Monthly Archives: February 2011

Feb 27 2011

What Do You Think I Should Do?

As I mentioned, my cousin called me last Sunday saying she isn’t doing well and has attempted suicide twice in the last two months. We talked (or she did) for 50 minutes on the phone. There wasn’t much I could say, but I tried my best. We decided to get together this weekend.

Monday I emailed her saying I hope she is ok and I think it is great that we are getting together over the weekend, that I can’t wait to see her. No response.

Tuesday I emailed her asking for her address. Within an hour she got back to me with her address. I just had a feeling, I don’t know what it was, but I wanted to go see her Tuesday night. I called my aunt and asked her opinion, she said I could wait for the weekend, but if I had an intuition I should go sooner. So that night I drove to my cousin’s house (she is about 40 minutes away). Luckily my aunt had talked to her on the phone about half an hour before I got there and told her I was on my way.

When I arrived it was somewhat awkward. She didn’t know why I came, and I felt uncomfortable. Her twelve year old son was there as well (she and her husband are divorced and their son goes back and forth since they live nearby each other). But we sat at the dining room table and started to talk, then we went upstairs so her son wouldn’t hear everything. We laid on her bed and talked a lot, and cried some. She said she was glad I came because had a feeling it would be a bad night. I was glad I went too.

When I left, after about three hours, she again said how glad she was that I had come, and we’ll get together over the weekend.

Friday I emailed her to see what we would do, and she called and said she was tired, she couldn’t come over, but maybe Saturday or Sunday. So we decided on Sunday. Last night I emailed her and she called today, Sunday, crying and upset, saying she wasn’t doing well, she had a bad day yesterday and a bad night, a lot of bad thoughts and suicidal ideation. Another friend was with her and she took some klonopin and is hoping to fall asleep for a bit and then I can come over in a little while. Whether she wants me to or not I’m going to go over there this afternoon.

In the meantime I wrote to the director of the crisis hotline where I worked asking for recommendations for inpatient treatment. I think that is what my cousin needs, but she says the facilities in her location are pretty bad. She is afraid to talk to her therapist or psychiatrist about her thoughts because she doesn’t want them to commit her.

I don’t know what to do really. I don’t think there is anything I can do. I can sit with her and talk with her, but that isn’t a solution. My aunt suggested she call NIH and see if she can get treatment there, but she is reluctant to call. I am going to see if she will let me call and get information on her behalf. I just don’t know what else to do, and I don’t think I can be very helpful since I’m not in a very good place emotionally or mentally right now either. I’m afraid we’ll end up with a suicide pact and we’ll both take our lives together.

Many of us have been in her situation – can you tell me what you thought would have been helpful for you? I just don’t know. Thank you.

Feb 23 2011

Therapy Recap 2/22/11

Since I haven’t been writing in my blog, I must give a rundown of my week, otherwise the therapy recap won’t make sense. So my week in a nutshell:

Tuesday night: fight with daughter
Friday: grocery shopping trip with boss’s housekeeper (who is now my friend) – really fun
Friday night: daughter tells me she is sick with either mono or strep, she is 1000 miles away at school
Sunday morning: send mean email to boss
Sunday mid day: send email apologizing to boss
Sunday afternoon: cousin calls to tell me she has attempted suicide twice in the last two months and doesn’t know what to do
Monday: telephone to aunt to discuss situation with cousin

That’s about it.

