Tag Archives: sister

Dec 11 2011

Too Much To Say

I have so much to talk about. I don’t really want to write about it here, except for maybe bullet list issues, because when I write about things I don’t talk about them in therapy. So I’ll just start with this:

• My husband forgot about my oncologist appointment and never asked me how it went, he actually went out to dinner with his buddies and got home late. Needless to say when I told him that it didn’t go well and the cancer came back, it got his attention.

• Friday morning I planned to run, but I was so despondent about the cancer having come back (this was before the “oops” phone call) that I could barely get out of bed. So I ran Saturday morning and I had a great run.

• I saw a movie with a friend Saturday afternoon (The Descendants – it’s good) and went out to dinner with my husband Saturday night.

• I ran in an 8K race this morning and got my best time of any 8K I have run before.

• I see the kidney doctor tomorrow; my husband is coming with me.

• I had an email exchange with my sister who told me that I can’t make peanut noodles for our family Hanukkah party. It seems all of a sudden someone in her family has a peanut allergy. So I told her I would use cashew or almond butter instead and she said that would be great. Something about our email exchange bothered me.

• Something happened to me when I was told that I had a recurrence of the cancer, and something else happened to me when I was told they made a mistake. Emotionally I mean. All I will say now is that for the first time, I feel like I really had cancer. I feel different.

Dec 7 2011

One Big Happy Family

Yesterday I got an email from my sister.  The same sister who didn’t contact me when I had my surgery, not by phone or email or text.  And when I saw her at my mother’s brunch a few weeks after the surgery she didn’t ask me how I am, or how I am feeling.

She works at the hospital where I am going tomorrow, it is where my oncologist is.  She is not a doctor, she is a dietician, but I am not sure if she has the ability to see my file.  Everything is computerized there, so my file is not the paper kind.

I had told my mother that I would be going for my 3 month scans this Thursday.  My sister’s email said:

A little birdie told me that you will be @ the hospital on Thursday. If you would like me to stop by or if you need anything while you are there, please let me know. I hope all goes well.

Thinking of you,

A

I’m wondering why all of a sudden she is so willing to be helpful.  I don’t trust this, she is very manipulative.  And the “little birdie” thing – she talks like that and it is so annoying to me.  Why couldn’t she say “Mom told me…”

I forwarded her email to my mother with this:

 I would appreciate it if you wouldn’t tell A, or anyone for that matter, about when and where my hospital visits are.  It’s really nobody’s concern.

My mother responded with this:

 

I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to intrude on your privacy.  I haven’t mentioned this to anyone other than A, and she is concerned about your health.  Pls don’t take this the wrong way.  We all are family and your health is important to all of us.

If you wish, in the future, I will not mention your health issues with A, although again she is concerned about you.  Let’s all move along and get on with our lives and be together as a family.

Mom

At least she said she is sorry.  I don’t believe that my sister is concerned about my health, actually there is nothing to be concerned about, I don’t have cancer anymore.  “We are all family????”  Well I guess so, by blood.  My health didn’t seem to be important to my sister when I did have cancer.

So now we shall move along and get on with our lives and be together as a family.  Oops, not that last part.  My sister and I do not have a relationship, and I do not care to have one with her.  Just because we are sisters doesn’t mean that we have to be together as a family.

Whenever my sister and I had an altercation, my mother would tell me I have to overlook what she does.  That blood is thicker than water.  But I got tired of overlooking and although I will continue to overlook, I will not have a relationship with her.

I also have an appointment with the kidney doctor at the same hospital next week.  My mother doesn’t know about that, I don’t plan on sharing any information with her about possible kidney disease.  I’m concerned that my sister will look at my file and see that I met with a kidney doctor, and be able to read his diagnosis and notes.  That is why I didn’t want my mother telling my sister that I am seeing any doctor at the hospital.

When I go tomorrow I will find out if she can see my file.  I’ll feel better knowing that she can’t.

Nov 10 2011

Guest Blogging

I have a guest post on my friend Evan’s blog. If you don’t read Evan’s blog you should give it a try, he writes about living authentically, something I aspire to, but seems beyond my reach. If you’d like you can read my post, which is about having a purpose in life, and there are some interesting comments also.

This is the kind of stuff that I would like to deal more with in therapy. I saw pdoc today, and told her that my t likes to deal with day to day things, and I want to deal with life issues, and she said that exploring and resolving day to day issues can improve life overall.

