounding exercises, and she wrote on her note cards “G” to remind herself to ground herself while she was speaking.  She said these grounding exercises have made her more self confident.  I guess if you are relaxed enough to speak in public it does wonders for your self confidence?

Then it got to be time to go, and I asked her how she works her payment.  She says I would pay her every week (J always bills me at the end of the month which is nice – no money stuff going on during session) so I wrote her a check.  She asked me about next week and I told her that I had to see J, we haven’t had a goodbye session.  Then I said, “Actually I have some decisions to make.”  She wanted to know when I would get back to her and I asked her if I could call her Thursday morning.  She seemed hesitant, but said it would be ok.  I said if anyone wants the time slot next Tuesday not to hold it for me if that was going to be a problem.  Then she suddenly changed gears and said I should meet with J before I made a decision about whether or not to see her anymore.  I said that wouldn’t be until next week, and she said that would be fine.  She said she is hoping that I decide to work with her because she enjoys starting with new people and getting to know someone new, or something like that.

I told her that I have problems with the phone, but I would call her and let her know either way.  Then I left and the parrot was in another room saying really loudly, “Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye, goodbye….”

It was so weird.

She is very nice, kind of bland, nothing about her is my style at all, but that really isn’t a problem.  She said she works exclusively with adults, mostly individual therapy but some couples, and she doesn’t work with severely mentally ill people anymore, although she used to when she was younger.  She doesn’t have any children, I didn’t ask if she is married.

I just kept thinking that she isn’t J.  Which is true, she isn’t him.  But I actually felt emotion in her office, and I didn’t feel the need to look and dress perfectly for her like I do with J, since he always looks and dresses perfectly.  I had no idea what she would look like or how she would be dressed or how old she was before I went, but I just didn’t feel the anxiety.  That was kind of nice.

But as I drove around afterwards I was thinking how great it is that I got this new job so that I can afford to continue seeing J.  I just don’t know.  How does one make a choice between two things that are so totally different?

And I have more to say about my new boss, but I’ll leave that for tomorrow.  I’m starting to feel so much pressure, he thinks I’m perfect or something.  Argh….

Tags: anxiety, intrusive thoughts, parrot, self esteem, son

On Friday, before the snow started, I sent J an email with my homework assignment. I was supposed to figure out what a parent’s responsibility is for their adult child. Basically what I said in the email was that I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to write about parents in general, or me specifically. If it was about me specifically, then I feel a lot of responsibility towards my son because of the things I didn’t do properly during his childhood. I gave him a link to a post on my blog where I wrote about my son and the difficulties he had academically, and what I tried to do for him, and how I ended up messing things up pretty badly. I also told him that he was welcome to read other posts on my blog about my son, but he didn’t have to if he didn’t want to.

Then I told him that thinking about this has brought up old bad feelings that I don’t want to deal with. I would rather focus on the problem. And don’t I have responsibilities for my daughter, my family, and myself? I told him that I just wanted to solve the problem without it being about me.

And I told him my son’s name.

And then I mentioned the insurance company difficulties, and how I am concerned that I had to lie to the insurance customer service woman, and now I am concerned that they will find out that I lied because of whatever paperwork J has to send in to them with my claims. And that was about it.

I wasn’t really expecting a reply, since I didn’t ask him anything, and this was just an assignment that he asked me to email to him, and the last time I emailed him he didn’t reply. I’m glad he didn’t send me back an email because I had enough to deal with over the weekend with the weather situation.

But this morning I did get an email from him saying that I bring up some good points and that this assignment was a prelude to coming up with a plan for my son. He said he would be happy to develop a plan but whatever he suggests would be just that – a suggestion, but he wanted to conceptualize my role first.

I felt really stupid once again when I read the email, and I was even more happy that he didn’t send it to me last week, because I would have been thinking about it all weekend and thinking about how I suck at therapy and here I am messing things up again. Of course he had a plan, why would I think he didn’t have a plan? And here I am saying I don’t want this to be about me, I just want suggestions for dealing with the problem and I don’t want to think about my feelings and all he was asking was for me to conceptualize my role in order to be able to make a plan.

And then he addressed the insurance issue – he said that he can handle it with minimal disclosure and he can show me what he submits to them. I don’t understand this at all, I really asked him if I could just pay him, and not deal with the insurance company at all. Why would he be opposed to that – maybe he thinks I don’t have the money to pay him and he’s afraid my check will bounce or something.

He didn’t say whether he read the blog post that I sent him the link for.

This morning I was talking to my husband about how I am “sharing” my friend’s personal trainer. We signed up for 12 sessions – which is 6 weeks – and he asked how much it was costing. I told him it was $55 per session, but it is a onetime thing, I’m only doing the 12 sessions and that is it. He said, “$100 a week???” OK, I guess that is a lot of money, but he has a gym membership that is $100 a month. Yes, that is $300 a month cheaper, but he has been going for a couple of years and I only want to do this for 12 sessions. After that I can do the workout on my own, or with my friend.

This afternoon, right after I got the email from J, my husband finally got around to asking how my workout went this morning, which I was surprised about since he never asks me how anything goes in my life. I told him that I had to pay the trainer the full amount in advance, so could he put $600 in my account. He got really pissed off and scowled and finally mumbled, “Fine.” Then I felt like a real piece of shit. Here I am using my family’s money to work out with a personal trainer 12 times, a real luxury, and how dare I do that? He plays golf all summer, which is expensive, and belongs to a gym, and my daughter has her own horse that we pay for board and lessons and horse shows, etc etc. And I want to spend $600 on a trainer and he gets pissed off. Just thinking about it is making me upset. I hate having to ask him for money.

I really want a new job. I’ve been answering job ads on Craig’s List, but no one ever gets back to me. I guess I have no marketable skills that anyone wants, and I have no way to make any money. The people that I normally work for haven’t been calling me because their workloads have dwindled lately, and they don’t want to spend the money on me. Or maybe they just don’t like me, who knows.

I just really feel like a worthless piece of garbage right now. And I have gained 5 pounds recently. It seems every day when I step on the scale there is another pound. I’m not sure if it is due to stopping the wellbutrin, or maybe I’m drinking more. I do keep track of all of my calories, but maybe I’ve been cheating too much. I really need to get my act together. I even bought some diet pills, but they don’t seem to do a thing. I certainly don’t feel any different or eat any less when I’m taking them. That was a waste.

This evening I got an email from the trainer asking, “How was today?” That was all he asked, and I started to read all kinds of things into it: He doesn’t want to work with me, he thinks I’m lazy, I complain too much, I’m not strong enough, I’m too fat, I’m too weak. I emailed him back asking, “I thought it was fine. Did you think it was ok? Did I complain too much?” He replied that I did fine and he wanted to be sure he was addressing my needs. Now I’m wondering what he really means, when maybe what he really means is what he really said. My mind is just totally spiraling out of control at this point.

Tomorrow is therapy and I get to go in there and feel like an idiot again. Isn’t therapy supposed to make me feel better about myself? When does that start happening?

Tags: blog, daughter, email, exercise, feelings, insurance, money, negative thoughts, son, weight, wellbutrin, work