Monthly Archives: December 2009

Dec 31 2009

Therapy Recap 12/29/09 (Late!)

When I went to my therapy session on Tuesday I was not liking J very much. I was doing a lot of projecting and after our session last week I felt that he was minimizing my issues, and being judgmental. That is projection, right? But I’m glad I didn’t say anything this week, because he was very nice. Maybe he really was minimizing my issues and being judgmental last week, and he knew it, so he deliberately tried not to be this week? Or maybe it was just me. I never know.

He started things out by saying he wanted to talk more about my disclosure from two weeks ago. We talked about that and I tried to explain more about it, but it was hard to explain and I even told him it was hard to explain, and he said it was ok. But it came down to me feeling like I have an evil part of me, that I have kept hidden from everyone, and the reason people like me is because they don’t know about the evil part. And I’ve tried really hard over the last 30 or 40 years to not act on the evil stuff, to keep it all as thoughts but not actions. But it’s hard work sometimes.

J said it’s admirable that I have been able to function for so long despite having these intrusive thoughts and urges. Not sure if he was being sarcastic. He also kind of laughed at the issue and then apologized and said it’s in his nature to be light-hearted. Hmmm…..

He asked me if anyone else thinks I’m evil, and said that no because they don’t know about this part of me. He said that he knows about it and he doesn’t think I’m evil. He thinks I’m a regular, decent, nice human being. He said that is his objective opinion, and I said, “Your judgment?” See, therapists do have to make judgments.

J asked me what the payoff is in thinking I’m bad. I couldn’t really think of one, and I don’t think there are any payoffs to having intrusive thoughts and thinking oneself is evil. He said, “Well if you know you are bad you don’t have to work hard to be good.” I replied, “I do work hard to be good, so that theory doesn’t hold water.” I still don’t believe there is a payoff.

He said I often say, “Is that bad?” when I say I did something, and that I seem to always have a battle between being good and bad. He asked what would happen if I didn’t try so hard to prevent the evil stuff from actually happening. I don’t know what would happen, I obviously have never tried.

At the end he said that we can’t control our thoughts but we can do thought inserting. He said, “don’t think about a zebra” and I thought about a zebra. Then he said, “think about a dozen roses” and then I didn’t think about the zebra anymore. I guess I need to think more about zebras and roses, and then I won’t have intrusive thoughts? Except when he told me to think about the roses I had some visions of thorns and the damage they can do. Why would I immediately focus on the thorns rather than the flowers?

And during this whole discussion J told about 10 stories. He is always telling me hypothetical or theoretical stories, and I remember the stories but I can’t remember the purpose of them. For example this week he told me about:

A recovering alcoholic working as a bartender, vs someone who doesn’t drink working as a bartender

A friend who was very rigid in raising his own kids, but is very lenient with his grandchildren

A guy he knew 15 years ago who was 75 years old and has probably passed away by now and I don’t remember anything else he said about this guy

A man yelling at his wife in public and people likely thinking “he is a jerk” when actually no one knows what kind of relationship they have and perhaps they have been married for 30 years and get along really well

People like to sky dive and ride rollercoasters because they want to feel close to death but in a controlled environment.

We were talking about something I don’t remember and he said, “We could get really deep here.”

Dec 30 2009

The Wrestler – Go Watch It

Only one more day left in 2009. That’s kind of scary, I hate when time goes on and on and I can’t control it. I would like to stop it for a while, get my bearings, and then restart it.

I know you are all anxiously awaiting my weekly therapy update (NOT!) and I’m working on it. Just not ready to post it yet. I’m really not enjoying therapy very much lately, which I guess means it’s working?

I think I’m finally over Jason Bourne. I have a new movie obsession – The Wrestler. (Does anyone else do this – just become so caught up in a movie that you watch it over and over in a short period of time?) I’ve watched it three times this week, and I think it is a fantastic movie, but at times hard to watch. Want to hear about it? I won’t give away the end, I promise.

This story is about a wrestler – Randy the Ram (played by Mickey Rourke). He is in his mid-50’s I would say, and his glory days of life and wrestling are long over. But he is famous for being a great wrestler, as much an athlete as an entertainer. Everyone knows about him, even if they are too young to have ever seen him wrestle. Now he just does small matches against younger wrestlers in places like the Elk Lodge or VFW hall.

He drinks, takes drugs (legal and illegal) and lives alone in a trailer. He works during the week at a grocery store, and he is trying to get more hours, but can’t work on the weekends because that is when he wrestles. Randy has a “friend”, a stripper named Cassidy (played by Marisa Tomei and she is hot! And about 45 years old). She is also older than the other women in the club. He is in love with her, but he doesn’t tell her this. He might not even know.