It wasn’t that great of a session with pdoc today, but I wasn’t in a very happy mood today. She was kind of grasping at straws about what to talk about, and we ended up talking about my sister, which put me in a worse mood.

Pdoc thinks that if my relationship with my husband was to improve and become a good relationship, my life would be much happier and complete.

T thinks that if I become a grandmother my life would be much happier and complete.

I don’t think either of those things is going to happen anytime soon or ever, and I feel like those suggestions minimize what I feel life is all about.

Sep 25 2011

There’s A Last Time For Everything

Today my husband, son and I went to brunch with my mother and her boyfriend. My sister and my niece were also there. At the time that my mother told me that she wanted to do this brunch for her 75th birthday, and my sister’s birthday which is Tuesday, I asked if my sister’s whole family would be there. Her husband and son rarely if ever show up for family gatherings, and I always make my husband and son come with me. She assured me that they would be there.

On our way to the restaurant I told my husband that if my sister’s husband and son weren’t there I would be very angry. We arrive at the restaurant and her husband and son weren’t there. The waiter came over and I said we were waiting for two more people, and my sister said they weren’t coming. I asked why not and she said, “H (her husband) had plans and C (her son) was sleeping.” This is my mother’s 75th birthday celebration and right in front of her my sister says that basically her husband and son can’t make the effort to be with her. My son was sleeping too, and I woke him up to come with us. After she said that I said, “Oh, well we had plans too, but we are here.”

In case anyone doesn’t know, or forgot, my sister and I have always had a rocky relationship, and a year ago at this time I stopped speaking to her. This has been great for me, but I am sure it is troubling for my mother who wants us to be one big happy family. We are a small family, just my mother, sister, and me, and since my mother doesn’t speak to my aunts, it is really just the three of us.

Today my sister did not ask me how my surgery went, how I am doing, how I feel, etc. She sent me an email about a month before my surgery saying she heard that I am having a “procedure” and she hopes it goes well. That was the last I heard from her. She didn’t call me, or send an email or card while I was in the hospital, or afterwards. And today she didn’t mention it at all. I guess that is to be expected, after all, I am the one who broke off communication with her.

A friend asked me if I want to have a relationship with my sister, and I said that I do not, but I do want to have a sister that I can have a relationship with. That is obviously not possible unfortunately.

When we were leaving and saying goodbye to my mother she said that she loved me. She tells me this about once a year, I remember once last year when she told me. She had a mimosa with breakfast, so maybe she was a little tipsy.

This was officially the last time I am attending one of these “family” events. I will celebrate family occasions with my mother and my immediate family, but not with my sister or her always absent spouse.

Update: my sister unfriended me on facebook.

Jan 10 2011

Update

As I mentioned I had a falling out with my sister in September. We have had a difficult relationship for as long as I can remember. I don’t like to think about how I treated her when we were children, so I won’t go there.

As adults we haven’t gotten along much better. I can tell many stories about times when she put herself above everyone else. Which would be fine if it didn’t hurt anyone else, but it always did. She didn’t care about hurting anyone, about inconveniencing anyone, what was most important was what was most convenient for her. She has hurt my children, and I don’t stand for that.

She also can’t get along with anyone. Everywhere she goes she has altercations with people. Walmart, Burger King, her job, her neighbors. How can a person get along with nobody?

I want to have a relationship with my niece and nephew. They are only 9 and 13 years old. I know it must be very difficult to have a child with Asperger’s, I can only imagine. I want to be a good aunt. It’s a dilemma.

My mother has always told me that I need to overlook my sister’s faults. I need to look the other way, to pretend like everything is always ok. I try to do that. But how long can a person do that without feeling some resentment? Why do I always have to be the one to overlook? Do I ever get a turn?

I was waiting for my sister to call me to tell me how my nephew is doing, but I didn’t feel right about it. I called her today and left her a voice mail. She called back not long after that to tell me that my nephew was released from the hospital. The doctors are still not sure if he has pseudohypoparathyroidism (and there are multiple forms of it), or a vitamin D deficiency. His calcium levels are normal right now, but the doctors aren’t sure if they will remain stable without the IV calcium and vitamin D. He has to get more blood work in a week, and keep seeing his endocrinologist. He also will have genetic testing in March.

My sister told me that she had to see the patient advocate at the hospital because there were some unacceptable things that occurred with my nephew’s treatment. Of course. Anywhere she goes there are unacceptable things that happen to her. I bet the hospital staff was happy to see her go.

