Monthly Archives: September 2009

Sep 30 2009

My List

Thank you all so much for your support and help! Your comments have meant so much to me today, and have really helped me see that there is some good stuff in me. I actually thought of a couple of things. I read through my blog because I do remember writing about this before. There was this post in which I wrote about six good things, and this one where I wrote about my top five strengths which I discovered after taking a test my life coach directed me to.

I didn’t want to list things I’m good at, like cooking and knitting, although I am proud of my talents. I wanted to stick with what makes me a good person. Cooking helps, but a mean, ornery person can be a good cook!

So here is what I’ve got so far:

1. I am perseverant, even when things get tough.
2. I am empathetic and a good listener.
3. I am a good problem solver.
4. I like to think.
5. I have strong values.
6. I am reliable and trustworthy.

I feel satisfied with my list. I couldn’t have done it without all of your help. Oh, and I do have good dental hygiene!

I did a little shopping today to celebrate feeling good about my list. I bought a bunch of stuff at the Gap, I love that store. My pants have been hanging off of me, so I needed some new ones. And I couldn’t resist this cute sweater either! I didn’t buy the scarf, I knit that. I cut my head off, sorry ‘bout that but I want to protect my privacy.

gap

Sep 29 2009

Therapy Recap 9/29/09

I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep last night. I haven’t been sleeping well in general, and last Monday night (night before therapy session) I couldn’t sleep at all. So last night I took 1mg of klonopin before bed. I hated myself for doing it. I’ve been tapering off the klonopin for about 4 months now, and I was finally down to ¼ of a .5mg tablet. Last week I finally stopped taking it, I couldn’t cut the pill any smaller or it would crumble. I started having trouble sleeping when I got down to that last low dose, but I thought I could tough it out and my body would adjust. It has to adjust eventually right?

But last night I couldn’t stand the thought of being up half the night and I took the klonopin. I slept great. I didn’t budge until 7am when the alarm went off. I disgust myself. I finally got off the stuff and I took it again, and it worked like a charm. Argh.

I got to therapy and there was the usual question, “What are we talking about today?” He said the things he is interested in are where I am on the self injury flowchart and how my job at the hotline is going. I have no idea why he is obsessed with those things, they barely register on my thinking on a day to day basis.

I told J I hate that question, it causes me to panic, and that I woke up at 6am yesterday morning thinking about that question and what I was going to say. That led to a discussion of what I am afraid of. We talked about how I am waiting for “other shoe to drop” (and J explained the origin of that expression because I never knew what the hell it meant, even though I use it all the time). J asked me if there have been any relationships in my life where someone left me because they found out something about me, and I said no. But I never tell anybody any of this stuff about me, this is the first time. J told me that he has had to terminate (bad choice of words, mine not his) three patients. Two came on to him (women I’m assuming), and one threatened him to the point where he was glad that the police station is across the street.

I would not do those things (I could never come on to someone who looks like Brad Pitt and is 10 years younger than me) of course. He assures me there is nothing I could say that would make him kick me out. I guess I’m more afraid that the more I tell him the more repulsed he will be by me and he just won’t want to see me anymore, or he won’t have empathy for me. How could someone who knows all of this stuff about me want to even look at me?

Somehow this led to a discussion of my marriage and how I’m also waiting for the other shoe to drop with my husband. We talked about my marriage, how it is, how my husband I relate. My husband and I don’t spend a lot of time together. He does his thing and I do mine. It works really well for both of us and my husband claims he loves me and wants to stay married to me. I asked him, I said, “Now that the kids are older and you don’t need me do you still want to stay married to me.” He said, “Of course, why wouldn’t I?” J asked if my husband loves me and I told him that he says he does, but what does that really mean? J asked how I could improve my marriage and I couldn’t really think of anything. It really does work. We never fight, but we never really connect either. That’s just me, I don’t really connect to anyone anymore.

I told J that I “overlook” a lot, and that is what I think makes the marriage work. He asked if I hold back from confronting my husband because of my fear that he will leave me. Do I do that? I don’t know, I have to think about it.

Then we talked, again for the gazillionth time, how I am hard on myself, I don’t see anything positive about myself, etc. J asked why my husband loves me and I don’t know. He asked me about good qualities about my husband and I listed a whole bunch. He asked me if I think I’m a good wife and I said no. He asked me what is good about me in my relationship with my husband and I said that I don’t have affairs, and that is good. He said that is the absence of negative, it is not a positive. Anything good about myself would be the absence of negative – I’ve never killed anyone, I don’t steal or cheat on anyone, etc. He asked me if that’s due to my mom, and I told him I felt bad about everything I said about my mom last week because she is not a bad person. He said he knows that and I asked how he knows that, because I didn’t really tell him anything good about her. He said he doesn’t mean to stereotype me, but I’m pretty typical for a daughter of a mother like mine. He said my mother was anxious, and had high expectations, and wasn’t supportive, she didn’t think my worth was due to me as a person, but more because of what I did. He said everyone messes up their kids, even parents who are 99% perfect. There is always going to be that time that they weren’t there for their child when the child needed them.

