Monthly Archives: March 2010

Mar 31 2010

Therapy Recap 3/30/10

I couldn’t believe it after J’s email on Friday which said, “Hopefully we can discuss this further on Tuesday” (referring to our email conversation about my inability to communicate leading to people misunderstanding me), but he opened our session by asking, “What are we talking about today?”

I said, “Whatever.”

He said, “So I don’t get you.” OK, so I guess he did remember the email. Why he has to play that game at the beginning, I don’t understand.

We talked about why I felt he didn’t understand me at the last session, how he asked at the very end if I wanted to send the email I was planning to send to the woman I work for to him first. I told him that negated our whole conversation because my problem wasn’t writing the email to her, it was sending it. He tried to explain that he didn’t want me to send it to him so that he could proofread it, but to give me encouragement to send it. Whatever.

Then I told him that I actually did not send her the email saying that I couldn’t work for her. That I sent her an email saying that I could work for her, and it was his fault. Because I didn’t want to do what he told me to do. He didn’t understand that. He was saying, “Well, you didn’t want to work for her and I was just helping you tell her that.” I know that. The reason I didn’t want to do what he told me to do was because I was angry that he didn’t understand me during the session. I can’t remember if I told him that or not.

Then I told him that if I sent her the email saying I couldn’t work for her she might find someone else and then I would discover that I’m replaceable and I’d be a nobody. He went into a long thing about how we are all replaceable. He did a lot of logicalizing. Then he tried to get me to see that I am irreplaceable to my kids, husband, family and friends, but I don’t really see that. Although when my father died and my mother remarried I remember telling people that you can’t replace a parent, but you can replace a spouse. Wonder why that doesn’t apply to me.

I told him about Jamie Oliver and how his experiments with the school children in West Virginia kept failing, but he didn’t see it as a reflection of himself, and he just kept on trying, where I would have quit. And how I’m so selfish, unlike Jamie Oliver. J went into a whole thing about selfish vs unselfish and how everyone is somewhat selfish, even Barak Obama and his health care reform (huh?). He said he doesn’t think I’m selfish.

I told him how I almost quit the hotline and the events that transpired there, and how it was selfish of me to quit because of negative feedback. That led to him concluding that my feelings of self-worth come from external points of view – things other people say about me, and things other people do. I think that is fairly obvious, and I believe he realized this months and months ago, but obviously I have not made much progress here.

Then I said, “Like when you forgot to answer my email last week – that made me feel worthless.” He asked me how many times we have emailed each other. I don’t know, a lot. I told him the good email exchanges don’t count; forgetting me once is what I focus on. He said he had no excuse for not emailing me. Thanks a lot. I don’t want him to lie, but that would have been a perfect time for him to make up an excuse – his kid was sick, he had a lot to do because he was going out of town, etc. Because he had no excuse for forgetting to email me I can only come to one conclusion – I am totally forgettable. Worthless.

He asked me how much my feeling of worthlessness improved after he did eventually respond, and I said, “ZERO.” He asked me how much I thought this feeling should have improved, and I said, “Lots of things should happen in this world – there should be peace on earth, children shouldn’t be starving in Africa.” And then it was time to go. Bye.

Mar 30 2010

Hotline Update

Yesterday morning I got a call from one of the other supervisors on the hotline. The supervisor who had left me the negative feedback (Supervisor #3) forwarded my email to the main supervisor (Supervisor #1) who forwarded it to Supervisor #2. I really like #2, well I like #1 also, but she is mostly involved with funding and grants and administrative stuff and doesn’t spend too much time with hotline volunteers, although it was she and #2 who did our training. #2’s office is right next to the hotline room and she has to walk through the room to get to and from her office, so I see her and talk to her the most.

#2 has heard me over the past few weeks saying that I thought feedback from #3 wasn’t productive or I don’t understand it or it is sarcastic. For example last month I got a call from a woman who was upset because she called her sister in another state for her birthday. The sister has Alzheimer’s and was arguing with the caller saying it wasn’t her birthday. Naturally the caller was distraught at her sister being in such a condition – she was sad, anxious, and angry. We had a good call and I wrote up the report. The feedback said something like, “Look at the bright side! She never has to have an excuse for forgetting her sister’s birthday or forgetting to send a gift!” To me this feedback perfectly represents #3 and the type of person he is. He is full of himself, very sarcastic, and thinks he is just a riot. How is this feedback helpful to a volunteer? I’m all for humor and I do have a sarcastic side to me but I felt a lot of empathy towards this caller and I don’t want anyone making fun of her or the situation. But again, I’m not sure if this is because I am too sensitive.