My nephew’s doctor says he is not showing the typical symptoms of the genetic form of pseudohypoparathyroidism, and if he indeed has it, it is most likely the non-genetic type, and it would be pure coincidence that both he and my father had the same disorder. I find that very hard to believe, it is a rare condition.

I am so hoping that he does not have any form of this disorder. I know it can be treated, but I can’t help but think about my father and his lifelong illnesses, which brought him down at age 53. He did live another 8 years, but they were difficult years. I don’t wish that on anyone.

I don’t think I can be supportive for my sister, I hope she can find support elsewhere. There is too much history.

Sep 11 2010

My Day With My Mom

My day with my mom went pretty well yesterday. We went out for lunch, then back to her house to do some chores. She used to live in a single family home before my dad died, and one of my jobs whenever I would visit would be to “go in the attic.” She stored stuff up there and I would have to go and retrieve or put things there. But now she lives in a condo, so she said, “One good thing about the condo is you don’t have to go into the attic!”

She wanted me to fix her DVD player, which I couldn’t do. I think the wires must have fallen out or something, so she said she would get my sister’s husband to fix it. Then she wanted me to transfer photos from her camera to her computer, and lastly she wanted me to add photos to her profile on her dating website (gulp). Yes, she is using dating websites to find men. She is 73 years old, but still very active and young looking. She wants to be with someone, and I hope she finds someone.

While we were doing this work my boss, R, texted me a few times. I responded, as I usually do. He and I have a casual working relationship, he knows he can text or email or call me at any time, and if I am available I will respond. I usually do.

So my mother said to me, “Do you like doing this work for him? Taking his dog to the vet (which I didn’t end up doing) and ordering him gifts that he wants to buy for his friends, and taking care of all of the stuff he needs?” I replied, “Well, that is my job.” She said, “But do you like doing that?” She had a negative tone in her voice. Or was I just imagining that? I don’t know. I said, “I don’t mind. It’s what I do. I don’t have any skills, what other kind of job could I possibly get?” She said, “Look how good you are at the computer! You just put my picture up on my dating website!” I said, “So who is going to pay me to transfer photos from their cameras to their computer?” She said, “A lot of people don’t know how to do that!” I said, “Sure, but will they pay me $25 an hour to do it?” She said, “I guess not.”

I felt like she was putting me down, devaluing me. But that is what she does. I still felt good about spending the day with her because she would have been alone. I was angry at my sister that she couldn’t take some time out of her day Thursday to be with my mother on the first day of Rosh Hashanah, and we got into a voice mail/email argument. I am fed up with her self-centeredness. I know I am not the best daughter, I ignore my mother’s calls and don’t talk to her often enough. But when I need to step up to the plate I do it. My mother is still my mother. She may be critical and judgmental, but she loves me. She has recently started to say, “I love you” when we are saying goodbye. I don’t know how this came about. It’s weird. I’m not used to it.

Apr 14 2010

Family Issues, Anger, and Being Weird

Yesterday morning I was in a really bad mood. It was April 13 – one month until my birthday. I was feeling really down about not getting “better” – my goal was to feel better by my birthday. I’ve been therapy for 1 1/2 years or so? Am I getting better? I don’t think so.

On Monday I had decided to invite everyone to my house for Mother’s Day (May 9th in the US). Mother’s Day is always difficult – we have to juggle two families, the holiday itself, my son’s birthday and my birthday. I don’t like to combine my family and my husband’s family because they don’t really get along, but it’s hard to split the day and go from one family to the other. It’s great that both my husband and I have caring mothers, judgmental as they may be, and close families. But logistically it’s difficult sometimes.

So I emailed everyone, and immediately got replies from my mother, sister and aunt. Of course. My husband’s family? Nothing. Still haven’t heard. I called his mother last night to talk to her about it directly. She asked if I talked to S and A yet – my sister in laws. I said that I emailed them. She said, well we can talk about it on Sunday. Talk about it? What’s to talk about? You either come or you don’t. But that is how they are. They have to consult amongst themselves before they will commit.

Then there is my mother – the ESTJ. “ESTJs thrive on order and continuity. Being extraverted, their focus involves organization of people, which translates into supervision.”

She calls me up on Monday to tell me what we will make, what we will buy, when we will do all the work, that she will come over the night before and help. I’m not even in that mode yet! I just invited everyone, I’m not planning anything yet. I don’t even know who is coming. But I went along with her, because now that I understand the ESTJ mentality (psychosis is better term) I know that I just have to go along with what she says. For now anyway.

