I've decided to remain with my current therapist rather than moving on. It's a peculiarity of mine to pack up and flee when things get irritating or stagnant. So two weeks after asking psychiatrist to find me a replacement, I've been going to sessions and discussing with her the exact issues that piss me off and asking her to do the same about me. It seems its been healthy for both of us, but since this is my therapy, not hers, that's good.
However, we have this symbiotic relationship that seems to float atop thin ice and my mood swings can bring out very insightful comments from therapist, like an in depth explanation of existential depression which is label tossed at me by psych. I take umbrage at the label because the parental abuse was so prolonged and extensive it formed the shell of a person I remain now, unable to attach to humans. Since I feel an attachment to current therapist, however warped it might be in psychiatric terms, it seems more productive to work through it than throw out everything and start again with no guarantee I will feel anything. I certainly cannot work with a young intern, even if he is supervised by the psych.
I mentally hunt and peck looking for holes to worm my way into a person's psyche and if successful, it can be dangerous. For me, usually not the other person. And when I think I'm understanding or empathizing with someone, its a short road to being critical or disgusted at another's vulnerabilities.
For example, my young neighbor upstairs introduced her mother to me, and said mother and I are around the same age, but similarities stop there. She's a holy roller, wants to win the lottery to change her life and moans about her work and lot in life. A hot mess as the t-shirt reads. She had no problem coming in my apt for 5-6 hours yakking about her life, belief in Lord keeping her together, etc etc and I listened because its one trait I have that is good with people...but I'm fried after 2 hours, even with my own children. At the fifth hour I'm ready to scream and by the 6th hour I will kill you if you don't get the heck out of my sight...she's a person oblivious to anything, except to ask, 'what are you thinking about' if you stop nodding in agreement or responding. In desperation I finally told her daughter I love having her stop by but can't handle 6 hour marathon visits. So she stopped coming altogether...some mother daughter talk that must have been.
So this past weekend I get a frantic call from the mother, she smells gas. She's hysterical about the new puppy breathing gas and it could die if she has to sleep there, in fact they both could die....she's gone from point A to point Z in a millisecond. Pilot lights go out all the time, especially here if you turn on the ceiling fan, and their ceiling fan is right in the kitchen near the stove. I told her on the phone, clear off any pots and lift up the stove top and see if both pilots lights are on. While holding phone and whimpering, she does that and lets me know only one light on one side is burning. I told her to just light the other one. Then she's terrified to 'play with the gas' because the stove may be broken and she and the dog may die. Meanwhile she's alone in her daughter's apartment babysitting the dog and she's been doing since her daughter got it 2 months ago. Either she gave up her apartment and is actually living upstairs caring for the dog or she commutes daily from a job 1 hour away to dog sit every evening. Since I was going up and down to the basement to wash clothes, I wasn't feeling too neighborly and told her to call the fire department or knock on her neighbor's door because husband is a chef and would know how to handle a stove. The neighbor gave her the afterhours emergency phone number of our landlord who sent a mechanic over about 3 hours later, somehow they survived the smell of gas in the meantime without my company to babysit them.
Her daughter, my actual neighbor, was in another state at a wedding and came home early. Can you feel the bile rising in your gut? Can you understand how manipulative this behavior is? Does it qualify as passive-aggressive? Within the space of 2 months, daughter bought a tiny pup her mother is now in charge of and a house; at a time in her life when everything is up in the air professionally and socially. The original idea for buying a house was to find a place for her mother to live with her, but the house she bought is too small and is like a starter home for a couple. So mom has excused herself from living there (insert violin music about here) not wanting to disturb any future relationships for her daughter. She discussed it with me, but I stopped saying anything after reminding her that the impetus for even looking for a house was to help her, so what was the point of getting a house that didn't make that happen?
I have no patience with irrationality, unless its my own, which always make sense to me.
Chassidisha maydel leaves klal,does tschuvah returns after quarter century in goyische velt. Ous yid ken men vern-ous khusid ken men nisht vern
Wednesday, May 29, 2013
Monday, May 27, 2013
Memorial days....
Every day is Memorial day for me. I am filled with nothing but memories that won't leave, that sit with me, sometimes won't shut up. Today is officially a day where Americans honor the dead who served in wars. But the inference is always wars 'over there' elsewhere. There are so many people who battle for a lifetime wars of physical and mental illness.
People who live in the streets with no homes, no families, broken lives and broken hearts. Soldiers of Life...the same people we sometimes flippantly refer to as the walking dead...people so tired and hungry they appear to be glazed over in a frost of the soul.
I've lived through wars since childhood. First watching my mother's face freeze as Cuba threatened to shoot missles at us. As the night skies were strobbed by long slender lights I watched, waiting for martians and bombs to come kills us, The weekly bomb drills where in school we ducked under our desksm squeezed our eyes closed and held our breaths until told it was all clear.