So #2 read the email I sent to #3 and said she read the report and feedback in question and she agreed that the feedback was not appropriate, but #3 did say that he misread the report and he was very sorry. #2 told me that my report was just fine. She said that #3 feels really badly about the situation, which surprised me so much. I can’t imagine him feeling bad about this, and now I feel bad that I made him feel bad. #2 told me that I am doing a great job on the hotline, if I wasn’t she wouldn’t have asked me to take on extra shifts or to help with training new volunteers. She also said that if I want to continue on the hotline that she would do all of my feedback from now on.

I was really touched by her offer and I told her that I really enjoy the hotline, that I feel I do help some people and it seems silly to allow negative feedback to stop me from continuing with the job. I told her that I would appreciate her doing my feedback, that would make me feel better. I didn’t tell her, and I should, that I still want her to be honest in my feedback though. Just perhaps in a more constructive way than #3 gives feedback.

I hate to be one of those people that throws tantrums and quits and then when everyone begs her to stay she says, “OK, fine, if you insist.” There are people like that on forums all over the place and it drives me crazy. They just want some adoration, they never really intended to quit. I wonder if I’ve turned into one of those people.

I really do feel better though, knowing that #2 will be doing my feedback from now on.

Oh, and by the way, #3 is training to become a therapist. Yikes!

Mar 29 2010

Feeling Unworthy

Yesterday was a difficult day. I was looking forward to going in to the Hotline, as I had to miss last week for the wedding. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this, but we have to write a report for each call that we take. We take calls on the county crisis hotline, as well as on the national suicide hotline, and we do different call reports depending on which line the person calls on. I was having trouble filling out the suicide hotline call reports because I was unsure of the procedure, and I was getting negative feedback on these call reports. We get feedback for each call that we take, there are three supervisors that give feedback, and it seems that most, if not all, of my negative feedback was from one particular supervisor.

A few weeks ago there was a volunteer meeting/training session and we were taught how to properly fill out call reports. It was such a relief to finally know how to do it right, and the very next time I was on the hotline I got a call on the suicide line and I was confident that I filled out the report correctly. But yesterday when I went in and checked my feedback it was once again negative. I was pretty disappointed. I mentioned twice in the report that the caller did not have a plan, but the supervisor asked me why I didn’t mention in the report if he had a plan. I wrote that he had a doctor who prescribed his meds and that we discussed visiting his doctor and we went over what he would say to his doctor, but my feedback asked me what resources I gave to the caller. The feedback also said that I didn’t mention what level I thought the caller was at; even though I did mention at least twice that the caller did not want to commit suicide. And finally the feedback stated that although my report was detailed, it was missing a lot of important information.

I just couldn’t understand why I wasn’t able to communicate to the supervisor all of the information that he needed. Once again I was reminded of how I suck at communication, and that maybe I just shouldn’t be doing this job. It’s obviously not working out, I’m not good enough. I wrote him an email stating that I’m thinking of quitting, I just can’t do it right, and outlining the feedback he gave me. He did reply by email shortly afterwards, and he actually said that he read my report wrong, that I did state that the caller had no plan. But he said I should have given the caller resources in case he can’t afford his doctor or if he has no insurance (the caller never mentioned this, and I seemed sure that he was going to see his doctor, but I guess I should never assume). And he said I needed to state what level I thought the caller was at because I didn’t explain his negative thoughts (I thought I actually did do that in the report – saying that he had obsessive thoughts in his head about killing himself, even though he didn’t really want to). But he said that he reads up to 30 call reports a day, and he gets tired, and sometimes he misreads reports. He apologized and said he would hate to see me quit because of my feedback on a call. He said we should talk by phone or in person if I want to.

Now I wouldn’t quit just because of one negative feedback, but I seem to be getting a lot of negative feedback. To be honest, I do get positive feedback as well, but I ignore that. I only focus on the negative. I just don’t know what to do. On the one hand I enjoy the hotline, on the other hand maybe I’m too sensitive and I can’t handle criticism. I know that even feedback that isn’t meant to be criticism I am taking as criticism. Is it worth it?

Then I start to think how selfish I am. I should be doing this because I want to help people, and stop thinking about myself so much. I think I am helpful to people on the hotline, not everyone, but I know that some callers have called back and asked for me, so I must be doing something for them. Isn’t that why I signed up to do this – to help people? I just feel really selfish, like I’m doing it to make myself feel good instead of to help other people feel better.