Then yesterday morning my sister calls. She says “I talked to Mom about Mother’s Day. She says we need cakes. A cake for A (my son), a cake for you, a cake for Mother’s Day.” I say, “We don’t need any cakes.” (I always make myself a red velvet cake for my birthday, and I love to bake, so any cakes will be made by me!) She said my mother was telling her to make cakes. I said, “We don’t need any cakes!” She said, “Well mom says we need cakes.” I yelled, and I mean yelled, “WE DON’T NEED ANY CAKES!” I was losing it.

But my sister is clueless. She had no idea I was getting angry. She started to laugh. “Yeah, mom says we need cakes. You really opened a can of worms, didn’t you?” I said, “I have to go get in the shower.” She replies, “Well it’s 53 degrees and it’s supposed to rain later!” I don’t need a personal fucking meteorologist too, thank you very much.

Last night my son asks me, “Who were you yelling at this morning?” I told him it was Aunt A. I said I was mad at her, but she couldn’t tell. He said, “I could tell and I was in the other room.” Yeah, she is so clueless.

I have often felt this rage towards my sister. I used to yell at her really badly when we were kids. I haven’t felt it in a while though, and I’m sure it wasn’t really directed at her. It’s me and my frustration about everything. Stressed out right now.

And I had a terrible night. I couldn’t sleep at all. That usually happens after unfulfilling therapy sessions. I wonder what I really wanted out of the session. I think I wanted J to help me figure out what exactly is weird about me, so that I can either come to grips with it or change. But he says he doesn’t think I’m weird. That’s very nice, but a lot of people have said otherwise. Yes, come right out and said it. The word “weird”. Nicer ones have used terms like my “idiosyncrasies” or “differences”. Some use phrases like, “No one has ever said that before” or “it’s never bothered anyone else before”.

Now that I think about it J himself has told me things like this. Of course I write about every session so I can go back and read my notes. He has said he says or does things in my sessions that he doesn’t do or say with others. And that my anxiety in therapy is very unlike his other clients who feel very safe and comfortable there. And I’m the only one who has ever told him that he is intimidating.

Do those things make me weird? No, of course not. But this shows that there seem to be differences between me and “most” people, at least in this situation. And is it that uncommon for a person to compare themselves to “most” people? I think it’s pretty common. So maybe he was telling me the truth when he said he doesn’t think I’m weird, but I didn’t ask him if he thinks I’m different.

A couple of times I said, “Don’t you think I should just accept the fact that I’m weird and learn to live with it somehow?” But he just kept on trying to convince me that I’m not weird. I don’t know what to think now.

Jan 29 2010

The Wild River

Today is the day I was supposed to meet my mother, my sister, and my sister’s friend for lunch and shopping. My mother already backed out, and yesterday my sister said she can’t go either. So it’s just me and her friend, L. L is the one who gets messages from dead people. Other than that, I like her, and she is easy to be with. I really need to get out more, so it should be good. I also went out to lunch with another friend yesterday, and that went well. I think know I spend too much time inside of my own head. I also haven’t been working enough hours, I need to work more. Especially now that I’ll be paying full price for therapy. Hopefully therapy will end soon. How do you know when it’s over anyway? My t once said that he works with people for an average of 6 months, and I’ve been going way longer than that.

Thank you for all of the kind wishes about my father. Yeah, I miss him.

I ran along a different part of the river yesterday. It’s the part with the rapids and waterfalls and it is really dangerous. There is a bridge built over the wildest section and I stood on that for a while. The water was so crazy it was making me dizzy. Here is a photo, I didn’t take this, but it shows the intensity pretty well:

river

I saw four people carrying rafts down to the water – I can’t believe anyone would raft in that ferocious water. And the water must be incredibly cold too. It was even too intense for me, I would not want to die that way. Not peaceful at all.

I’ve been thinking about how the act of suicide affects those left behind. I know someone whose mother committed suicide when she was teenager, and I’ve been doing some reading. Apparently, and judging by this person I know who is pretty screwed up, suicide of a parent or loved one has a lasting impact on the survivors. What isn’t fair, though, is that these people don’t generally show appreciation or gratitude for the suicidal person when she is alive. But after she is gone they get all fucked up. I guess one can’t really expect the people in one’s life to be constantly reassuring them that they are needed and valued though, especially when that person acts like nothing is ever wrong.