Watching the '67 War blow by blow on television when the media followed soldiers on the battlefield and reported live. A war where Israel took back Golan and the Rebbe said to keep going...the '73 War of Cyprus and Greece into which I flew on my way to kibbutz life in Israel. Sitting on a grassy knoll outside the airport at 19, I was oblivious to my own safety, my only thought of my father's death occurring months earlier and the necessity to carve a life out of nothing, penniless.
My father's parents came to America due to war in Europe. Russian Jews who settled in Baltimore, their personal battles continued to affect my father who married a non-Jewish woman, and they declared him dead. My father was a 'dead' man who spent his life trying to retain an identity stolen from him by a tradition that rendered his two daughters to live forever without his family. I inherited his desire to form a life as a Jew, so deep was the void and pain of his loss I immersed myself in the war zone known as Chabad after returning from Israel. I returned from Israel primarily because of being shocked at the secularism,-even in '73- of having married male kibbutzniks make passes while I drove a tractor, clubbed carp in the kitchen or picked olives, grapes and rimonim.
Vietnam seemed to infuse every aspect of high school while I was there, work, travel and social life. We were in the streets trying to turn everything that wasn't yet turned upside down, inside out or scrawled over with graffiti by followers of BPanthers, the Chicago 7 or Weathermen. Our soldiers came home to be spit on, scorned....I was already ensconced in a world without television, radio or newspapers. I prayed 3x a day for other things, mostly for clarity and a secure place in a confusing world...a religious husband so I could live the life that escaped my father's dreams, in life and death.
As the Middle East and all its surrounding countries conflagrates daily, it will be so until eternity as all parties claim righteously that land is theirs or was stolen from them. By the year 2025 (approx.) it is estimated that the last of the Greatest Generation will have passed on...the memories will dwindle slowly after them as many children of survivors will take another generation to forget if they haven't done so already. Those children who deliberately Away from the misery of their parents pain and chose to live a strictly secular life and those who were told nothing by parents who could not even speak of the horrors they survived.
It is early evening, unusally cold this time of year, May and its in the 50s...a man has been sorting through the dumpster outside my apartment window. He seems to be collecting anything he can reuse and its amazing what my neighbors consider 'garbage.' I've cooked two pieces of chicken, made cabbage salad and homemade biscuits, enough for two. I excuse myself now to fix whoever this warrior of life is, a hot dinner in hopes that for this one day, he has a happy memory.
People who live in the streets with no homes, no families, broken lives and broken hearts. Soldiers of Life...the same people we sometimes flippantly refer to as the walking dead...people so tired and hungry they appear to be glazed over in a frost of the soul.
I've lived through wars since childhood. First watching my mother's face freeze as Cuba threatened to shoot missles at us. As the night skies were strobbed by long slender lights I watched, waiting for martians and bombs to come kills us, The weekly bomb drills where in school we ducked under our desksm squeezed our eyes closed and held our breaths until told it was all clear.
Watching the '67 War blow by blow on television when the media followed soldiers on the battlefield and reported live. A war where Israel took back Golan and the Rebbe said to keep going...the '73 War of Cyprus and Greece into which I flew on my way to kibbutz life in Israel. Sitting on a grassy knoll outside the airport at 19, I was oblivious to my own safety, my only thought of my father's death occurring months earlier and the necessity to carve a life out of nothing, penniless.
My father's parents came to America due to war in Europe. Russian Jews who settled in Baltimore, their personal battles continued to affect my father who married a non-Jewish woman, and they declared him dead. My father was a 'dead' man who spent his life trying to retain an identity stolen from him by a tradition that rendered his two daughters to live forever without his family. I inherited his desire to form a life as a Jew, so deep was the void and pain of his loss I immersed myself in the war zone known as Chabad after returning from Israel. I returned from Israel primarily because of being shocked at the secularism,-even in '73- of having married male kibbutzniks make passes while I drove a tractor, clubbed carp in the kitchen or picked olives, grapes and rimonim.
Vietnam seemed to infuse every aspect of high school while I was there, work, travel and social life. We were in the streets trying to turn everything that wasn't yet turned upside down, inside out or scrawled over with graffiti by followers of BPanthers, the Chicago 7 or Weathermen. Our soldiers came home to be spit on, scorned....I was already ensconced in a world without television, radio or newspapers. I prayed 3x a day for other things, mostly for clarity and a secure place in a confusing world...a religious husband so I could live the life that escaped my father's dreams, in life and death.
As the Middle East and all its surrounding countries conflagrates daily, it will be so until eternity as all parties claim righteously that land is theirs or was stolen from them. By the year 2025 (approx.) it is estimated that the last of the Greatest Generation will have passed on...the memories will dwindle slowly after them as many children of survivors will take another generation to forget if they haven't done so already. Those children who deliberately Away from the misery of their parents pain and chose to live a strictly secular life and those who were told nothing by parents who could not even speak of the horrors they survived.