I just started talking from the events on Friday until the events on Sunday. It went something like this:

“So, on Friday I went grocery shopping with my boss’s housekeeper. I really love her, we get along great and we have a lot of fun when we go shopping. We laughed a lot. Then we were pushing our carts back to the car and she said, ‘I’m so happy, just doing this.’ And I said that I was just thinking that too. But I felt really badly that I hadn’t said anything, that I never would say anything like that and I wish I could. Then Friday night my daughter called to tell me she was sick and I got anxious about that and I felt bad because we had had a fight Tuesday night and she said she felt sick all week and Sunday morning I sent my boss a mean email, and then I sent another one later apologizing, and he said ‘no problem’ then half an hour later he sent another saying ‘I’m sorry you have a sick child far away’ and then a couple of hours later my cousin called to say she tried to commit suicide twice in the last two months and she doesn’t know what to do and she talked for 50 minutes and she asked me if our aunt knew about my issues and I said she didn’t and my cousin said she was surprised because she thought my aunt and I were so close and I said we are, but I don’t talk about things like that, and then Monday I talked to my aunt and I told her that I don’t know how much help I can be to my cousin because I’m not in such a great place right now and my aunt said, ‘well you’ve never tried to kill yourself’ and ‘I know you have issues, but you’ve never been as bad off as cousin is’ and that made me feel bad because I have never opened up to her about my problems even though we are close, and that’s about it, why are you being so quiet?”

I looked at the clock, and only 10 minutes had gone by since I walked in, but it seemed like I was talking for at least 30 minutes. How did this happen?

J said that was good and he was being quiet because I was talking, now can we go back through the whole scenario and talk about emotions? So we did that.

I told him that I recently heard the term “emotionally unavailable” and I feel like that describes me. He asked me where I got that term from and I said it’s on google, mostly referring to men, but I think I have it. And these things that happened with people this week made me realize just how emotionally unavailable I am. Someone had once made a comment about my writing, saying, “She doesn’t put her feelings in her writing, so it’s kind of flat” and I remember this and thought it is probably true and also a sign of my “emotional unavailability.”

J took a different approach than what I thought though, in that he tried to convince me that I am not emotionally unavailable and I have high expectations of myself in this area, as in most others. He said when I was grocery shopping with my friend, that just because I didn’t come out and say “I’m so happy this is fun” it doesn’t mean I wasn’t emotionally there. I was laughing, and joking, and having fun and she could see this. I told him that is true, but I want to be able to express emotions. He said it’s easy when you are having fun, and people like to hear that you are having a good time with them.

Then he said something a little creepy. He said “I don’t mean to be crude, but [and I can’t remember exactly what went here, either he saw this on tv, or read about it, or someone asked him] how to talk dirty in bed, and the answer was ‘you just do’”. Hmmm….I don’t have a problem talking about sex at all, not that we ever have, but this just seemed a little off the wall to me. I think he could have used a different example, that’s all.

He said, so when you are having a good time you just tell the other person. There are no barriers. And I said, “Yes there are barriers!” He asked me what they are, and I told him they are the fact that I don’t trust anyone, and I don’t like to vulnerable. He explained that if I tell someone I am having a good time, or I am happy in their presence they are unlikely to say “Well, I’m not!” Even if they aren’t having such a great time, or aren’t so happy with me, it will likely make them feel good to know how I feel in that moment, so they will give a positive response.

He asked me more about the fight with my daughter, and I explained that, it really was just a typical teenager type thing, but I felt bad because we didn’t resolve it before we ended talking for the night, and then Friday she called to say she was sick. J asked me if I was upset about having fun with my friend that day because my daughter was sick, did I feel guilty about that? I told him I did not feel guilty about that, should I feel guilty about that, the reason I was sad about the friend thing is because I want to be able to express emotions like she did. And he restated that he really doesn’t think it is a problem that I didn’t say anything, because I was displaying emotion in a different way.

J asked me about the “mean” email, and I explained to him what had happened. My boss emailed me that he is having angst about becoming an empty nester, and that email just happened to come when my daughter was sick and my email back to him was all about “just you wait, it gets worse, wait until you have a long distance fight with your kid, and then they get sick and there isn’t anything you can do about it…..on and on.” And he replied “Thanks a lot.” I felt so ashamed of myself, I know I was triggered by his comment and it came at a bad time, but I wasn’t empathetic at all and basically I tried to one up him. But J said the fact that I sent an email apologizing, telling him that he caught me at a bad time and I shouldn’t have taken my anxiety out on him, and then my boss sent me back two emails, the first saying “no problem” then the second saying he was sorry my daughter is sick, was really good and we both expressed our feelings and worked it out. And I spend the whole day Sunday thinking he would fire me, but my boss moves past things really quickly, and when I saw him Monday the whole thing was forgotten. I told J that I suppose things worked out ok, but I felt that my boss and I kept missing each other, emotionally. (PS – my boss expresses emotions very freely, and to everyone he talks to).