He once again asked me to state something good about myself. Somehow we got onto the subject of me being reliable and I grudgingly admitted that maybe, sort of, I guess I’m reliable, sort of. He wanted me to forget the maybe, sort of, I guess and just say I’m reliable. It doesn’t mean I’m 100% reliable, because no one is perfect. But I’m a reliable person. Ok, I admitted that I am a reliable person. He said my homework for this week is not to think of good things about myself, which I seem to have confused with good deeds, but to reinforce to myself that I am a reliable person and to come up with another thing about me that is good.

I asked him if he was done with my DVD, and it turns out he never watched it. It was still in his computer, but for some reason he couldn’t watch it on his computer – who doesn’t have Windows media player (he doesn’t have a Mac so there goes that excuse)? He gave it back to me and when I got into the car I broke it into lots of tiny pieces. I never knew it was so hard to break a DVD, netflix doesn’t seem to have that much trouble breaking DVDs. I guess he wasn’t too interested in watching it, even though every week he asks me where I am in my flowchart of self-injury.

I feel really sad now. Therapy brings out all of these things. I knew all along that I can’t think of anything good about myself, but having to admit it out loud makes it so much more real. Who can’t think of one good thing about themselves? Not like “I’m a good cook”, I have that stuff. I mean something good about myself as a person. How pathetic am I? Everything about me is fake, that’s what it feels like. And I realize that parents influence their children, but I am 49 years old and I’m still being influenced by my mother. That is so…..I don’t even know.

Therapy makes me feel like shit. I’m glad J isn’t a cheerleader, my son’s therapist was like that and it didn’t feel genuine. I knew it was fake. I’m glad J doesn’t do that, actually today he started to tell me that I’m perseverant, that he has patients who come 2 or 3 times and quit because they aren’t willing to make the commitment to work at themselves, but I keep coming week after week even though it is incredibly anxiety provoking. But then he said, “I don’t want to point out your good qualities to you.” I guess he wants me to discover them for myself which will be so much more meaningful, right? He must see something positive in me. I know that I show up every week, I never miss my appointments, I pay my bill within minutes of receiving it in the mail. I wonder if he sees anything more than that? Sometimes I wish he would give me a clue.

Sep 28 2009

Rambling About Anxiety

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

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

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

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

Sorry for rambling and complaining……

Sep 24 2009

Parent Insight

Today is my mother’s birthday, so we spent the day together. We had lunch and walked around a fun historic city that is nearby. It was really hot and humid, but otherwise a nice day. It’s been 11 days since her husband passed away, and she has closed all of his accounts, arranged for his daughter to pick up his car, cancelled his insurances, notified all of his doctors and dentists, talked with her financial planner, and booked a cruise to Bermuda with seven of her single friends. And one wonders why I have such high expectations of myself? I can’t help but be intensely aware of everything she is saying and doing lately, and how these behaviors and comments have shaped my development when I was a child and young adult. Maybe it’s because I’m in therapy and am more self aware.

Here are some examples. My mother was telling me about my sister’s husband, and how he didn’t go to work one day last week. She thought he was very upset about the death of my mother’s husband (actually I think he just had a cold) and was too emotional to go to work. Her comment was, “He’s not like us.” She said the same thing about him 11 years ago when his and my sister’s son, my nephew, had a major surgery to reconstruct the bones of his skull. He was 11 months old at the time. We were all sitting in the waiting room of Children’s Hospital and the doctor came in towards the end of the surgery to tell us that the surgery is almost over and everything went fine. My brother-in-law started to cry. Later my mother said, “He’s not like us.” Meaning, we don’t expose our icky emotional feelings to the world. We hide them and move on to the next hurdle. No crying, no missing work, just move on.

Today my mother was telling me about my cousin. My cousin is going through a divorce, her husband got laid off and she had to get a job. I asked her what type of job my cousin got. Her response was, “I don’t know. She’s never known what she wants to do. She’s tried so many different things, who knows what kind of job she can get.” This was a bit personal for me, because I’ve never known what I want to do, I’ve tried so many different things, and I don’t have “real” job. The way she said it, with a degrading tone to her voice, made me wonder, “Does she think the same way about me?” Because my mother values hard work, commitment, nothing wishy washy.