After a particularly grueling match Randy has a heart attack and needs heart bypass surgery. He wakes up and his doctor tells him he can’t ever wrestle again. He has a huge scar on his chest. So now he is totally alone and can’t wrestle – the one thing he is good at. He tells Cassidy about the heart attack and how he has nothing left, and she tells him to try to rekindle his relationship with his daughter. He goes to his daughter’s house, but she yells at him and curses him out and tells him he is a loser and she doesn’t want to have anything to do with him.

Cassidy then goes shopping with Randy to buy his daughter a gift. She is breaking her rule about socializing with customers. She chooses a nice peacoat for his daughter, and he chooses a gaudy green jacket with the letter S on it (her name is Stephanie). Then they go out for a beer, Randy kisses Cassidy, she freaks out and leaves.

Randy sees his daughter again and gives her the gifts. She is softening towards him. They spend the day together and agree to have dinner in a few days.

Since he is not wrestling anymore Randy tells his boss at the grocery store that he can work weekends now. He is assigned to the deli counter, and there are some humorous, but sad, scenes of Randy interacting with customers as he gives them ham and potato salad.

A few days later Randy goes out, meets a woman, gets wasted, and spends the night at her house. He goes home in the morning and sleeps all day, then realizes he missed his dinner with his daughter. He goes to her house, and it’s not a pleasant scene. He let her down once again.

So now he has no relationship with his daughter, his love interest isn’t interested in him and only likes him as a customer, and he can’t wrestle. He has nothing. He decides to wrestle again and schedules a big match, knowing that the doctor told him that wrestling would be fatal. It’s the only thing in his life that he can be proud of, that he is good at, where people love him.

I won’t tell you anymore! You must watch the movie, the end is amazing. I think I’ll go watch it again actually.

Dec 29 2009

Collage

So it turns out that my blog word document had a lot of page breaks in it. I took them all out and it is actually only 241 pages. I had only printed out December 08 – March 09, so I sent the rest to the FedEx copy store to be printed out and I picked it up today. I keep it all in a binder. I’m not sure why.

I made a collage of the intrusive thoughts that have been in my mind for the past couple of weeks. It probably doesn’t make any sense to anyone, but I think it helps me to confront the images more directly.

collage

Dec 28 2009

Vacation Update

I keep my blog in a word document (I don’t like to write my posts directly to the blog, too unreliable) and it is currently 285 pages long. That’s a lot of writing in the past year, isn’t it?

I spent the last four days at the beach (not a warm beach, it was a cold beach) with my husband’s family. It went better than I thought it would, and I only took the klonopin twice. My husband’s brother and his wife have a very big beach house and there were 16 of us there, ranging in age from 79 to 12. My sister-in-law only had one tantrum, and no one stormed out this year. And no one made any derogatory comments about my eating. So it was success. When things got loud and overwhelming I went to my room. I also ran 8 miles on Saturday, most of it in the rain. It was actually pretty warm though, so that was good. I’m scheduled to run 10 miles this Saturday and I’m not happy about that. This happens every time I have to run farther than I’ve run before. I don’t think I can do it, I say to myself, “I’m only going to do x miles, and then I’ll see how I feel”, and then I end up running the full distance. But 10 miles sounds like a really long distance. At least I’ll be with my running group, which makes it a lot easier. Saturday I did the 8 miles alone.

I entered the lottery for a local 10 mile race in April, and my name got picked. Apparently a lot of people didn’t get picked, so I guess I’m lucky. I’m nervous about it though, the longest race I’ve ever done is a 10K. Plus I’m not too keen on planning that far ahead these days.

I didn’t have a lot of time to think this week, due to being with family every minute of the last four days. Not sure if that is good or bad.

I hope everyone is well out there, I know some of my blog friends are suffering right now. My wish for all of you for 2010 is to have peace and love in your lives, and no more pain.

Dec 27 2009

Just Forgetful, or Something More Serious?

Something scary happened while I was rereading my old blog posts the other day. J and I had discussions that I don’t remember at all. I’m not too concerned about that because of course I know I can’t remember everything we discussed over the last year. But apparently I gave him a letter about a year ago, and in that letter I disclosed the same thing to him that I told him two weeks ago. I have no recollection of giving him that letter, or anything that was in it. And it took me weeks to get up enough courage to tell him about this situation, when in actual fact I had told him about it a year ago! I have a copy of the letter in my blog, and a copy of it in my documents folder on my computer. But I don’t remember writing it or giving it to him. I don’t understand this at all.

