Harriet M. Welch

I’ve been googling new therapists. I looked on my new insurance company’s list of psychologists and counselors to find ones in my area. Some of them are on the Psychology Today website, which is a great resource. I found one that looks promising. She is a woman, graduated college in the 80’s, practices humanistic and person centered psychology and she says she “incorporates a wide variety of techniques into the therapeutic process, including cognitive-behavioral techniques, guided imagery, communication exercises, relaxation exercises and other awareness techniques.” Normally using this website one can send a prospective therapist a message via the internet, but when I click on the link it says, “Dr XXX PhD. would like to hear from you but prefers to be contacted by phone.” Strike one. I don’t do phone. But maybe I’ll call and leave a message anyway, just to hear her voice. Voices are important to me also.

I think what I am looking for is someone who combines some of Carl Rogers, some of Carl Jung, some existential stuff, and a little CBT thrown in to get through the day to day garbage. I found a paper online that someone had written explaining how the theories and practices of Rogers and Jung can actually complement each other. I’m still working my way through this. One thing about Jung is that a lot of his material is so way over my head. I totally don’t get much of what he came up with, and I would really like to understand it, because the things I do understand I see so much value in.

I also want someone who will let me write, either by email, or by bringing in material to my sessions. Someone who can do alternative methods of communication – writing, art, photography, music, etc. I would love to have someone who will take a walk with me instead of sitting in the office, but I know that is a stretch.

More to think about….

I know I should not be worrying and thinking so much about this thing that I am worrying about, because I am sure that there is a good explanation for it. I just don’t know it yet, so why am I worrying about it before I have the good explanation? I guess I’m worried that there isn’t a good explanation for it, but it seems silly to worry about that until I find out if there is a good explanation. And obviously I am not writing about it either. In case I ever need to password protect my posts I will be happy to give out the password to anyone who emails me. The link to my email is over there on the right.

I just read something that made me think. It was on a mental health forum, and someone asked if the others used people’s names when referring to them in their therapy sessions, or if they just said the relationship. I would say 95% of the respondents said that they use names, and many of them also acted kind of judgmental towards those who did not use names, for example saying things like, “I’m confused about the question, why wouldn’t I? I tell my therapists my deepest darkest secrets, why wouldn’t I tell her names?” Good way to make the other 5% feel like shit, thank you very much. Someone did bring up the fact that in cases of abuse it is important to name names, due to the fact that abuse is frequently secretive and part of the healing process is to bring it all out in the open. And that makes perfect sense to me.

As for me, and you knew I was getting to this, I have never named names in therapy. I had no idea that people did that. I really don’t understand it either. My therapist has no idea who these people are, so why would I tell him their names? He doesn’t tell me anyone’s names, although I know that is a terrible analogy, he doesn’t really tell me anything. I would just feel so uncomfortable saying my husband’s, or my childrens’, or my friends’ names. That’s just icky. Maybe it’s a way for me to keep my distance once again, my fear of getting too close to people, distrust, etc etc. Maybe it’s the compartmentalizing behavior. All that crap. I just think that if I was a person who could name names in therapy then I wouldn’t need therapy.

And to end on a lighter note, here is a cute cartoon I saw. I guess if you’re not an INFJ, or if you are not involved with one, you would not be interested in this at all. But it’s so perfect.

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.

So my therapist, J, has been talking about mindfulness a lot lately. Mindfulness sounds so nice, doesn’t it? I imagine Buddhist monks sitting around quietly being mindful. So peaceful. Yeah, I wish.

My problem is the voices in my head. Well, they are not really voices, they are more like images. Not necessarily moving images like a movie, but maybe those old fashioned movies where one image after another flashes by. And those images enter my head when my head is not busy thinking about something else. So if I am thinking about whether or not I turned off the straightening iron and ruminating on this for awhile my brain is nicely busy. You may think it’s not good to wonder all day if I turned off the straightening iron, however it is better than the alternative.

When I try to empty my mind and just enjoy the moment, that’s when bad things happen. Those images start, and they are bad ones. I know the Mindfulness experts say, “Thoughts will enter your mind, you can’t stop them. But you should just acknowledge them without judgment, and then gently bring your mind back to the present moment.” OK, you Mindfulness experts – tell me exactly how to do that. Without judgment? That might be possible for normal people, who might have a thought enter their mind like, “Don’t forget to pick up the dry cleaning.” I think I’d be fairly non-judgmental about that thought. But there are certain thoughts and images, very very bad ones, violent, horrendous ones, and then it’s not so easy. Yes I can acknowledge them, no problem. Without judgment? No way. And gently bring my mind back to the present moment? You’ve got to be kidding. I am now in the midst of a panic attack due to the these images that are now in my mind because of the damn mindfulness. Thanks a lot.