It is early evening, unusally cold this time of year, May and its in the 50s...a man has been sorting through the dumpster outside my apartment window. He seems to be collecting anything he can reuse and its amazing what my neighbors consider 'garbage.' I've cooked two pieces of chicken, made cabbage salad and homemade biscuits, enough for two. I excuse myself now to fix whoever this warrior of life is, a hot dinner in hopes that for this one day, he has a happy memory.
Monday, May 20, 2013
For the moment...
I'm on hold with switching therapists as my psych has to arrange with his intern how to work with me. I'm not easy to work with:-) Maybe you figured that out already from reading my blog. Been told I think too much, ruminate too much, isolate way too much and am generally a misogynist with OCD, PTSD besides formal diagnoses. Opinionated, stubborn, terrified and often too smart for my own good...or everyone else's good because I have a low tolerance for BS and circuitous conversation leading nowhere, which is a primary reason for a change of therapists.
My current therapist doesn't take any notes or tape sessions. Her M.O. when something is critically important and usually dealing with attachment issues/the lack of attachment is to lean in and say very somberly, I am so very sorry you had to go through that, a phrase that runs off my back like water off a duck, in fact it rings so hollow its almost irritating to hear each time, its useless. it's also an opportunity for her to share her own similar stories or those of other nameless patients who went through situations and survived.
I haven't survived, I'm a shattered vessel of a human being trying to manage each day as it comes.
I watched mesmerized today as Dr. Phil interviewed the mother who walked away from her 2 children and husband for 11 years. One day was so overwhelmed with the idea of being divorced and left to raise her children, she abandoned everything with the clothes on her back and walked to a park, to sit crying until a group of homeless came to sit with her and ask if they could help. She became part of a group of people in Key Largo FL, lived with an alcoholic for almost a decade until she couldn't stand his drinking anymore, her father was an alcoholic, her mother didn't bond/attach with the children FOR GOD'S SAKES YOU COULD WRITE MY NAME IN PLACE OF HERS. And her worst sin was she lived a life without ever contacting her kids. She was reconstructing her life each time in each new relationship as if it was going to be good now...when the pressure got to much she left, over and over. FOR GOD'S SAKES YOU COULD WRITE MY NAME IN PLACE OF HERS.
Dr. Phil interviewed 2 psychiatrists and they both said ATTACHMENT issues were at the core, she never learned to deal with anxiety, depression or fear, she had no coping skills that normal parenting would have taught her. Here's where we differ, I also have attachment issues, severe ones that allowed me to step away from my children and both of us wept for all the years of separation but remained incapable of reaching out to close the breach. The difference is I had learned from my father, since I took care of him since toddlerhood, that work is honorable, being smart is a gift and you use what you have to talk your way in and out of anything and everything. So at times I feel like a powerful machine and at other times, sometimes simultaneously, I feel completely vulnerable and incapable of anything productive. This mix of terror and belief in myself has kept me afloat and yet held me back from doing what I might have accomplished as a writer. I write now and think, who the hell cares, no one would listen there are so many other disconnected dysfunctional voices crying out in the dark.
I felt badly for her, to watch her sniveling in from of a camera, apologizing for something she couldn't explain. Because its almost impossible to explain to another human being, particularly one with children of their own, that you feel that anyone else could be a better parent than yourself, that you don't want the crud that you are to soil your beautiful kids and its better to just walk away to save them from you. Maybe Augusten Burroughs would get it....
My current therapist doesn't take any notes or tape sessions. Her M.O. when something is critically important and usually dealing with attachment issues/the lack of attachment is to lean in and say very somberly, I am so very sorry you had to go through that, a phrase that runs off my back like water off a duck, in fact it rings so hollow its almost irritating to hear each time, its useless. it's also an opportunity for her to share her own similar stories or those of other nameless patients who went through situations and survived.
I haven't survived, I'm a shattered vessel of a human being trying to manage each day as it comes.
I watched mesmerized today as Dr. Phil interviewed the mother who walked away from her 2 children and husband for 11 years. One day was so overwhelmed with the idea of being divorced and left to raise her children, she abandoned everything with the clothes on her back and walked to a park, to sit crying until a group of homeless came to sit with her and ask if they could help. She became part of a group of people in Key Largo FL, lived with an alcoholic for almost a decade until she couldn't stand his drinking anymore, her father was an alcoholic, her mother didn't bond/attach with the children FOR GOD'S SAKES YOU COULD WRITE MY NAME IN PLACE OF HERS. And her worst sin was she lived a life without ever contacting her kids. She was reconstructing her life each time in each new relationship as if it was going to be good now...when the pressure got to much she left, over and over. FOR GOD'S SAKES YOU COULD WRITE MY NAME IN PLACE OF HERS.