Dec 26 2009

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to all of my friends who celebrate Christmas! I hope you get everything you want from Santa, and have a peaceful day with loved ones.

I’m enjoying my vacation at the beach, and trying not to think about anything important. Giving my brain a rest.

Yesterday I was trying to put into words how I feel about my therapy session on Tuesday. When I left I felt stupid, like my issues were being minimized. I did a little reading about techniques therapists use when talking to clients. Some of these techniques are reflective listening, validating feelings, and normalizing feelings. Apparently clients feel better when their therapists use these listening techniques. In my case, though, I didn’t really feel better and I’m wondering what it is about me that is causing this.

I actually feel judged right now, and I know J didn’t do anything to judge me, because therapists don’t do that. However when I was explaining that I hated having his book because I was so afraid something would happen to it, he responded, “OK, that just sounds like anxiety.” Is that a judgment, or a professional assessment of a mental disorder? I was very disturbed by these thoughts that I had, they made me feel like I was some kind of evil person, and when J made this response I really should have felt better. I should have thought, “Oh wow, that’s great! I’m not evil, I’m not a psychopath, I just have an anxiety problem!” Why didn’t I feel that way? It must be something in my subconscious again, that I can’t get to in order to figure out how I really feel.

And when he told me that if he asked 100 people if they had intrusive thoughts from time to time like I had and 85 of them would say they did, well that should make me feel better too. He was normalizing my feelings by telling me it’s normal to think things like this. But my first thought was, “I don’t have these thoughts from time to time, I have them all of the time!” And my second thought was, “I guess I didn’t explain myself very well, because he doesn’t understand what I’m saying.” And my next thought was, “How can I get him to understand how terrifying these thoughts are?” And next I thought, “I’m being ridiculous and making a big deal out of nothing, so there must be something in me that is making me too dramatic. I need to snap out of it.” And then I felt judged again.

I think I am just too damn sensitive and I need to develop a thicker skin. I have to keep reminding myself that not everything is a big deal. So what if I have terrifying thoughts, nightmares that occur when I am awake. Apparently it’s something everyone experiences and I should just move on.

Another thing about me is that sometimes, with some people, I can feel their feelings. And this seems to be happening with J, although I’m not sure if I am feeling his feelings or if I am projecting my feelings onto him. He would say I’m projecting, because he doesn’t believe that I can feel other people’s feelings. I would like to ask him what he was feeling on Tuesday, because the feelings I got from him were a little impatience, some frustration, a bit of sarcasm, and definitely caring in there as well. I can’t really trust my intuition on this though, because of the projection thing going on.

Dec 24 2009

Pdoc Update

Pdoc called me back at 7:00PM last night. He asked me what’s been going on and I explained everything to him. He said it sounds like my anxiety is getting out of control, and he doesn’t think the wellbutrin is contributing to my problems. We talked about klonopin and he called in an rx for me. Picked it up this morning on our way to our little vacation at the beach. I took one about 11AM and feel asleep in the car soon thereafter. Then I felt pretty good today, even though there are a lot of people here at the beach and lots going on. I just have to remember to breathe, and get away to my room when things get overloaded. It will be fine though.

Yesterday I read a little bit of my blog from last year. I’ve been writing this blog for about a year now, prior to that I handwrote in a journal. What’s disturbing is that last December I was talking about stuff in therapy that is exactly the same as what I’m talking about now. How discouraging! Have I made no progress? I read December through February’s posts, and I do think that I have made some progress in some areas, but seem to sliding backwards in others. I am working hard on overcoming the perfectionism, being less critical of myself, and trying to focus on my strengths and talents. It’s not always working, but a lot of times it is.

But the anxiety and the intrusive thoughts don’t seem to be diminished at all compared to what I was talking about to J last year at this time. I also find that last year I was spending a lot of time with friends, going out to lunch and dinner and having people over. I have been isolating myself for quite some time now, and I have basically one friend left that I talk to and see on a regular basis. So that is a step backward.

So I’ve made forward progress in one area, no progress in another area, and reverse progress in a third area. That is discouraging.

Dec 23 2009

It’s a good thing I’m not suicidal…

….or I’d be dead by now. I started calling pdoc at 4:31PM yesterday, but they close at 4:30PM. I tried at 8:15AM, but they don’t open until 8:30AM. I called at 8:45AM and talked to the office manager, told her I wasn’t feeling well and that I thought I need a prescription for klonopin. She asked if I would like the pdoc to call me back, and I said yes. It is now 4:45PM and he hasn’t called. I did take one of my son’s valium at 11AM, and that seemed to do something for me. I have a lot of those, my son takes them when he gets his teeth cleaned, which he does about three times a year, and his dentist gave us a prescription for 25 of them. So we have extra. Still don’t want to dip into my klonopin stash. It’s so irrational.