I was watching Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution last night. I really like him, I liked him when he was just a regular chef on tv, wearing a hat cooking outside. Now I really admire him. He was having a tough time on the show this week, his experiments were failing and the kids just wanted to eat more and more junk. The administrators were getting fed up with him. But he really has a passion for wanting to help people, and he didn’t take any of this personally. He never thought, “I’m a loser, I’m worthless, I can’t help them.” He never internalized any of his failures – he never thought of himself as a failure, just that his experiments failed. And he felt this was due to external forces – society, the government, others’ preconceived notions. And he just regrouped and continued on. How do people do that?

I woke up with a terrible headache this morning, did a lot of crying yesterday. Feeling worthless. Even my T forgot to email me back last week, that’s how unworthy I am. If I wasn’t paying him I wouldn’t even be worthy enough to sit in the same room with him. Yikes, I’m going to go for a long walk and clear my head.

Mar 27 2010

Email, email, email….

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

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

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

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

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

Mar 25 2010

Email Non Update

So J didn’t write back. He asked me why I thought our session didn’t go well, I told him my thoughts, briefly (trying to keep all of my emails very brief), and asked him if he thought I wasn’t being understood because I don’t communicate well. He never responded.

Now I’m not sure if he didn’t get the email, if he is busy, if I’m in trouble, if I seem ungrateful because I said that I don’t think he really got it, etc. I can think of thousands of reasons, but I’m sure that most, if not all, of them are untrue. I hate waiting for responses. I might have to email him again just to be able to move on with my week.

Thank you all for the great dialogue on yesterday’s post. I have a lot to think about. Right now I’m feeling that I just can’t find my place in the world. And not hopeful that I ever will. So I can continue a futile search, or maybe just come to accept the fact that this is the way it is. I feel like the Man of La Mancha (actually never saw the show, but I think I know the plot). I’m dreaming the impossible dream.

The other day when I was talking to my cousin we talked a little about our childhoods. I hate my little child, well, the one I was when I was little. If I ever have the chance to run into her on the street I would push her in front of bus so that she doesn’t have to grow up and be me.

Mar 24 2010

Understanding and an Insight

I couldn’t sleep last night. I kept waking up, and finally at 3:30am I woke up and really couldn’t go back to sleep. I tried for a while, but too many thoughts were whirling around on that hamster wheel I call my brain. Finally at 4:50am I emailed my T and said, “I don’t think my session went very well yesterday – just wondering what you thought.” I guess somehow that made me feel better because I was able to fall asleep until my alarm went off at 6:30am.

J emailed me back this morning and said he thought the session went well because “We discussed the things that you felt were important. We came up with a behavioral plan (or at least a next step) in dealing with your son and we were able to connect how the three topics were related.” Then he sent another email a couple of minutes later asking, “Why do you think it did not go well?”

I thought about what to say for a while, and responded, “That’s true, we did do those things. The discussion about my son went well I thought. It was the other two things. Maybe my expectations are too high. I don’t feel like you really got it, but that’s just my inability to communicate well I think. Do you think that is why I feel that no one understands me, because I don’t communicate well?”

Ron made an interesting comment on yesterday’s post that J’s personality type just can’t understand my personality type. It makes sense, but it seems such a severe generalization. How can a full 1/16 of the population of earth totally not understand another 1/16 of the population?

I’m thinking of my mother’s type (ESTJ) vs my type (INFJ). We are so incredibly different. However, when I read about her type and how I can best communicate with her and why she acts the way she does I felt that I understood her so much better. Can’t we move past our personality types and come to understand the others? I would think that a psychologist especially would be able to do this. But maybe due to the personality differences the communication issues become even a greater hurdle.

Speaking of my mother, I had an interesting insight the other day. My mother has high expectations and sets high standards for other people, and when they don’t meet her expectations she thinks there is something wrong with them.

I also have high expectations and set high standards for other people, but when they don’t meet my expectations I think there is something wrong with me.

I’m surprised that my mother and I can get along at all, given our differences. I guess I should give us both some credit for working hard to have a good relationship.

Mar 23 2010

Therapy Recap 3/23/10

I’m feeling unsatisfied with my therapy session today. But maybe I just have expectations that are too high. I’m not sure. I’m feeling misunderstood. But maybe I am a person who is unable to be understood.

I emailed J yesterday with a list of three things we could talk about, and we did talk about all three.

1. Telling my cousin about my “stuff” this weekend at the wedding and feeling uncomfortable with that.
2. Last week I got an email from one of the people I work for asking me if I can come in for an hour and help her with her computer. I really didn’t have time and I wanted to say no, but it is so hard for me. I had the thought that I could email J and he’d tell me what to do, and that thought freaked me out.
3. My son and continuing to talk about my plan to get him on a good path.