Dr. Phil interviewed 2 psychiatrists and they both said ATTACHMENT issues were at the core, she never learned to deal with anxiety, depression or fear, she had no coping skills that normal parenting would have taught her. Here's where we differ, I also have attachment issues, severe ones that allowed me to step away from my children and both of us wept for all the years of separation but remained incapable of reaching out to close the breach. The difference is I had learned from my father, since I took care of him since toddlerhood, that work is honorable, being smart is a gift and you use what you have to talk your way in and out of anything and everything. So at times I feel like a powerful machine and at other times, sometimes simultaneously, I feel completely vulnerable and incapable of anything productive. This mix of terror and belief in myself has kept me afloat and yet held me back from doing what I might have accomplished as a writer. I write now and think, who the hell cares, no one would listen there are so many other disconnected dysfunctional voices crying out in the dark.
I felt badly for her, to watch her sniveling in from of a camera, apologizing for something she couldn't explain. Because its almost impossible to explain to another human being, particularly one with children of their own, that you feel that anyone else could be a better parent than yourself, that you don't want the crud that you are to soil your beautiful kids and its better to just walk away to save them from you. Maybe Augusten Burroughs would get it....
Friday, May 17, 2013
New therapist coming
I met with my psychiatrist this morning and flat out told him, through tears, I need his help. We discussed the relationship I have with my current therapist and her divulging so much of her personal life, which has only made me very concerned for her and her frailties. When I saw her Tues, she said her other patients all did well during her 3+ week absence only I was highly stressed and remained the single highly stressed patient she has. I have also brought her gifts in moments of deep 'love' and concern to make her feel better. While I care deeply for her, my intuitive sense is that the relationship is skewed and off balance, its more about her than her guiding me forward. I was concerned that either narcissism or something else was making me biased about how we were working, wanting the focus on me more than me comforting her, but seeing the expression on my psychiatrists face made me realize my instincts are right.
He has recommended I begin working with his intern whom he will supervise. It will only be for about 1 year but at least it will begin a track of my being supervised by one of the best psychiatrists in the country. He knew immediately to adjust my diagnosis to a specific type of depression and while he is brilliant, he is impenetrable. I told him today that is why he is invaluable for me to work with, because no matter who I work with, male/female, I construct a transference relationship, a common part of my diagnosis. With him, I can care for him, but its a safe caring. He hears me, understands, asks pertinent questions, isn't afraid of my emotional storms and actually is capable of ironic humor something he is able to do because he trusts himself and respects my intelligence. I am truly lucky to have him on my side....and I hope he remains there.
So I will have to terminate with my current therapist, but first I will meet with this new one and we'll both decide if its a good fit. After the year is up, I have to trust something will be in place to continue work.
I was very anxious about this morning, thinking I would be referred back to my existing therapist or challenged on why I want to suddenly leave but there are too many balls that have been dropped and I realized how much time I'm wasting, I am immensely relieved psych understood the importance of making a switch aside from the emotional issues I brought into the session.
He has recommended I begin working with his intern whom he will supervise. It will only be for about 1 year but at least it will begin a track of my being supervised by one of the best psychiatrists in the country. He knew immediately to adjust my diagnosis to a specific type of depression and while he is brilliant, he is impenetrable. I told him today that is why he is invaluable for me to work with, because no matter who I work with, male/female, I construct a transference relationship, a common part of my diagnosis. With him, I can care for him, but its a safe caring. He hears me, understands, asks pertinent questions, isn't afraid of my emotional storms and actually is capable of ironic humor something he is able to do because he trusts himself and respects my intelligence. I am truly lucky to have him on my side....and I hope he remains there.
So I will have to terminate with my current therapist, but first I will meet with this new one and we'll both decide if its a good fit. After the year is up, I have to trust something will be in place to continue work.
I was very anxious about this morning, thinking I would be referred back to my existing therapist or challenged on why I want to suddenly leave but there are too many balls that have been dropped and I realized how much time I'm wasting, I am immensely relieved psych understood the importance of making a switch aside from the emotional issues I brought into the session.
Thursday, May 16, 2013
My craving
More than medication, more than chocolate, what I crave are a pair of strong male arms to hold me against his chest, to protect me and make me feel safe. A man who will not dismiss my fears but remind me that he is stronger and all the horror outside will not touch us, he will keep us safe. Someone who loves cats but helps me learn to love a human being, more than animals and learn to trust a person, something I cannot do now.
A man who is stronger than my paranoia and terror. A man whose chest is there at night so when I wake from a nightmare I can turn to a safe warm wall and he will not turn away.
A man who is stronger than my paranoia and terror. A man whose chest is there at night so when I wake from a nightmare I can turn to a safe warm wall and he will not turn away.