Dec 22 2009

Therapy Recap 12/22/09

First let me say that I hate therapy. I had to get that out of the way.

We start the session same as always, How are you? Fine. How are you? Good. Good. What are we talking about? I looked around the room, like I usually do. I asked J if he ever thought about having some toys in the office. He said, “For you?” I said, “Not just for me. Don’t your other clients want toys?” He said there were some blocks in the other room for when the therapists see children. I didn’t think blocks would be what I needed, unless I could sit on the floor with them. I said, “Do you have a slinky? Or some play-dough?” He got up and went into the other room and came back with a squishy ball that was black and white like a soccer ball. I took it. I got to squish it the whole time.

I told J that I didn’t know what was wrong with me lately, that I think I have a brain tumor. He said he thought he had a brain tumor a couple of days ago because he was mixing words up. But then he decided he was just tired. He asked me why I thought I had a brain tumor. So I gave him some examples of what’s been going on.

First I told him that I hated having his book that he lent to me. I was afraid something would happen to it. It was too hard for me to come right out and say, “I was afraid I would purposely ruin it.” And since he is not a mind reader he didn’t get that. He said, “So, something could spill on it, or it could get ripped. What’s the big deal? That sounds like anxiety to me.”

Then I gave him the example of having the urge to steal things at the Container Store. We talked about the details of that a while. And I gave him the example of shopping in the grocery store with the portable scanner and how I accidentally put something in my bag without scanning it, and then I became somewhat obsessive about checking every item 2 or 3 times to be sure I scanned it, and now I don’t use the portable scanner anymore.

He told me that everyone has thoughts like this. I just hang on to them. He tried to find out what I thought would happen if I actually did put something in my pocket at the Container Store and tried to walk out with it, that the management would stop me and ask me to pay for it. I wouldn’t get arrested, the worst that would happen would be I wouldn’t allowed to shop there anymore. And he asked me what would be the benefit of stealing things and hiding them in my house. I couldn’t figure out the benefit of that, but he came up with a couple of lame benefits. I still don’t see the benefit of hiding things one would steal, I mean if I was going to steal things, which I’m still not certain that I’m not doing, I would want to use them. Isn’t that the purpose of stealing them?

And about his book – he said if I did ruin his book he would weigh that against the fact that I am a good client, my check is always the first one he gets when he sends out the bills, I’m never late, I never miss an appointment unless someone has died, my checks never bounce, etc. So what if I ruin his book?

I was getting the impression that he just wasn’t getting this. So I came right out and asked, “Why would I want to destroy your book?” He said, “Accidents happen.” I said, “It wouldn’t be an accident, I wanted to ruin your book.” He said that maybe it is because I have issues with him. I told him that I don’t have any issues with him. He said that perhaps in my subconscious I do. He knows that therapy is difficult for me. Perhaps I was angry because he loaned me the book and now I had homework, and it’s not a very interesting book and maybe I am mad. Maybe I think that therapy is supposed to be a collaborative effort and here he is giving me something to do on my own and maybe that is making me mad. Now, I have not felt any of those things. Maybe I do in my subconscious, I don’t know.

Then he brought up the matter that I disclosed to him at the last minute last week, this was also about bad thoughts that I had. But this was 15 to 20 years ago. He said he bets that if he asked 100 people, 85 of them would say they had those thoughts at one moment or another, and the other 15 probably had them but wouldn’t admit it. That’s very nice, but I didn’t have those thoughts at one moment or another, I had them all the time. For years.

I have to interject here. J talks a lot. A LOT. It’s because I don’t say much, because it is very difficult for me to talk in therapy. Which is ridiculous because that is the idea of therapy. I used to email him, but I don’t feel very comfortable with that anymore since the email debacle in August. So today we talked about toys for 5 minutes, I talked for about 10 minutes about the examples, and then he talked for the remaining 30 minutes. I know it is not his job to make me talk, but I wish he had some techniques to get me to talk more. But that isn’t his job, it’s my responsibility to say what I have to say.

Sometimes I find that he is talking and talking and he gets to something that I want to respond to, but it takes me a few minutes to formulate my response and by then he has moved onto something else.