J asked me about my cousin and what she was going through and what prompted me to open up to her. We talked about the driving into the tree stuff, and how we have similar issues and had similar childhoods. He said that in a couple of weeks or a month I’ll feel better about having told her because I’ll see that she isn’t spreading my secrets around the family. He also said that since she is in a worse place than me I should feel safe that my secrets will stay secrets. I don’t necessarily feel that I am in a better place than she is and I don’t know why he said that. It made me feel minimized. First point of dissatisfaction.

Then the issue of saying no to the woman I work for. J wanted to know why I was horrified about my thought of asking him for help. I told him that first of all I don’t ask for help, I do things myself. And secondly, I had asked him for help once before and it turned into a huge disaster. We talked about why that didn’t work and how I have trouble asking for help. So he said I should tell him what my email to him would be if I had sent it. We talked about that and he dictated what he would have emailed me back, which is exactly what I knew he would say and I told him that. But then I said the problem isn’t knowing what to say in an email to her, it is actually sending the email. And that is why I’m glad I didn’t email him asking for help, because he wouldn’t have understood exactly what I was asking for because I don’t explain it well. So then we talked about why it would be difficult for me to send her an email saying I don’t have time to help her. I thought he kind of understood, but for me the issue was more that I can’t ask for help than the actual email. More on this later.

Third item – my son. This was a somewhat more productive discussion and J brought up the fact that I need to get rid of my guilt about my abilities as a parent in order to be more authoritarian. This doesn’t seem practical as it could take a long time, although it does make sense. We left that discussion deciding that I would tell my husband of the tentative ideas that we have so far and see how he can help.

As I was getting up to leave J asked if I was going to email the woman I work for, and I said I would try. He said, “Do you want to send me the email first?” I asked him if he would send it for me and he said that wouldn’t be a good idea. So what would be the point of sending him the email? I already told him that writing the email isn’t the problem for me; I don’t need someone to proofread it for me. I need someone to press the damn send button! After our discussion about this it didn’t seem to sink in for him.

He did say that he welcomes emails like the one I would have sent if I had actually sent it. Emails where someone is asking him how to proceed with a certain issue and asking what they should do. I can’t bring myself to do that. My emails aren’t quite like that. I actually haven’t sent any emails lately, except for quick ones like suggesting topics to talk about. I was really feeling unsatisfied with the responses I was getting from J via email. Ggrrr, I’m feeling resentful again. I’ve brought up so much in sessions and in emails and nothing ever seems to get resolved, there is no continuity. I’m getting frustrated. And I don’t feel understood, and it makes me sad that I’m a person who is not able to be understood.

Mar 22 2010

Telling Someone

This weekend was my cousin’s wedding. It was in Atlanta, and I was pretty calm about flying. I did take my Xanax, which knocks me out (I woke up with a start when the plane touched down – I thought we crashed!), but I would say I’m a pretty comfortable flyer right now. Much different than I was 10 years ago.

The wedding was nice, but it was sad that more family members didn’t come. We have such a small family and for my mother and sister not to be there was just a shame. My mother called me last night and asked some questions about the wedding, but she didn’t seem to want to hear about how nice it was and how much fun I had. I think she wanted me to be miserable and for the wedding to have been full of screw-ups or something.

My first cousin, who is 6 years younger than me, was there. A year or so ago she wrote an email to the family saying that she decided to divorce her husband and that she has been suffering from depression. I wrote her a long email back telling her about my experiences with mental illness, as well as other people in the family who have suffered as well. She and I talked about it a little, but then she dropped out of sight. I saw her last August after she called me out of the blue, and we were supposed to get together again, but again she dropped out of sight. I tried emailing and facebooking her but she never got back to me. I invited her to my house last December, but didn’t hear back from her.

Saturday when I saw her at the wedding the first thing she said was, “It’s been a hard year.” Later in the day she told me what was going on with her. She was very depressed, suicidal, and even sent her son to live with his father for the school year. She told me that she was thinking about driving into a tree.

This prompted me to tell her about what has been going on with me (I never knew anyone else actually thought about driving into trees). I told her that she was the first person I’ve told. When she was suicidal she told her mother and her mother came down to stay with her for a while, but she said her mother was mean to her. Which she is. She also told her boyfriend, and he was freaked out by the whole thing. So basically she had no good support, although she did get a therapist. This is probably why I don’t tell anyone, I wouldn’t get good support either.