Terrifying few days...
Dealing with mental illness remains a double edged sword. I was open and confided to my therapist that I felt her absence of 4 weeks due to illness felt like abandonment. I reminded her I had called my daughter and told daughter I had a premonition that her boyfriend may try to kill her on a trip they had planned. Subsequently I didn't hear from my daughter for 2 months and when she came on Mother's Day, she reminded me that I called her hysterical to break the news her boyfriend was a killer. I had no recollection, at all. As she repeated the incidence some details sounded familiar but I honestly had almost no recall at all. I do know that at the time I called her my primary concern was saving her life so it felt imperative that I tell her what I knew.
That was not an isolated incident...I had experiences at work where for example I confided in my VP that our crumbling new building should be blessed because despite repeated repairs to get clearance to open the building for occupancy, things kept breaking down. She laughed and told me the university community was too evolved to lean on prayer to solve problems.
Last night I dreamed my oldest son had committed suicide or was killed by a car...it was unclear in the dream other than he was gone.
The response from my therapist was to request permission to call my psych who only prescribes meds, and I agreed assuming that some medicine adjustment would be the answer. He didn't call me directly, the therapist called me to say, "go to the emergency room and tell them you need blood work to test your sodium levels, hormone levels." I mentioned that there were no written orders and no one would do such tests on someone walking in asking for them. She replied, "just tell them what you told me, that you had some hallucinations and your doctor wants these tests done." I smelled a rat, as we say.
I called a friend and explained the inexplicable and she warned me that if I walk in and say I've been having hallucinations that immediately the situation would turn into a psych hold and no one would hear anything else. Well of course she was right. Since the problem has more or less ended--there are no more faces peering out of my paisley design curtains--I wasn't ready to be held over for any amount of time. My sole comfort are my cats who need me.
I called my shrink directly and spoke to him; he had suggested the medical tests saying he felt it was a metabolic imbalance but if the symptoms have abated, we could leave the tests for now and I should come to see him at my appointment end of the week.
It seemed to me therapist was on thin ice trying to get me into the hospital as if I was too stupid to understand how the system works...just tell them what you told me, you're having hallucinations...yeah right and I have a bridge in Brooklyn I want to sell you.
That was not an isolated incident...I had experiences at work where for example I confided in my VP that our crumbling new building should be blessed because despite repeated repairs to get clearance to open the building for occupancy, things kept breaking down. She laughed and told me the university community was too evolved to lean on prayer to solve problems.
Last night I dreamed my oldest son had committed suicide or was killed by a car...it was unclear in the dream other than he was gone.
The response from my therapist was to request permission to call my psych who only prescribes meds, and I agreed assuming that some medicine adjustment would be the answer. He didn't call me directly, the therapist called me to say, "go to the emergency room and tell them you need blood work to test your sodium levels, hormone levels." I mentioned that there were no written orders and no one would do such tests on someone walking in asking for them. She replied, "just tell them what you told me, that you had some hallucinations and your doctor wants these tests done." I smelled a rat, as we say.
I called a friend and explained the inexplicable and she warned me that if I walk in and say I've been having hallucinations that immediately the situation would turn into a psych hold and no one would hear anything else. Well of course she was right. Since the problem has more or less ended--there are no more faces peering out of my paisley design curtains--I wasn't ready to be held over for any amount of time. My sole comfort are my cats who need me.
I called my shrink directly and spoke to him; he had suggested the medical tests saying he felt it was a metabolic imbalance but if the symptoms have abated, we could leave the tests for now and I should come to see him at my appointment end of the week.
It seemed to me therapist was on thin ice trying to get me into the hospital as if I was too stupid to understand how the system works...just tell them what you told me, you're having hallucinations...yeah right and I have a bridge in Brooklyn I want to sell you.
Sunday, May 12, 2013
Published
My poetry will be included in the 10th year anniversary edition of www.crannogmagazine.com CRANNOG Literary Magazine, published in Galway, Ireland. My work was selected from global submissions sent in from every continent....that's pretty nifty.
Publication date is June 28, 2013, it is a hard copy literary journal so if you're interested, go to the site and purchase a copy.
Kvelling:-)
Publication date is June 28, 2013, it is a hard copy literary journal so if you're interested, go to the site and purchase a copy.
Kvelling:-)
Wednesday, May 8, 2013
Shrunk
Well, I'm not sure what's going on with my therapist. but ostensibly she caught a virus from another patient who thought they were non contagious and has since been in absentia, not seeing patients. Or not seeing me. Before we chalk this up to my usual paranoia, let me say a few things....