An example of this is when J made the comment about 85 people having bad thoughts from time to time. I wanted to say, “I didn’t have them from time to time, I had them ALL the time.” I heard the words in my head and they were on their way to my mouth, but there is some sort of time delay and the words didn’t come out right away and then J had moved on to his next thought. Sigh.

Then J said that as I know he works with many substance abusers. Sometimes when they are in recovery they have dreams about using, and then they are worried that having a dream is just as bad as actually using. And he assures them that a dream is just a dream as long as it doesn’t lead to action. At this point I wanted to ask him if it is normal to have dreams and nightmares when I’m awake, because that is what happens to me. This happened last night, I had a waking nightmare that involved a car crash, and blood all over a highway and snow, and it was a highway that I had driven on yesterday and there was snow. But the words didn’t quite make it out again.

So J summarized the whole thing by saying that everyone has these thoughts, but everyone else just moves on from them and I hold on to them and use them to prove to myself that I am a bad person. Well, so I guess that’s it. He said he would like to continue this conversation and talk more about drives and impulses. As I was leaving he said that no one can control their thoughts.

The feeling I get from this, today anyway because my feelings change during the week as I process things, is that I am the same as everyone else. Everyone else has bad thoughts, and I just happen to be a person who makes a big deal out of them. I shouldn’t be wasting my time dwelling on these thoughts. It’s just anxiety, or my unconscious. And I’m wondering if he brought up the substance abusers as if to say to me, “hey, there are people out there with real problems, why are you wasting my time with imaginary thoughts?” I know he would never mean to do that to me, but if my subconscious could be angry with him for giving me a book to read, then couldn’t his subconscious be angry with me for wasting his time with trivial problems? If all of our subconsciouses are directing our behavior how do we know what is true and what isn’t?

I am left feeling stupid. I’ve been wasting my time being terrified of these bad thoughts for most of my life. J seems to be saying, “Everyone has them, why can’t I just be like all of the other people out there and forget about them?”

All of the things he said that were intended to make me feel better did not make me feel better. I’m trying to think of what he could have said or done that would have made me feel better. I don’t know if he is minimizing my problems (due to me not completely explaining them or because he truly feels they aren’t serious) or if I make too much out of things. I know I am over sensitive, and when violent thoughts blast through my mind they freak me out. I can’t help it, and maybe I just need to get over it. I am very confused right now. And my head is buzzing from the wellbutrin, and I don’t know what to think, and I’m completely emotional because I feel like I can’t get the help I need because I can’t even talk in therapy.

I called the pdoc at 4:31PM, but they close at 4:30, so I missed them. I’ll call again in the morning, I think I need some klonopin or something. I don’t want to have any more panic attacks, I don’t want to have thoughts about highways and car accidents and blood and garbage disposals and stealing and destroying people’s property. I don’t care if everyone else in the world has these thoughts, I don’t want to have them anymore. I have a stash of klonopin, but I don’t want to dip into it. I’ll get in touch with pdoc tomorrow and hopefully he’ll call me in a new rx.

Dec 21 2009

Me and Jason Bourne

I’m anxious about therapy tomorrow, and about going to the beach on Thursday with DH’s family for four days. I know it will be fun, but they don’t understand two important things:

1. Food issues
2. People needing to be by themselves for a little while

Other than that, it should be fine. Ugh.

I think I know why I’m so fascinated by Jason Bourne lately. Warning – if you haven’t seen the Bourne movies don’t read any further because I give away the ending.

It’s the good vs. evil conundrum, which I have been thinking about a lot lately as you know. Jason Bourne wakes up from being unconscious with bullets in his back and he doesn’t remember anything, except how to read, write, do math, speak at least 5 languages, walk, make coffee, tie knots, load and unload bullets into guns, shoot guns, and lots of martial arts. That’s more than most people know I guess, but for him it’s not enough. He wants to know who he is. As he discovers his talents he begins to wonder what in the hell kind of life he led. He recognizes that it’s not normal to know these things, that’s another thing he remembers – what normal is. He wants to get close to people, he feels protective of people, yet he has a feeling that he isn’t such a good guy. As flashbacks of his past occur he is dismayed to learn that he did some bad stuff. He knows he did those things, and he knows he doesn’t want to do them anymore, because he is a good guy. He knows he is a good guy, despite the bad things.

By the time we get to the third movie, 6 hours later, we find out that he was brainwashed into doing these evil things. He did volunteer, but without full knowledge of what the job entailed. And then he was pissed off, in a big way. However, he is aware, despite the fact that he was brainwashed, that he did do these evil things and he is very remorseful. As far as I know there were only three Bourne books, so that is the end of Jason Bourne. A good man, with lots of dead bodies along the way.