My mother’s values have imprinted themselves on me. That’s a normal parental thing to do, we pass on our values to our children. It’s not good or bad, it’s just a part of parenting. A problem arises when a child’s personality is so different than the parent’s personality. Those values may not be in sync with the child’s personality. So how does one resolve that dilemma? Maybe that’s why I often feel torn inside. I have a need to show the world that I am capable, confident, competent, that nothing fazes me, that I can solve all of my problems on my own, that if something difficult comes up I deal with it and move on. But inside I know I’m not like that. I’m emotional, not always capable, have no confidence, everything shakes me up. If something difficult comes up I do deal with it and move on, but do I really move on? Or do things build up inside of me to the point where I engage in self destructive behavior?

Sep 23 2009

Therapy Recap 9/22/09

I had to cancel therapy last week because it was the day of the funeral. It’s really hard to go back when I’ve skipped a week. Monday night I could not fall asleep – I think I finally fell asleep at about 3am, and then I woke up at 6:30am. I also had a really bad stomach Monday and Tuesday morning.

The last time I saw J he assigned me homework. I was supposed to write down one good thing I did and one thing I’m grateful for every day. I actually did the homework Tuesday through Saturday, but that was it since my mother’s husband died and things got crazy. I had a really hard time with the homework. The grateful stuff wasn’t bad, but coming up with good things was very difficult. Two of the days I didn’t do anything good, one day I made a donation to my friend Ann’s foundation, another day I bought girl scout cookies even though I don’t want girl scout cookies – I donated them to the troops. I did a volunteer activity one of the days, which I don’t even think counts as good, but I was desperate. I was actually going to go to the humane society and adopt a dog just so I had something to put on the list.

J said that wasn’t really how the homework was supposed to go. He apologized. He said he didn’t intend for me to go out and search for ways to be good, I was supposed to just write down things I did in my daily life that are good. But I don’t normally do good things in my daily life, so I’m a bit confused about what he was looking for. He said in the future he’ll give me more explicit directions. He gave me back my list and I ripped it to shreds. I said it was stupid. Mature of me, isn’t it?

We got onto the topic of my mother. Every therapist’s dream, right? It all comes back to the mother. I told J about something my mother did a few days ago that really hurt my feelings and I wondered why she felt the need to do that, but “that’s what she does.” He asked me to explain and I told him that my mother is very judgmental and nothing is ever good enough. I gave a couple of examples. We talked about my childhood a little, and how my parents had very high expectations of me, and not very high expectations of my sister. I think that is because she was sick as a baby and toddler and she could get away with a lot more. I took on the role of the “good child”, and I was smart and well behaved so it was a self fulfilling prophecy. The better I was the better I needed to be.

J postulated that perhaps my parents wanted me to be this good child because it made them look like good parents. Never thought about it that way, but it makes sense. And to this day I never feel like I’m good enough or meet my mother’s expectations of me.

I know that everyone at some point talks to their therapist about their parents. I feel bad about it though. My mother is a good person, despite her flaws. Everyone has flaws, no one is perfect, and plenty of people had much worse mothers than I do. I do feel guilty about the things I said about her to J.

I did some more projecting during our session, but maybe since I admitted that I was projecting when I sent J the email a couple of weeks ago, he felt more comfortable telling me when I was doing it. He’d say, “You’re projecting again.” I don’t do it on purpose, I swear I don’t!

I have more to say, but I’m so tired. In the ongoing dental adventure I’ve been having, the second stage of my root canal was supposed to be last week, but due to the circumstances I had to reschedule. And now my tooth is infected again, so I called the dentist and he prescribed another antibiotic. I took two doses, and last night woke up in the middle of the night covered in hives. I took some benadryl and finally went back to sleep, but since I didn’t sleep Monday night or last night I’m exhausted. I’m on a different antibiotic now, I’ve taken this one before so I don’t expect any hivey surprises tonight.

Sep 22 2009

Thank You For Your Support

Thank you all for your well wishes during the difficult time of my mother’s husband passing away. It was so sudden. He was supposed to go home from the hospital last Monday. On Sunday afternoon the doctors removed a temporary external pacemaker that he had put in when he had his heart valve replacement surgery. He was taking a blood thinning medication because his heart kept going into atrial fibrillation and that can cause bloodclots, and the blood thinning medication prevents these clots. But it also stops the body from forming clots when it needs to. A couple of hours after the pacemaker was removed his blood pressure became very low. Within a short amount of time he was in cardiac arrest. He was taken to ICU, and the heart could not be revived. They even cut open his chest to massage his heart, and that was when they saw that there was internal bleeding around the heart which caused it to stop pumping.

