Harriet M. Welch

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?

My dad died 12 years ago today. On the one hand it seems like just yesterday, on the other hand it seems so long ago. I’m so grateful to have had a wonderful father, because I know that there are many out there who are not so lucky. My father had a terrible childhood, and he wouldn’t talk about it. But rather than grow up repeating what happened to him as a child he seemed to take the opposite approach. My sister and I also suspect that he had Asperger’s syndrome, as my sister’s son does. He was a kind, gentle soul, we called him a “likable guy”. Everyone liked him, and I did too. You know how there are guys who everyone loves except their wife and kids? They put on fake front to the world, but at home are horrible people? Not my dad! He was likable everywhere to everyone. It really sucks that he was ill his whole life, and ultimately had to quit working at age 53. He was sick for the next 8 years, and then passed away. It was really awful, and no one as likable as him deserves such a death. I wouldn’t even wish such a death on anyone unlikable.

Moving on to the here and now, something my shrink, J, said on Tuesday is that I tend to take other people’s comments and opinions as true endorsements of myself. This is true. I believe the reason that this is, is because I cannot trust my own feelings about myself and what I perceive in others. I am too sensitive, and because of this it makes me wonder if my feelings are justified. So if someone tells me something, or makes a remark about something I do or say, I take it to heart. They must be right, because my feelings are unreliable indicators due to my sensitivity. I think this is a realistic attitude.

J himself does this. For example, one day I was telling him about something troubling that I was dealing with, and he said, “Sounds like just anxiety to me.” That made me feel minimized, like what I was frightened of wasn’t worth being frightened of. It’s just anxiety. So I am giving his remark more weight than my feeling of fear. I now feel minimized, and confused, and not sure why I was so frightened if it’s such a minor thing. Then my reaction is to withdraw. Well, I must be wrong, so why bother even continuing with this conversation, or continuing to try to explain my feelings? He has already made his judgment, and it must be correct, because my feelings are so unreliable. Add to that my insecurity about my idea of self-worth, and forget it, I can’t even go on. He is so much smarter than me, so much better adjusted than me, so much more objective than me, that he must be right.

So my feelings take a waaaaay back seat. I’m not sure if this is good or bad, I don’t even know what to think. I’m not even sure if I am making any sense. Time for another glass of wine, I think.

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.

So boys and girls we have a winner!  Ding ding ding ding ding…..

The winner is Ron.  I’m sorry that I do not have a prize for you, Ron.  Although you did choose the correct number, the context was a little off.  You said that you thought my therapist might want to discuss whether or not it is worth it to continue in therapy.  I had written to him that when he asked me that question I immediately thought that he didn’t think it was worth it, but I realized that these were my thoughts, not his, which for me is progress.  However in his email response to me he said that he wants to discuss my thoughts about his feelings towards me.  He thinks “we should try to keep those dynamics closer to the surface; to have more awareness of those dynamics as they occur.”

I’m curious as to why, of all of the nine items, this jumped out at him, especially considering that I did have awareness of those dynamics at the time that they occurred.  I thought I did pretty well with this, unlike the other eight things.  I guess I won’t know unless I ask him.

I’ve been feeling down, and I’m not sure why.  I’ve been cutting, not sure if I should write about that here, but it’s my blog, so I guess I can.  It makes me feel better. When I run along the river I stop and watch the water swirling around, there are parts that are somewhat rough and even a sign that says, “Danger.  An average of 7 people drown in this area every year.”  I wonder if any of them drown on purpose.  The water must be very cold, I would think it wouldn’t take long to drown.  I don’t like the idea of drowning, especially since watching my father die from congestive heart failure, which is basically drowning in your own body.

And I think about my meds stash a lot too.  It sounds so nice to just be able to take a bunch of pills, fall asleep, and die.  However, I know it doesn’t work that way.  I’m sure what would really happen is I would get really sick, and throw up a lot, and maybe even have to go to the hospital, and I would never want that to happen.  But I do think about the pills a lot.