I’m not sure we got to the suicidal cousin (PS – I went to see her last night, I wanted to make sure she is ok). J said something about getting my emotions out on my blog (not sure I do that according to some of my readers) and I said that I miss my blog. He asked me why I’m not writing in it (I didn’t remind him that we already spoke of this). I said it was because I thought I was using my blog as a replacement for talking to people in real life. He asked if I am now talking to people in real life, and I replied that I feel like I am talking more to him, and he agreed. He wanted to know if it is such a black and white thing, the writing. I told him that I do write occasionally, but about less important topics, like recipes, and it isn’t very satisfying. He asked if I set a time limit for not writing on the blog and I didn’t, and he said maybe soon I can go back to it. He asked when my writing group is meeting next, and I’m not sure, but I said I don’t write stories for the group that are anything like what I write on my blog anyway.

I think he tried to reassure me that things in the past week went better than I made them seem, and I told him that it seemed like it was one event after another showing my emotional unavailability and each time something happened it made me more sad. I believe I used the phrase “emotional unavailability overload” and he brought up the How To Talk Dirty In Bed For Dummies thing again, which was just as creepy the second time.

I’m a bit confused. I want to open up more to people, be able to express my feelings verbally. But J is making it seem like I don’t need to do that, that my expectations of myself are too high. Does he think I will never be capable of this? That I should just accept things the way they are? He knows my goal is to have better relationships with people and to connect more with people, and I thought to do that it would be good to be able to express myself emotionally and be more vulnerable and open with people. I have a lot of questions for him next week I suppose.

And another thing. I few times during the session I got teary eyed, and I think my voice got wavery or breaky once or twice, and J just continued on talking as though nothing was happening. Is that a normal t thing to do? I’m frankly not sure what t’s are supposed to do when a client gets emotional, or even cries (gasp). And I don’t even know what I would expect or want him to do. Say “Are you ok?” or “Why is xyz making you sad?” or ignore it, which is what he does. He just continues on with whatever he is saying. Which I guess is ok, not making a big deal out of anything, he knows I don’t like to draw attention to myself, which is pretty difficult to avoid in the therapy room when one is being stared at like a bug. I don’t know, just wondering what other t’s do.

Later in the day I checked the voter registration website for my state, because I was thinking of changing my political party to an independent one (I am currently registered for one of the two major parties), and I learned that anyone could enter anyone else’s name, zip code and birthdate and see the results which include their full name, address, polling location, and registered political party. So I entered J’s information, just for kicks, and, gulp….he is registered in the party that I am not. I won’t say which one of us is which, but they are the two major parties, and I didn’t like what I saw. It’s ridiculous, his political views have nothing to do with my therapy. Besides I should have known his views based on the cars he drives. Not that one’s choice of cars is a definite determinant of their political viewpoints, but sometimes it is. I was surprised, and I’m still trying to figure out why. Another interesting psychological puzzle.

Feb 18 2011

Cooking News

I have a request for a cooking post, which is timely because I have been doing a lot of cooking lately. And I got a wonderful new cookbook “The Essential New York Times Cook Book” by Amanda Hesser, and I’ve been trying out a lot of new recipes.