My therapist has divulged a lot of very personal matters to me including aspects of her own diagnosis, her neurological difficulties, she is partially deaf and lip reads, her husband is confined to a wheelchair and fell out of it a few months ago into a street that luckily had no traffic at that moment, and little updates about her pets. Before you pee from laughing, there literally is a severe shortage of able senior practitioners who are accepting patients. I cannot work with someone doing their residency, tried that, no good.There have been sessions when 1/2 the time is spent on me listening to family anecdotes.
But I digress...my diagnosis often has problems with severe transference even same gender and in this therapeutic relationship it has manifested in me having severe anxiety she might die or be too frail to care for me. She shared, with good intentions, to explain to me how similar our experiences have been (debatable) so she is well prepared to work with me.
Early on she recommended a layman's psych workbook that I found to be written for preschoolers and told her as much. It was weeks later that she told me how 'hurtful' my dismissal of her recommendation was. She suggested a novelist Barbara Pym whom I thoroughly enjoyed a number of her books, somehow in discussing the books either I used a term, old fashioned or staid, nothing obscene or really offensive and she subsequently will not recommend ANY reading material to do with the anxiety/depression problems keeping me locked up. I am not responding appropriately to her gestures of being helpful.
So I returned to reading Masterson and began to read Eric Maisel last month.
But even with reading I prefer being housebound and the term is apt, I am bound mentally to be at home as much as possible. Few things would drive me to go out-completely out of cigarettes and nicotine gum isn't cutting it; out of cat food. I've rescheduled Dr. appointments if anxiety is off the chart. Sometimes I go through periods of not speaking, other than occasionally to the cats, so that when I hear my own voice I almost don't recognize it. I hate small talk, this issue almost cost me professionally many times. Luckily I had someone above me who was empathetic, I told her I'll do almost anything, I'm not good with cocktail chatter one on one. "But you don't have problems speaking to me," she once told me and I responded, "You're a pleasure to speak with, you have a brain and don't BS around."
So I'm going into my 3rd week without a session, no word from therapist after she checked in at the height of my depression, which included mild psychosis and my psych had to increase the anti psychotic med...nothing, total silence. I see him in about 10 days and will ask him to recommend someone to take me on. I am not reaching out to my current therapist a 3rd time for a session.
My therapist has divulged a lot of very personal matters to me including aspects of her own diagnosis, her neurological difficulties, she is partially deaf and lip reads, her husband is confined to a wheelchair and fell out of it a few months ago into a street that luckily had no traffic at that moment, and little updates about her pets. Before you pee from laughing, there literally is a severe shortage of able senior practitioners who are accepting patients. I cannot work with someone doing their residency, tried that, no good.There have been sessions when 1/2 the time is spent on me listening to family anecdotes.
But I digress...my diagnosis often has problems with severe transference even same gender and in this therapeutic relationship it has manifested in me having severe anxiety she might die or be too frail to care for me. She shared, with good intentions, to explain to me how similar our experiences have been (debatable) so she is well prepared to work with me.
Early on she recommended a layman's psych workbook that I found to be written for preschoolers and told her as much. It was weeks later that she told me how 'hurtful' my dismissal of her recommendation was. She suggested a novelist Barbara Pym whom I thoroughly enjoyed a number of her books, somehow in discussing the books either I used a term, old fashioned or staid, nothing obscene or really offensive and she subsequently will not recommend ANY reading material to do with the anxiety/depression problems keeping me locked up. I am not responding appropriately to her gestures of being helpful.
So I returned to reading Masterson and began to read Eric Maisel last month.
But even with reading I prefer being housebound and the term is apt, I am bound mentally to be at home as much as possible. Few things would drive me to go out-completely out of cigarettes and nicotine gum isn't cutting it; out of cat food. I've rescheduled Dr. appointments if anxiety is off the chart. Sometimes I go through periods of not speaking, other than occasionally to the cats, so that when I hear my own voice I almost don't recognize it. I hate small talk, this issue almost cost me professionally many times. Luckily I had someone above me who was empathetic, I told her I'll do almost anything, I'm not good with cocktail chatter one on one. "But you don't have problems speaking to me," she once told me and I responded, "You're a pleasure to speak with, you have a brain and don't BS around."
So I'm going into my 3rd week without a session, no word from therapist after she checked in at the height of my depression, which included mild psychosis and my psych had to increase the anti psychotic med...nothing, total silence. I see him in about 10 days and will ask him to recommend someone to take me on. I am not reaching out to my current therapist a 3rd time for a session.
Sunday, May 5, 2013
Racing to the finish
I watched the PA runners race, waiting but not wanting another catastrophe to happen. It seems my naiveté knows no bounds. I kept thinking the brothers were simply swept away by impulsive passions to better their individual beliefs. It seems know they were egged on by a mother and had assistance by 'friends' who tried to destroy evidence and a wife who wanted to protect her husband. A mere boy who laughs when confronted with the bombings by friends who were watching on TV.