I heard about a book the other day, it is called something like Get Out of Your Mind and Get Into Your Life. Wow, that sounds like something I’d like to do. But before I could buy it I had to do the research on it, because I am sick of self help books that say do x, y, and z, but don’t tell you how to do x, y, and z. So in reading the reviews and the sample of the book that I downloaded onto my Kindle, I learned that one of the basic premises of this book is that our thoughts and feelings are a product of our mind, they are not US. Huh? That has got to be one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard. It doesn’t even make any sense. Our mind is US, my mind is ME, and whatever my mind thinks or feels is ME. So I didn’t buy the book.

I think I mentioned to J last week that I thought that mindfulness works best for people who have good control of their thoughts. He mentioned the word “medication” and I went somewhere. Not physically, but I guess I zoned out or something because I have no idea what transpired after that. I hate when that happens, because maybe he said something worth listening to. Although if it involved medication then probably not.

I have used mindfulness to ground myself if I am in the midst of an anxiety attack. I used to use it a lot when I flew, because I was a fearful flyer. I would look at the seat in front of me, and check out the fibers, and how they are woven together, and whether they are frayed, and what colors are in them. I got to know a lot about airline seat fabrics. I hate the leather seats, nothing interesting to look at there. So it’s not that mindfulness doesn’t have a place, and it’s not that it does nothing for me. I just don’t think that it’s for someone whose mind does crazy things like mine does.

Although those Buddhist monks certainly look peaceful.

Childhood Abuse, Neglect Linked to Later Health Problems

“Researchers have found that adults who experienced early childhood abuse, neglect, social isolation or economic hardship were more likely to exhibit depression, chronic inflammation, and other markers related to increased health risks.”

If you would like to read further click here.

Who actually pays people to come up with this research? Is it really necessary to do research to find this out?

We have a regular caller on the hotline, I’ll call him Mike (lots of guys call themselves Mike on the hotline for some reason). I’ve talked with him a few times. He has an obsession that he thinks about/talks about all of the time. Every time he calls he talks about this scenario that he is obsessed with. He is a very nice guy, articulate, intelligent, open to feedback, and easy to talk to. I often hope that he will get help from a professional to get over this obsession.

Mike called a few weeks ago and we had our usual type of conversation. Nothing to really think about. A couple of hours later I got a call from a man I’ll call Vince. He sounded anxious, somewhat high strung, and angry. He said he was suicidal and has attempted suicide one or more times in the past few years. He is angry at God for not letting his attempts succeed.

We talked for about five minutes, and then got cut off. I was really hoping he would call back, but he didn’t. I was very concerned about him, but he said he was not planning to hurt himself in any way today, as he was with his nephew. I thought about him a lot during the week and I was anxious to get back to the hotline the next Sunday so that I could see if he called again.

The first thing I do when I get to the office is check my feedback from the previous week. We get feedback from one of three supervisors on all of our calls. I saw the call report from Mike and read my feedback, but I didn’t see the call report for Vince. Then I noticed a second call report from Mike, that happened at the same time as the call from Vince, and I opened it. It was Vince’s call report, with a note saying “Caller has been identified as Mike by supervisor.” I was very confused, why did the supervisor think Vince was Mike? I called her and she explained that when she checked the caller ID records, the call did indeed come from Mike. She also added to Mike’s caller profile that he has been diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder, and did indeed attempt suicide in the past.

Then I was baffled. First, I was not under the impression that Mike was receiving any mental health treatment, but he must have, at least at some time, in order to be given that diagnosis. I also could not wrap my head around the fact that Vince was Mike, because he sounded like a completely different person. They had a different voice, different inflections, different topics of conversation, and even a different level of intelligence. I asked my supervisor if Mike was aware that Vince called, if Vince is aware of Mike. She said that she didn’t know a lot about DID, but it can manifest itself differently in different people. I wondered if Mike suddenly found himself in his home with the phone in his hand, wondering who he was talking to and why, and hung up.