She and I have a lot in common, including the fact that we both isolate when we are feeling depressed. We both made a promise to try to push at the other when we sense that we are withdrawing, because I think we can be supportive for each other. I’m not sure how I feel about revealing all of this to another person though, of course it makes me feel vulnerable and I have trouble trusting people. What if she tells anyone else in the family? Oh well, I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. In the meantime I’m going to just trust that by telling someone I have made an important step.

Mar 16 2010

Therapy Recap 3/16/10

When I got to therapy today J said, “What are we talking about today?” I told him that he wasn’t playing fair, that last week I had two things to talk about, but he wanted to talk about my new job so we did. He said that we should talk about what I want to talk about, not what he wants to talk about and if I had something to talk about I should have said, “I don’t want to talk about xyz, I want to talk about abc.” I told him I can’t do that. He said that he invites me to do that. I said thank you for the invitation.

So he suggested that I talk about those two things from last week, and after hemming and hawing about it I did. First I mentioned the background check for my new job and how he asked me about that. He had asked two weeks ago what would happen if my new boss found something in my background, which I knew he wouldn’t since there was nothing to be found. But I knew that J was convicted of a crime and I wasn’t sure if he was asking about me or him. I told him that I knew about the crime and I never felt badly about knowing since it is public knowledge (in my state we can search on a particular website to see if anyone has committed a crime, or even if they are involved in anything court related like a divorce, or a speeding ticket). But I did feel bad after our session two weeks ago because I felt like I should have told him that I knew. And when he asked me about it I felt like he was asking me to tell him that I knew about his record. I told him that it certainly didn’t matter to me (it was 15 years ago and wasn’t a crime that would affect anything about therapy) and it was none of my business which is why I never told him that I knew.

He said that he didn’t mind me knowing, he knows it is public knowledge, it was a long time ago. He did say something interesting though, he said that because of that incident he chose this career path. I know that he was in pharmacy school, and maybe a person with a criminal record can’t become a pharmacist. But they can become a psychologist!

So we talked about that a little, and how maybe I felt guilty about knowing this information and how I felt he was testing me. He threw out a guess that maybe because I was worried about how he would react when he found out I saw another T, and maybe that was related. I’m not sure about that, but it’s an interesting theory.

Then I brought up the second issue, the topic of my son, and how when I went to see him 3 years ago about my son he helped me with a behavioral plan and we didn’t go into feelings at all, but this time when I wanted help with my son it was all about feelings and it turned into a big awful mess with me wanting to kill myself. He said things are different now and he can’t work on my problems without the feeling part. I still don’t get that though. So I asked him if I should see someone different specifically for my son’s problem, someone who is more objective. He went over to his computer to look up people and while he was doing that we talked more about it. He talked about me wanting someone to just tell me what to do about my son, and I said, yes, that is exactly what I want. While he was talking I just asked him, “Why can’t you do that?” So he threw out some suggestions and they were really good, and it turns out he really can do it, although he did try to get me to see that it is somewhat about the feelings as well.

I told him that when I was feeling really bad last month I called a hotline. That it wasn’t my hotline, and I wanted to see what it would be like to call them. I told him that the woman I talked to said something really good – that whatever I did in the last 19 years with my son doesn’t matter right now, that I should start from where I am right now. J said that he was watching Apollo 13 this weekend and there was a part of the movie with an explosion and everyone was arguing over who caused the explosion. Someone said it didn’t do any good to bicker over who caused it; they just needed to fix the damage and get back.

We talked about different things I could do with my son, and we went over the list I had made last month about things I do for my son, things that could be taken away or used as barters or bribes to get my son to do things. J said that if my son was 5 or 12 or 35 it would be much easier, but he is almost 20 and it’s a really difficult age. But he came up with a couple of things that could really work, and it gives me hope that maybe J can do this for me, and that I can do the things that he suggests.

I told him that I was afraid of slipping back into the way I felt last month after talking about my son, and he said we would just have to be careful. After acknowledging this, at one point he asked me, “So what makes you a good parent?” And I said, “I’m not necessarily a good parent. But I am not talking about that.” Hello? That is exactly the type of thing that sends me into a spiral down the rabbit hole. He said that was fine, but he just wanted to point out that I could have said that I give my kids three meals a day, and take them to activities, and make them go to school, etc. But instead my first reaction is that I am not a good parent. Yes, I know that. But I don’t want to go there right now.

So in the end I did talk about my two topics that I had ready for last week, and we did figure out a way for J to help me with my son, without talking too much about feelings for my sake, and with talking a little about feelings for his sake. It was good.

Mar 14 2010

Time To Think

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

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

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

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