What can be in the mind of a boy his age, who has seen much good and evil of the world, who could not escape the facts surrounding those who attempted the same feats and were captured, only to spend their lives locked up forever. Bombs of opportunity, they were called. Made too quickly and ready to go, they had to be disbursed prior to July 4th, so Patriot's Day seemed like a good substitute. Is it the thinking of many youths that tomorrow never comes and if it does?...nothing can touch me, I am invincible.
Did his mother urge him to give up his life for Islam? She blames the U.S. for corrupting her children and yet they flourished here on government welfare programs deemed refugees, there was empathy and a helping hand as this country always tries to offer those new to these shores.
And I have to ask why I empathize with such broken wings as these two were...stray cats, fallen birds, people who seem down on their luck because of chance, happenstance, bad luck...even poor decisions whose consequences mar their current days, decisions they would never make if given a second chance. And yet prisons are filled with remorseful people, some of whom learn to change and some of whom grow firmer and more stubborn from the very grief they've caused others and themselves and now find there's no way out.
When I consider madness and my hand in it, I think of the straight track of self preservation I've remained on. No booze, drugs, stealing or falling behind and waiting for the government to care for me. I've lived a very hard life but a clean one. I've worked since age 14 and yet still cannot grant myself the peace of resting now in retirement.
People around me ask and wonder what in the world I can possible do all day...reading, baking, keeping house, shopping, resting from illnesses, these are minor escapes in a world that values most, what one does for a living. if you are doing no work, you are doing nothing. When I was a child and would walk to school I often wondered what went on in the street with adult I saw who didn't seem to be working. Were they bums? Alcoholics, some were. perhaps many had to leave to race before the finish. My father didn't leave until he was injured at age 74 by a push cart of dresses that ran over his ankle. Even then, he felt a failure because he wasn't supporting his wife and girls. he wept and worried what was to become of us, he knew the race wasn't over because his time was ending...he wanted us ready to run for ourselves once he was gone. Every time he tried to talk to me about this, my mother told me to go find something else to do and to leave him alone. I cannot tell you that I know my father can see what I've done with my life, that I made my living with writing, something he yearned to do albeit with a 3rd grade education. I cannot say he waits for me, because I don't know any of these things. Perhaps my 'race' ended earlier than others because it began so early...maybe I need to learn how to grant myself the grace of being allowed to finish early.
What can be in the mind of a boy his age, who has seen much good and evil of the world, who could not escape the facts surrounding those who attempted the same feats and were captured, only to spend their lives locked up forever. Bombs of opportunity, they were called. Made too quickly and ready to go, they had to be disbursed prior to July 4th, so Patriot's Day seemed like a good substitute. Is it the thinking of many youths that tomorrow never comes and if it does?...nothing can touch me, I am invincible.
Did his mother urge him to give up his life for Islam? She blames the U.S. for corrupting her children and yet they flourished here on government welfare programs deemed refugees, there was empathy and a helping hand as this country always tries to offer those new to these shores.
And I have to ask why I empathize with such broken wings as these two were...stray cats, fallen birds, people who seem down on their luck because of chance, happenstance, bad luck...even poor decisions whose consequences mar their current days, decisions they would never make if given a second chance. And yet prisons are filled with remorseful people, some of whom learn to change and some of whom grow firmer and more stubborn from the very grief they've caused others and themselves and now find there's no way out.
When I consider madness and my hand in it, I think of the straight track of self preservation I've remained on. No booze, drugs, stealing or falling behind and waiting for the government to care for me. I've lived a very hard life but a clean one. I've worked since age 14 and yet still cannot grant myself the peace of resting now in retirement.
People around me ask and wonder what in the world I can possible do all day...reading, baking, keeping house, shopping, resting from illnesses, these are minor escapes in a world that values most, what one does for a living. if you are doing no work, you are doing nothing. When I was a child and would walk to school I often wondered what went on in the street with adult I saw who didn't seem to be working. Were they bums? Alcoholics, some were. perhaps many had to leave to race before the finish. My father didn't leave until he was injured at age 74 by a push cart of dresses that ran over his ankle. Even then, he felt a failure because he wasn't supporting his wife and girls. he wept and worried what was to become of us, he knew the race wasn't over because his time was ending...he wanted us ready to run for ourselves once he was gone. Every time he tried to talk to me about this, my mother told me to go find something else to do and to leave him alone. I cannot tell you that I know my father can see what I've done with my life, that I made my living with writing, something he yearned to do albeit with a 3rd grade education. I cannot say he waits for me, because I don't know any of these things. Perhaps my 'race' ended earlier than others because it began so early...maybe I need to learn how to grant myself the grace of being allowed to finish early.
Wednesday, May 1, 2013
PTSD
Surely in all the writing about myself I've mentioned PTSD, but it became officially a diagnosis this past week. The Boston bombings that took place 2 weeks ago set me off...weeping and afraid to venture outdoors. But oddly the grief is not as much for those injured or who died, but for the boys who committed the acts, in particular the younger Dzhokar (sp?) who seems to me to have been groomed by his older brother.