Maybe I haven’t been keeping busy enough, I haven’t worked very many hours this week.  Although I’m not motivated to keep busy, so I’m not sure which came first.  Mr. IRS Seal emailed me yesterday, I thought he forgot about me, which would have been a good thing.  But he didn’t.  He wants to meet me next Wednesday.  Oh well, what’s the worst that can happen?  He’ll see I’m stupid and don’t know what I’m doing and that will be it.

Yesterday I was making pancakes. I was flipping the first pancake and it slipped off of the spatula and flipped over the edge of the pan so that pancake batter was spilling off the pan onto the cooktop. Just a bit of batter, not very much at all. My thought immediately was, “Oh – my – God – I – am – such – an – idiot.” My next thought was, “If this was my daughter or my husband or a friend flipping pancakes and they did that, would I say to them ‘You are such an idiot’” Of course not! I might make a sarcastic remark like, “Good job!” said in a loving way. I should practice saying things like that to myself. Why do I treat myself like shit?

People liked me better when I was fat. Maybe I was more accessible. I know I was more likeable, more fun, easier to be with. That could also be because I was on anti-depressants.

Once a month I meet with friends that I used to work with when I taught nursery school. We meet for dinner at a Chinese restaurant. Last spring I stopped eating Chinese food, because every time I ate it I would gain about 3 pounds. So I stopped having dinner with them. But last month I decided I could go and have steamed brown rice and steamed chicken and snow peas and it would be fine. Other women in the group get their own meals, not everyone shares and no one ever has a problem with it. So at our dinner I said I wasn’t going to share that night, I was going to order my own food. One of the women said, “What, are you too skinny to share?” I thought that was awfully rude, but I didn’t let it hurt my feelings (yay, that’s an accomplishment!) Eighty percent of the women in this group are thin, and the others aren’t fat, they could stand to lose 10 or 20 pounds, but they are perfectly fine the way they are. I don’t know why anyone is picking on me, I guess it’s because I’ve changed. I used to be a sharer and now I’ve gone solo.

Other ways I’ve changed because of my eating:

I don’t like to go out to eat
I don’t spend as much time with friends because I don’t like to go out to eat
I obsess about food a lot which reduces time in the day for fun, and makes me uptight
I obsess about exercising, which does the same thing

Or maybe I haven’t changed because of my eating, maybe I’ve changed because I went off of the wellbutrin. No, I don’t think so, because this eating stuff started to happen while I was still on the wellbutrin.

Or maybe people just like overweight people because they aren’t threatening? I don’t think I’m threatening, but people who are thinner than me are threatening to me. (I know that’s ridiculous, but I try to be honest here.)

Yesterday I ran in a race. It was a 5K and my goal was to run it in under 30 minutes, but over the last couple weeks I was thinking I would just run it for fun, since I developed shin splints. I’ve really been taking care of my injury, cutting back on frequency of runs and duration of runs, icing, stretching, exercises, physical therapy. I didn’t want to push too hard and make this worse because I have a 10K I’m running on November 1st.

But this week I was feeling pretty good and when I got to the race I decided I would go for it. Maybe I was deluding myself about forgetting about my goal, I’m way too competitive for that. So I tried to run the race in under 30, but the first mile really screwed me up. There were 2700 people running and I lined up too far to the back of the pack. I had a hard time getting around people for the first mile, and I finished in 10:14, which I knew was a setback. I ran the next two miles much faster, but it wasn’t enough, I finished in 30:16. I did cut 2 minutes off of my 5K time, which isn’t too shabby, but I was disappointed about the 17 seconds. I know it’s not a big deal in the larger picture, but it is what it is. (I know that a 30 minute 5K is no big deal for most people, but hey, I’m old and I’m slow!)

My husband said I did great and 17 seconds is no big deal. I finished 25th in my age group out of 117, and that’s a good thing! Then my mother called me in the afternoon to find out how I did in my “marathon.” She said it was broadcast on TV and she was looking for me, but didn’t see me. I explained to her that I was not running a marathon, but a 5K. I told her a 5K is only three miles. Her response, “Oh, well I guess you had no trouble with that.” Yeah, mom, no trouble at all. Sorry to disappoint you that I didn’t run the marathon. Then I saw that my sister posted on her facebook that I was running a marathon. Sheesh!