Jan 26 2010

Therapy Recap 1/26/10

J asked what we are talking about. I said, well, whatever. He said he would like to talk about my email from three weeks ago, since last week I talked about wanting to talk about that. Unless something happened this week that I would prefer to talk about. I said nothing happened this week, but in his email to me last week he said he wanted to talk about my thoughts that he is sick of me and frustrated with me. He said he didn’t remember what was in his email to me last week. I said, well, you said you wanted to discuss this particular item, and the reason I wrote about it was because I thought I did a good job reframing my thoughts and I wanted to let you know that. But then you said you wanted to discuss it and it made me anxious all week and I was wondering why you chose that item as something to discuss. He really couldn’t remember any of this, so he went to his computer to see what he had written. He claims that this particular item stood out for him because it was larger than the other items since I wrote it in list form rather than paragraph form. Oh.

How could I get so anxious about something, and he doesn’t remember saying it at all?

We did discuss how when someone makes a comment or remark to me I tend to believe it and think that they are judging me and then I hold onto these thoughts and this leads to feeling bad about myself. We’ve had this conversation before, about 99 times before. What it comes down to is knowing something intellectually, but not being able to feel it. I asked him how I do this. He doesn’t know. He tried to come up with an answer. He said if I think logically about things eventually the logic will win out. That kind of sucks as an answer, but maybe that’s the way things work.

Then he asked me if he could tell me about a personal situation he encountered last week, that had to do with this type of logical thinking. I said sure, I’m always happy to talk about the other person rather than myself. He told me his story, and we talked about it for a while, and it was so much better than talking about myself. I wish we could talk about him every week. He was still talking about it when I got up to leave.

I didn’t tell him about the cutting, or the suicidal ideation, or the constant feeling of hating myself. Maybe I’ll tell him that next week.

I talked to my sister yesterday, and she told me that the reason my mother doesn’t want to come to lunch with us on Friday is because she doesn’t want to drive an hour to my house with my sister’s friend because she doesn’t feel comfortable with her. I didn’t quite believe that. I talked to my mother today and she said she isn’t meet us on Friday because we “young girls” don’t need an “old lady” like her hanging out with us. I told her that we would enjoy having an old lady like her with us. I said, “I thought you didn’t feel comfortable driving here with L.” She said, “No, I never said that, that’s not a problem.”

My aunt called me and told me that my mother called her and told her she isn’t going to my cousin’s wedding. My aunt says she doesn’t believe the reason my mother gave, she wishes she knew the true reason why my mother isn’t going. I know the true reason, but I’m not telling my aunt. I don’t want to get caught in the middle between the two of them.

Then I had to call my insurance company. We switched to a new provider on January 1st, and I checked my claims online and saw that they didn’t pay for my last three therapy sessions. So I called them and they said I needed to get these pre-authorized. They said they could do that on the phone, but they needed to ask me a couple of questions, that I didn’t have to answer if I didn’t want to. The first was if in the last two months I have drank too much or taken drugs. The second was if in the last week I felt like hurting myself. Huh? Who the hell would answer yes to these questions? And if you choose not to answer isn’t that just like answering yes? I lied. Well, the first question I told the truth, I haven’t drank too much or taken drugs. Not illegal drugs anyway. And prescribed drugs are ok, I’m assuming. But I did lie about the second question.

Everybody lies, and you never know who is lying, and who is telling the truth, and what the truth really is. That’s life.

I told my husband that I hate this new insurance company and they would only approve 10 visits of therapy, and then the therapist has to apply for more visits for me. Huh? I’m not going to ask him to do that. I told my husband that they were asking me intrusive questions that were none of their business and we are just going to pay out of pocket once the 10 visits are up. With the amount of money we spend on insurance every year (we pay for our own insurance) I don’t feel like I have to justify my therapy to them. So there.

Tomorrow morning is my meeting with Mr. IRS Seal. I don’t know what to wear. All of my business-y type clothes are too big. I’m anxious about the meeting, and I’m anxious about what to wear.

I’m still cutting. It’s like a compulsion now, I have to do this almost every day. I wrote that post yesterday about thinking rationally and logically about what is going on, but once again, although I know these things intellectually, I can’t feel them. I can’t feel better about myself. It’s just really hard.