When we got to the hospital Sunday night his body was already taken down to the morgue and they asked if my mother wanted to see him, which she did. A lovely nurse moved heaven and earth to get security to bring the body back up so that my mother could say goodbye. He looked very peaceful. It was so sad for my mother.

The funeral was really nice and he was buried in a Veterans’ Cemetery; he was in the army during the Korean war. He lost a good part of his hearing during training, which is certainly a huge sacrifice he made for our country. The burial was amazing. Two National Guard officers had a beautiful flag ceremony while a third officer played taps. The officers presented my mother with the flag. They were so regal and respectful.

Everyone was very respectful to my mother and to us – the funeral home director, the rabbi, the cemetery workers. My mother’s husband has four children who don’t live nearby. They were here of course and it was actually nice spending time with them. They have never made much of an attempt to befriend us, and never responded to our efforts to befriend them, so we were never sure if they liked us. But it was very a good week with them, we got to know them in a way we never have before. I don’t know if our relationship with any of them will last now that he is gone, but I’m glad I got to know them a little better.

I stayed with my mother for the whole week, except for one night when my sister slept there. My mom lives about an hour away from me, when there is no traffic, and there is never no traffic! Her birthday is Thursday and I told her I’d spend the day with her. I think I’ll be spending more time with her now. I hate the thought that she is alone. She lost my father 11 years ago, and now her second husband, to whom she was married 7 years, is gone. We don’t always have a great relationship, but I love her and I’m sad for her.

Sep 13 2009

Bad News

My mother’s husband had heart surgery last week. We were in the hospital with him all week and he was doing great. I just got a call from my mother – the doctor called her and said he passed away. We don’t know what happened. I feel so badly for my mother because I know she and her husband were angry with each other earlier today and she told him that he was being mean to her and not appreciating her and she wasn’t going to visit him tomorrow. And now he is gone.

I’ll be out of touch for a few days. Be well everyone.

Sep 12 2009

Thank You

I want to thank everyone for your kind and supportive comments on my blog posts. I always doubt myself, I feel like I don’t do anything right, like I’m just wandering through life without a plan or a path, not knowing what is important, ready to chuck it all. And you all find positive things to say all of the time. I just don’t get it, but I so appreciate it, and I’m really trying to believe what you all say about me. Maybe one day I will. My homework this week is to write down one thing I did good and one thing I’m grateful for every day. I’m having a little trouble with the doing something good column, but today in the grateful column I’m going to write that I am grateful for my blogging friends.


So yesterday was September 11th, obviously, and it was the day my friend Ann died while on a plane heading to Los Angeles, which ended up flying into the Pentagon instead. I hadn’t seen her in a while, and I kept thinking “I need to go see Ann” but I kept putting it off and then she died. So my lesson for September 11th is “Don’t put off seeing people who are important to you, because they might not be there tomorrow.” September 11, 2001 was honestly the worst day of my life, as I’m sure it was for many people. I actually found out Ann died on September 12, 2001, so 9/12 isn’t a great day for me either. She was 49 when she died, which is my current age. That’s not really relevant, but just kind of an interesting fact. So I’ve been pensive the last couple of days.

Sep 9 2009

Email Update

Thank you all for the support about the email to J. I did send it this morning, and he responded pretty quickly, basically saying that he doesn’t think that I only think about myself. That in therapy people focus on themselves because that is what they are supposed to do while they are there. He said that he did not mean to suggest that I am self absorbed or only think about myself because he knows that is not true.


Then I felt bad about writing the email, and about feeling that he was thinking badly about me. Maybe I was projecting my feelings and thoughts about myself onto him? I thought to myself, this is why I never tell anyone anything about me, because then they will think badly about me. Even if they don’t think badly about me, I am thinking that they are. So I tell J a lot of stuff about myself and I think naturally he is going to think I am a bad person, a loser, etc. But he says he doesn’t think that. How is that possible?


I wrote him back saying that I’m glad he doesn’t think that, and maybe I was projecting, and I feel better now. And he said that is good to hear. I can’t believe he hasn’t kicked me out the door yet.

Sep 8 2009

Therapy Recap 9/8/09

The week flies by doesn’t it? Yes, today was therapy day. And when I showed up, J asked what we are talking about. I said, last week you picked the topic, now you want me to pick the topic. You can’t keep changing the rules like this.

I’m really blocked right now in therapy. I cannot talk about anything important. I know that one can’t have a deep session every week, but I kind of feel like I’m stuck at a certain level and can’t get words out of my mouth. We talked about the hotline, about eating, about exercise, about what is “good enough”.