So here you go!

blondies

Blondies I made for the Super Bowl. I think this was my first time making blondies and they didn’t come exactly the way I wanted. I would prefer them more sweet and more chewy.

eggs

Deviled Eggs – also for Super Bowl. I adore deviled eggs. But no one ate them! So sad.

salad

Salad on a stick. A pain in the ass to make. Served with blue cheese dressing. Healthy!

cupcakes

Super Bowl cupcakes – some with black sugar for Pittsburgh fans, some with green sugar for Packers fans. I am not a fan of either team, but I don’t particularly care for Pittsburgh, so I am happy that Green Bay won.

spices

Here is what I do on weekends. Organize, label and alphabetize my spices. Please don’t tell me that is a symptom of OCD, ok?

soup

Mulligatawny soup. Oh my god, this was so good. It has chicken in it and some jasmine rice. Lots of spices including turmeric, ginger, coriander and cayenne.

chicken

Roast lemon chicken. Also very delicious. Nothing better than a good roast chicken, right?

green beans

I served the chicken with these green beans (haricots vert) with ginger and garlic. Really quick, easy, and tasted so good.

noodles

Asian sesame noodles garnished with peanuts and cucumbers. I went to the Chinese grocery store to buy ingredients for this. I can’t read Chinese, so it was somewhat difficult, but I was able to find what I needed and this tasted great. My son loved it without the cucumbers.

olives

Moroccan Chicken smothered in Olives. This also had some great spices in it – ginger, turmeric, cumin and pimenton (sweet Spanish smoked paprika).

I also made two other soups, one is a Farro and Chickpea soup that was outstanding. Farro is my new favorite grain. Also a Spinach and Split Pea soup that, frankly, was ick. Very healthy, but I just can’t bring myself to eat it.

I have also been on a hunt for the best Banana Bread. I’ve been making a different one every week, and I think I am close to perfection. When I find it I’ll let you know.

If anyone wants any recipes just ask and I’ll email them to you!

Feb 15 2011

Therapy Recap 2/15/11

I’m not going into a lot of detail here, just bullet points of the main points of therapy today.

  • I started by telling J that I felt pretty good after I left last week, but then had the thoughts of him being bored, and what was therapeutic, and my insight on Friday, and figuring out what was therapeutic about last week and asking him how to tell the difference between a distorted belief and a real belief.
  • J saying that he thought about my perspective on the Wrestler a couple of days after my session when I was talking about it, and how he tried to see it from my point of view and had a different perspective on it now.
  • J asking me how I felt physically when I had my insights on Friday (I told him I have no idea) and if I felt it was freeing to talk so much last week (I said no, it produced a lot of anxiety for me.)
  • Discussion about whether what other people think about me is important (me saying yes, very important).
  • Me asking “how do I know if I am boring”, I can’t trust J to tell me the truth. He said later in the conversation that he doesn’t find me boring at all, but he knows his opinion doesn’t hold any weight with me because I am paying him.
  • I told him the story of my monthly writing group, the woman from that group that I spent a day with a few weeks ago, and the get together I planned last week for the people from my actual writing class.
  • Discussion about how I don’t open up to people, I prefer to get people to talk about themselves, I am sad because even when I have an opportunity I can’t say much about myself and I guess I appear closed off.
  • J telling me a good way to email the woman I spent the day with, and I actually did email her today after my session.
  • J telling me how to handle getting together with the people from my writing class again, they all said they want to, but no one is stepping up to the plate to plan another get together, and maybe they are waiting for me to do it again.
  • How the writing class get together went, and that someone emailed the next day that she had never met such interesting people in one place, and me thinking she must be talking about the other people there and not me.
  • I felt like I talked a fair amount today, about things I wanted to talk about, but J talked more than he did last week, which made me feel better. I told him he was very quiet last week and he said he doesn’t like to talk over people.
  • I have something I feel would be good to talk to him about, but I am very ashamed of this thing and have no idea how to go about talking about it. So I didn’t say anything today.
Feb 14 2011

What is therapeutic?

This break from the blog isn’t working out very well, is it? Maybe I can’t be all or nothing about the blog, maybe I can just write now and then. I actually wrote this last Friday, because at my t session last Tuesday I left feeling, “How was that therapeutic?” And I decided not to think about it, that an idea would just come to me. And it did, on Friday. Here is what I wrote:

I liked last week’s session. I cleared up my misunderstanding about “why do I keep coming back?”, I explained why I fear illness and aging and I talked about stopping my writing in my blog. I talked a lot.