I’m reading a book in which the main character is an overeater. She loves cupcakes and sometimes buys 6 or 7 or them at once and eats them. I also love cupcakes, who doesn’t love cupcakes? They are cute and little and have a high ratio of frosting to cake. What’s not to love? So yesterday afternoon I was craving a cupcake. I went to the grocery store for some things and stopped at the cupcake section in the bakery. Yum, they looked good. You can’t buy one, you have to buy six. My kids love them and would have enjoyed them. But I thought, am I buying them for my kids, or to see if I can resist them if they are sitting on my kitchen counter. Am I doing this to punish myself for not meeting my goal in the race? Because if so, that is a bad reason to buy cupcakes and I’m not going to do it.

But if I want a cupcake I should be able to eat a cupcake, right? I’m not a binge eater, it’s not like I would ever eat all six. Today my daughter and I went to the mall and there is a new shop that sells frozen tart yogurt and cupcakes. I told my daughter I’ve been craving a cupcake and she said they are really good and I should get one. I told her I didn’t think I wanted one, they have too many calories. She said I could get one and eat one half today and one half tomorrow. Wow, what a good idea. But, guess what? I didn’t get one. I can’t bring myself to eat a cupcake. She had a cupcake, topped with frozen yogurt, topped with granola. And she looked like she enjoyed every bite of it. I did get some frozen yogurt – only because it’s the tart kind. And there were 6 raspberries on top. I liked it, but it wasn’t a cupcake.

Why can’t I eat a cupcake if I want a cupcake?

Not feeling very good about myself at the moment, and maladaptive coping strategies are sneaking their way into my life. I had a drink last night and another tonight. I know one drink doesn’t sound too bad, but I haven’t been drinking more than one drink per week, and I know that this can escalate. Next klonopin, then cutting….

Seriously considering restarting my wellbutrin. I think I’m a failure at living an anti-depressant free life.

I think I should make it clear that I am not comparing myself to Ted Bundy. It might have sounded like that in my last post and I’m sorry if I gave the wrong impression. I guess I chose someone very extreme to make my point, but I really don’t think I’m anything like Ted Bundy, except we both volunteer at a suicide hotline.

So what I think I need to remember is:

1. Bad thoughts and feelings happen to everyone.
2. Bad thoughts and feelings don’t make someone a bad person.
3. Good people have bad thoughts and feelings sometimes, it is a part of being human.
4. People aren’t necessarily good or bad and there is no need to classify them as such.
5. I should hold myself to the same standards that I hold everyone else. I am no better or worse than anyone else and I am not more or less important than anyone else.

I am reading a book called “Reinventing Your Life” by Jeffrey E. Young and Janet S. Klosko. Their premise is that there are patterns in our lives (they call them lifetraps) that start in childhood and reverberate throughout life. It begins with something that is done to us when we are children by our families or by other children (or I might add even by ourselves). Eventually the lifetrap becomes part of us. It determines how we think, feel, act, and relate to others. Even when we appear to have everything we are often unable to savor life or believe in our accomplishments.

I don’t think that they invented this concept, but the book is easy to read. It has little quizzes in it and chapters based on the various lifetraps, which include abandonment, mistrust, emotional deprivation, social exclusion, dependence, vulnerability, defectiveness, failure, subjugation, unrelenting standards and entitlement. I dare you to find someone who doesn’t have one of these problems! I have a few, I don’t even want to admit how many. I believe that some of them are co-morbid, and some are overlapping in their symptoms.

I recommend this book, it’s enlightening. The steps that one would take to change the lifetraps are well explained, but I think it would be hard to make these changes alone. If it was that easy there would be no need for mental health professionals, would there?

It’s so much easier for me to understand things on an intellectual level than on an emotional level. On an intellectual level I see that I am really no different from most people in my abilities, my talents, my vulnerabilities. But I don’t FEEL that. That’s where there is a disconnect for me. It seems like a huge jump to make and I can’t see how to get there.