I resolved to learn more about DID so I put a book on hold at the library. I picked it up a couple of days ago and have been reading it. I am learning a lot about this disorder, which I’m not even sure can be called a disorder. After all, dissociation is a brilliant coping mechanism that the human mind/body uses to get through trauma such as abuse. The disorder comes when the person begins to function poorly, or suffers from anxiety/depression, or PTSD symptoms. Sometimes people are not aware that they have DID, they visit a mental health professional due to other issues, and then are diagnosed later on. I haven’t finished the book yet, so most of my questions haven’t been answered. I did learn that DID isn’t really as rare as my supervisor implied. And that not everyone behaves like the characters in the movies or TV like Sybil or the United States of Tara.

I truly hope that Mike is seeing a professional to get help with his DID and his obsession. He must be in a lot of pain.

Last week at my therapy session, J, my psychologist, told me that when he sends out his bills at the end of the month, mine is always the first check he gets. We talked about that for awhile, how I want to be the perfect client, and I know I suck at the therapy part of therapy so I’m trying to be really good at the logistics part of therapy to make up for it. We talked about what it would be like if I didn’t drive the check to the post office the day I get the bill so that he’ll get my check the next day. I get paid on the last day of the month, so it makes sense that I would pay the bill then also, but I do agree that I am somewhat obsessive about getting it to him quickly.

However I’m not sure I like that he told me this. When I left last week I had conflicting feelings about it. At first I thought, “Wow, mine is first, I must be special.” Then I realized I don’t want to be special, I want to be like everyone else. And I don’t want to feel like I have to be the perfect client. I know what you’re thinking – just wait a day or two before you send in the check. But it’s not that simple. It’s never that simple, is it?

This morning at 6am I had a dream. I was running on a trail in a park near my home and I fell into quicksand. I screamed really loud (in my dream, not out loud) and woke myself up. I wonder what this dream says? I’m getting really sucked into my running? Hmmm, what would Freud say?

And here is a project I worked on last week. It’s very difficult for me to meditate by just sitting still doing nothing. I made this mandala out of paper glued onto foamcore. I wanted to make it out of stained glass (I used to do a lot of stained glass mosaics, but I lost my inspiration), but I was afraid of working with broken glass (self injury, etc). I still had to use an exacto knife, but it was ok. It took me a few days to make this and it was very meditative. My sister says I must be a kinesthetic meditator. Is there such a thing?

It’s supposed to represent the earth. All around the outside is chaos, lightening, etc. Then the green crust of the earth. Brown dirt under that, and blue oceans and rivers around the whole thing. Then it gets hotter and hotter as you get to the center, with a few places where the hot insides burst through onto the outside. Kind of like me I suppose.

I woke up today and couldn’t get out of bed. I didn’t take any klonopin last night, and I had a bad night. I get this thing that feels like I need to jump out of my skin. I don’t know what it is, and it doesn’t happen all the time, but it happened last night. Maybe because I took two klonopin the night before, and I had a really great sleep, and I took two more yesterday morning. I can’t believe I would have withdrawal after just 2mg of klonopin though.

I’m feeling anger, because it took me so long to get off the damn klonopin. I have three bottles of it in my drawer and I never touch it. Until Tuesday night. And it makes me so damn angry that I sleep so well when I take it, but I can’t sleep when I don’t take it. Is it too much to ask for a good night’s sleep.

I also started the wellbutrin yesterday. I never had a chance to talk to J about it, there just isn’t time. 45 minutes once a week goes by quickly. But I guess I really need it and I’m going to give it 6 months and see how it goes. I see my pdoc next week. Yesterday at about 2PM I was so tired, I guess from the klonopin. I was at work, alone, and I fell asleep on the couch for about 45 minutes. The klonopin also seems to affect my cognitive skills. I had a really hard time remembering what I did for lunch and what I ate. I had to search my brain to remember. God knows what else I did that I forgot. I only took 1mg in the morning, not a huge dose or anything, and no liquor with it.

I also cut a little. But I don’t want to talk about that. Except to say it didn’t even hurt, so it was waste.

I woke up today feeling sad and also angry. I’m angry that I go to therapy every week, and I try, I really do. I think I do. Maybe not enough. But I feel like it’s all I can do to talk about my feelings, it takes everything out of me, and then I’m told that my feelings aren’t logical. So J explains the logic of whatever the situation is, and I get that. I really really GET the FUCKING logic!!!!! I would tell anyone else the same thing.

But I CAN’T FEEL it. It is so frustrating. How do I FEEL it? I’ve read books, I’ve asked people, I’ve told J I can’t feel it. But no one has been able to tell me how to feel the logic.

I had a time frame for therapy. If I didn’t get better by a certain day I would use my backup plan. But due to a change of circumstances I can’t use my backup plan. Now I feel like I have no therapy and no backup plan. All I want to do now is be numb and sleeping.

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.