It took me three days to figure out what was therapeutic about this. But I think what I have come up with, is my fear of vulnerability and my fear of what other people think about me. I think everything I said last week was boring, or stupid. My whole story about growing up with a sick father and sister, the ridiculousness of going on and on about The Wrestler. I’m sure I was a dull, boring person and the only reason anyone would listen to me is if I am paying them.

But maybe it doesn’t matter what I talk about. Well, it does. But one of the therapeutic aspects of this is changing distorted beliefs about what people think about me, and being less reliant on what other people think about me in order to feel good about myself.

It matters what I talk about, because I also need therapeutic help in allowing myself to become more vulnerable, and the way to do that is to share parts of myself that I don’t usually share. So, yes, I could go in and talk about the latest People magazine (if I actually read it) and that would help with overcoming the distorted thoughts, but it wouldn’t help with the vulnerability.

However, and this is the tricky part, what if my thoughts about myself aren’t distorted? What if I really am a dull, boring person and the only way I can get people to listen to me is if I pay them? How will I know this? There are certainly boring people out there, and there is nothing worse than being boring and not knowing it.

So this brings up my distrust of people. I don’t trust that they are telling me the truth, I don’t trust that they aren’t saying behind my back, “That Harriet – she is beyond dull”, I don’t trust them not to laugh at me if I reveal something personal, or ignore it, or tell me I am being silly, to just get over it. I don’t know the therapeutic solution for this.

Feb 8 2011

Therapy Recap 2/8/11

I’m taking a break from my break to write a therapy recap. I had a good therapy session today. I’m not sure why this is, it could be due to a number of factors, but none is definitive.

When I went to see pdoc last week I told her that J, my t, asked me why I keep coming back to therapy. This hurt me. She told me to ask him about it.

So when I walked in we said our hellos and how are you’s, and then I said, “What did you mean when you asked me last week ‘why do I keep coming back’?” J actually answered the question, he didn’t put it back on me or deflect or any of those therapeutic techniques. I realized then that my favorite twin was in session with me today, so that was a relief. He told me that he was asking me that question for me, not because he wants to kick me out. He wanted to know what I am getting out of therapy. That he realizes it is very anxiety provoking for me to come to therapy sessions, and it takes tremendous fortitude to do this every week. I accepted that answer and thanked him for explaining his motivation. I told J about my cycle of feeling frustrated after each session because I didn’t talk about what I want to talk about, and that lasts a few days, then I think “I can do better next week” and that is what motivates me to come back next week, but then I don’t do better and the cycle repeats every week. We talked about my high expectations of myself, and what I feel I “should” be doing in therapy. I asked how do I know if my expectations are too high, and he said if I am never meeting them perhaps I would think they are too high.

Then I said, “I wanted to continue our discussion from a few weeks ago when we were talking about aging and illness.” I asked J if he remembered that and he said he did. I told him that I was going to send him some stuff to read via email, but I didn’t. That I wanted to explain more about why I feel the way I feel. He said, “OK, let’s talk about it then.” I said, “OK, yes, now seems like a good time to do that.”

So I told him the whole story about my father’s illness, and my sister’s illness, and my nephew’s illness. I guess I kind of rambled. I said, “Where am I going with this?” a few times. I talked more than usual. More than I really normally do. J was so quiet. I’m used to him doing a lot of talking. I thought maybe he was bored. Not because of anything he said or did, but because I thought maybe it was a boring story. Before I began the story I told him “It’s not that great of a story” and he said something like “already minimizing yourself before you even start” and I said, “yes, exactly, don’t get too excited.”