There was an opening for me to talk about my suicide ideation, and I hinted at it, but J didn’t get it. Of course not, he is not a mind reader. We were talking about how my mother’s husband was having heart surgery. J asked me if thinking about that took my mind off of thinking about myself, and if it put things in perspective for me. I get the impression that he thinks I think about myself all the time. I don’t know how this happened. I just wrote the other day about how I think so much, but it’s not always about me. Every time I bring up someone else’s problems he asks if this puts things in perspective for me, as though I’m so narcissistic I could never consider anyone else’s problems. So J asked me how I feel about my mother’s husband’s surgery in relation to my life and I told him that I know that I would never be in this situation – where I had to have heart surgery. He said, “So you feel gratitude?” And I said, “More like resignation.” He asked, “You feel resignation about not ever needing heart surgery?” I said, “Well I know I’ll never be in that situation.” He thought I was talking about how I eat right and exercise and take care of myself. I said, “What?” He replied, “You take care of yourself so that you’re healthy so you won’t develop a bad heart.” I said, “That isn’t what I meant.” Of course he asked what I meant, and I couldn’t say, “I don’t plan to live long enough to develop a bad heart.” What I did say was, “Never mind. I don’t want to talk about that.” He asked why I didn’t want to talk about it, and I didn’t really answer. Then he said, in a petulant voice that wasn’t really very cute, “I WANNA talk about it.” I just couldn’t. I’m stuck.

I told him about how I tried to write down five things every day that I am grateful for, but had to quit after 2 weeks because I ran out of things. He asked if I was repeating things, and I said, “Of course not.” He said, you realize if you have to find 5 things every day that would be 1800 things a year, and 18,000 after 10 years. Well, yeah, I set the bar high! I guess that’s why I failed at that project.

J also thinks I need to meditate more. He asked me what are the times when my mind doesn’t think so much, and I said, “When I run.” But we talked about it and I said the effects don’t last. As soon as the run is over the thoughts start up again. So he thinks I should meditate. I think that is probably a good idea, meditation never hurts, right? I should schedule it into my day.

J gave me a homework assignment – every day write down one good thing I did, and one thing I’m grateful for. Considering he thinks I think about myself a lot, it seems like this homework assignment feeds into that.

I wrote J an email to explain how I don’t think about myself all of the time. I haven’t sent it, I’m always afraid to click the send button. Here it is:

J,

I think that you think that I think about myself 24 hours a day and I’m sorry you have that idea about me. I do think a lot but it’s not always about me. For example:

For the past four days I have been thinking about my mother’s husband and his upcoming surgery, which was today, which was to replace a heart valve and to fix his aorta. This summer I went to the beach with a friend whose father in law had the same surgery, while we were at the beach, and an hour after his surgery ended he died. So I have been worried about my mother’s husband since we found out he needed this surgery.

I’ve been thinking about my daughter a lot because last year 99% of her best friends were seniors, and now they have all gone to college and she still has one more year of high school. The past few Saturday nights she has actually been babysitting because she doesn’t have friends to socialize with, and I feel badly for her, even though she has never complained. I’m concerned about what this school year will be like for her without her best friends around.

I’ve been thinking a lot about my son, who spends all of his time in his room; he sleeps all day and is up all night. He doesn’t drive and hasn’t made an attempt to get a job because he says he can’t get anywhere. We’ve been to the movies a few times and I love spending time with him because we are alike in a lot of ways and it’s sad that all of his friends have gone back to school and he hasn’t, and his life revolves around his computer, tv, and video games.

I’ve been thinking that I need to do some research into fair trade products because I would like to change some of the things I purchase in order to ensure that people around the world are receiving fair wages and are being treated with dignity.

I think about a lot of other things, reading the last few days of my blog I see that I have been thinking about the meaning of life, Steppenwolf (the book I’m currently reading), an essay that my daughter wrote for one of her college applications that freaked me out because she was writing it as though she was 70 years old and looking back at her life, my current fixation with movies and books about death and dying, my blogging friends who are having some problems, District 9 (the alien movie) and how people treat other people so poorly (even if they are aliens), a conversation I had with a couple of my friends about how their plans for their lives didn’t quite materialize the way they had intended, and other things as well. I realize that when I think about these things I am thinking about them in relation to my own life, but I am not thinking about myself the way that you think I think about myself. I don’t always mope around thinking about what a bad person I am, what a loser I am, how could anyone want to be around me, etc… I do think like that sometimes, but I don’t just have those thoughts all of the time and no others.

I don’t know how you got that idea and I just wanted to clear it up. Thanks.

H