Jan 25 2010

Snap Out Of It

I would like to end the pity party. I am going to think rationally about what is happening here, process my thoughts and figure out what is logic and what is my irrational thinking. I think that a lot of my feelings of unworthiness and stupidity this week resulted from my therapy session and email exchange with my therapist, J, last week, as well as from my upcoming meeting with Mr. IRS Seal. I am not happy that therapy has this much importance in my life that it can cause these strong feelings and lead to a ruined week. Six full days of crap, feeling like a loser, cutting, isolation, crying, etc. How can a mere 45 minute session cause this? I went into my session last week with the intention of talking about my suspicions that my therapist was searching for specific words on my blog. I was unable to come right out and say what I wanted to say, and thus I never got an answer or the information that I was looking for. I also spent the whole session thinking about what I wasn’t talking about, and none of the session actually talking about anything productive. I got very frustrated and I could feel J’s frustration as well, although he would probably never admit it.

Then I wrote him an email full of everything I should have said in session, and in the previous session as well, when I also did not say what I wanted to say. The words are in me, the feelings are in me, the thoughts are in me. I don’t know how to get them out orally. This is making me feel like I am a helpless loser. Yes, I can express myself in writing, but that is not how therapy is supposed to be. Didn’t someone, maybe Freud, call therapy the “talking cure”? Not the “sit in silence during your session and then send your therapist a three page email that he has to read on his personal time cure”. But my therapist says that he doesn’t mind the emails, that he likes them because if I am not expressing myself in the session, how else will he know what I’m thinking? So I have to believe that it is ok for me to send these emails, because he says it is. I know there are other people who have therapists who don’t do email. So if J says it is ok, then it must be ok. It’s me who has a problem with it, not him.

Facts:

It is difficult for me to express myself in my therapy sessions
J says he welcomes email
I can write about my thoughts and feelings better than I can talk about them
It is ok to do therapy in a variety of ways, one size doesn’t fit all

This is going well.

I am also feeling badly because of all of things in my email J chose #4 as the item he says he wants to discuss. I feel badly because first of all, that was the one item in the email that I thought I was doing well with. I wrote about it to tell him that “Look, I did something good!” I also feel badly because just last week we had a discussion about my previous email and how there were things I thought that were important in that email, and he chose not to discuss them, he chose another item that I didn’t think was particularly important. So we had a discussion about how I should be the one to determine what is important, and here he is again making a decision about what he wants to discuss. Why couldn’t he say in the email, “You raise some good points here, what would you like to talk about from this email next week?”

Facts:

I wrote an email expressing my concerns, as well as a couple of things that I think I am doing well as a result of therapy
J said that I did a good job of expressing myself in my email
He did reconfirm one of the items that I thought I was getting better at, and said that he would like to continue working on that
He did say that he would like to talk about this email next week
He said he specifically wants to discuss item #4

I’m not sure these facts are making me feel much better about this particular situation.

As for Mr. IRS Seal, I am comparing myself with him and seeing that I come up short. He is a professional financial advisor, and that is something I have no idea how to do, therefore my conclusion is that he is better than me, smarter than me, more professional than me. However, I am good at what I do, I have had many clients who think I am some kind of goddess for helping them get their stuff organized and getting them set up with systems that help them in their daily lives. I have to remember this.

Facts:

Mr. IRS Seal is a professional financial planner
I am a professional organizer
He helps his clients do things that they can’t do alone
I help my clients do things that they can’t do alone
I am perfectly capable of sitting down to have a conversation with him in order to figure out how I can best help his clients because this is what I do with my other clients

As for my mother, well that just happened yesterday, so it didn’t have an impact on my week until yesterday. But to think logically about this we have these facts:

My sister was passing on information that may or may not be true
My mother is really not enjoyable to spend time with
This is a great way for me to out of doing something that isn’t enjoyable
Rather than feeling hurt that she doesn’t want to spend time with me, I can feel relieved that I don’t have to spend time with her

This is going well. If I can just keep remembering these things it would be helpful. I would like to be a person who doesn’t have all of these thoughts, who doesn’t ruminate on things, who lets things just slide, who doesn’t let crazy thoughts ruin her week, who doesn’t have to go through this complex mental process in order to get through negative thinking patterns. I know there are people like that – I know a lot of them. They don’t go through all of this. Frankly, it is tiring, it is mentally draining, and do I really end up in a better place after the process is over?

Sure, I have analyzed these situations and come up with logical facts and I see how my thinking can be skewed. Intellectually I have come to some positive conclusions. Am I feeling better? I still have to work on convincing myself for some reason. Why do feelings trump logic? Something is wrong with that.

Last night I had a dream kind of experience, you know when you are not really asleep and not really awake? I had an image of a movie projector in my head, and the film was going around and around and around. And then a really big scissor appeared and cut the film. It immediately stopped going around. That film is the thoughts in my head, and the scissor is the tool I need to make them stop.