Afterwards he asked me a few questions. One I found interesting was about my father. I told him that my father couldn’t do the things other fathers did because of his illness. And because of the secrecy about his illness I had a lot of questions. J said, “Questions like, ‘Does my dad really have an illness, or does he just not want to play with me?’” I thought that was weird. Like he is looking for reasons to explain something. I have told him in the past about how great my father was, and how he thought I was great no matter what I did. So I said, “No, not questions like that. Questions like ‘Am I going to get the same sickness that my dad has?’”

Then we talked more about aging and illness and my thoughts about how people aren’t meant to live to be 98 years old, and The Wrestler. J said he has seen The Wrestler (he hasn’t seen many movies that I have seen) and I went into a whole lecture about the themes of the movie and how I relate to it. J said he admired Randy’s perseverance and did I admire it too? I said he persevered in the wrong things – he spent all of his time trying to relive his glory days instead of persevering in developing good relationships with people which would have made him happier in the end.

We disagreed about the ending of the movie though. J said, “We don’t know what happens in the end.” I said I knew what happened. I won’t tell though, in case you haven’t seen it.

We talked about J’s positive outlook on aging and how great his life will be when he is 70, as he told me a few weeks ago. He changed his tune today, however, and said he doesn’t know that. He could be hit by a bus tomorrow; he could have cancer, etc. I said, “yes, but if you are alive your life will be great.” He’s perfect, so how could it not be?

Then I said, “I stopped writing in my blog.” J replied, “That is a big change for you.” I told him that I thought it was replacing interacting with real people. He asked how today’s session went in relation to this revelation about not writing anymore. I asked what he meant, and he explained. I said, “So what you are saying is did I talk more today because I am not writing in my blog? Yes. And that is part of the reason why I stopped writing.” He said that isn’t exactly what he meant, not talking more necessarily. We talked about talking in therapy, and I told him that the days I have something to talk about are the days he has something to talk about, and then I’ll come in the next week with nothing, and he’ll have nothing. We discussed having an agenda, either me emailing him one, or bringing in one, or just having it in my head. A soft agenda he called it. Not set in stone.

I told him that I just need to be more assertive. He said he doesn’t consider it assertive; it is more of a natural thing. He described how other clients bring up their issues in sessions. I said, “What you consider ‘normal’ for a client, I consider assertive.” He said he doesn’t like the word normal, but for many people it is “natural” to go to their t and talk about what they want to talk about. I said that I was reading someone else’s blog and she said to her t, “I’d like to continue our discussion from last week about xyz.” And I think I can do that. So that is what I tried today.

He said there are things we have talked about in the past that if I want he could bring up again, ie; how my anxiety is doing. I said that I thought he didn’t like me to talk about things that we already talked about, and he said no, that isn’t true, therapy involves talking about things again and again. I said, “I have that idea in my head, I don’t know where it came from.”

I asked J if he thought I talked more today than usual. I said I thought I jumped around a lot and he said that is natural in therapy. He said he would be curious to know how I feel about this session in 6 hours or 3 days. I feel pretty good about it actually. Like I spoke up about things I wanted to talk about and that he pretty much got what I was saying. He said it was really good how I brought up the issues about the question from last week, the illness and aging stuff, and the blog.

I think it was good today. Not sure where the therapeutic part is, but I’m sure I’ll have insight into that as the days go on. So as I said this is a break from my break. I really miss writing in the blog. Instead of writing blog entries I am keeping a list of things that I would be writing about if I was writing. I need to do something to keep writing, so I’m thinking about what that might be.

Feb 2 2011

To Clarify

My blog break has nothing to do with any comments anyone has left on the blog. I appreciate all of your comments, and discussions, and support. I am just conflicted with how the blog is interfering with my being able to communicate in real time, with real people, and in particular in therapy. I process so much here that perhaps there isn’t much left to talk about in therapy, and that is where I really need to be able to communicate more effectively. You are all great, I love every one of you, and I will be around via email and on your blogs as well.

Feb 1 2011

A Break

I think I need to take a break from the blog. I love my blog, and I love writing, and I love getting comments. But it is interfering in my real life I think. Well, I’m not sure. I’m sorry.