My grief seems to revolve around the hopelessness of such young boys who think sacrificing their lives for a greater good, whether it involves terror or murder will leave a lasting mark that changes anything---that such acts today in any way forwards their cause whatever it was.
In this situation it seems too convenient to blame religious fundamentalism or fanaticism. I could be wrong, not being a expert on brainwashing, but unless there was more at work than the 6 month return to Dagestan and Russia, Tamerlan had too much going on with expectant wife, governmental income, 2 parents, his own good looks and personal success--again I say these boys were not losers, like many others who self combust, their inner joy experienced as meaningfulness in a world that doesn't value moral or ethics to the same extent as capital success, were suffering a type of emptiness at their core selves.
Imagine, as so many American soldiers who have served in Afghanistan and Iraq, living in an environment where the most basic acts of faith inform everything done throughout one's day and then having to slaughter people who have done nothing except be in the way or try to defend themselves from rockets, bombs and machine guns. Yes, I know its not all so black and white....America has become expert in nuancing our wars of late to allow us to continue in combat mode where we define it as necessary. The highest rates of America soldiers taking their on lives has been after returning home from Afghanistan and Iraq. I wonder whether anyone is tracking military conversions to Islam as well?
I was prescribed an antidepressant to break the otherwise unstoppable cycle of grief, but found more effective was listening to hours of Chopin, the complete Nocturnes, some Waltzes, Etudes, Polonaises...these speak to my Self as if prescribed for my soul. I needed both to be honest, as I am in writing to you who take time to come by and read here. And I see from the audience those reading understand my passion for Chopin.
The level of grief I experience is so powerful it makes me physically ill, stomach cramps and other unmentionables, but I can't leave the apartment. Not only because of physical discomfort but mental terror of being caught in a maelstrom as on 9.11 when after seeing both buildings come down, the streams of people walking silently over the Brooklyn Bridge to get home. I couldn't do that and was put up with several other women by the College in the dorms for 4 days. Each women left at different stages, we were waiting for the electricity to be turned back on and once it was and the trains were back to runnings, I too left. But the echo of silence against the bluest of skies, the fluttering of sheaves of papers, billowing smoke and falling bodies somehow remains impressed no matter how I try to shake it all off. I would not survive a war...I've been through too many since childhood and have run out of adrenaline to flee or fight, I remain a casualty in waiting, one to be counted.
My grief seems to revolve around the hopelessness of such young boys who think sacrificing their lives for a greater good, whether it involves terror or murder will leave a lasting mark that changes anything---that such acts today in any way forwards their cause whatever it was.
In this situation it seems too convenient to blame religious fundamentalism or fanaticism. I could be wrong, not being a expert on brainwashing, but unless there was more at work than the 6 month return to Dagestan and Russia, Tamerlan had too much going on with expectant wife, governmental income, 2 parents, his own good looks and personal success--again I say these boys were not losers, like many others who self combust, their inner joy experienced as meaningfulness in a world that doesn't value moral or ethics to the same extent as capital success, were suffering a type of emptiness at their core selves.
Imagine, as so many American soldiers who have served in Afghanistan and Iraq, living in an environment where the most basic acts of faith inform everything done throughout one's day and then having to slaughter people who have done nothing except be in the way or try to defend themselves from rockets, bombs and machine guns. Yes, I know its not all so black and white....America has become expert in nuancing our wars of late to allow us to continue in combat mode where we define it as necessary. The highest rates of America soldiers taking their on lives has been after returning home from Afghanistan and Iraq. I wonder whether anyone is tracking military conversions to Islam as well?
I was prescribed an antidepressant to break the otherwise unstoppable cycle of grief, but found more effective was listening to hours of Chopin, the complete Nocturnes, some Waltzes, Etudes, Polonaises...these speak to my Self as if prescribed for my soul. I needed both to be honest, as I am in writing to you who take time to come by and read here. And I see from the audience those reading understand my passion for Chopin.
The level of grief I experience is so powerful it makes me physically ill, stomach cramps and other unmentionables, but I can't leave the apartment. Not only because of physical discomfort but mental terror of being caught in a maelstrom as on 9.11 when after seeing both buildings come down, the streams of people walking silently over the Brooklyn Bridge to get home. I couldn't do that and was put up with several other women by the College in the dorms for 4 days. Each women left at different stages, we were waiting for the electricity to be turned back on and once it was and the trains were back to runnings, I too left. But the echo of silence against the bluest of skies, the fluttering of sheaves of papers, billowing smoke and falling bodies somehow remains impressed no matter how I try to shake it all off. I would not survive a war...I've been through too many since childhood and have run out of adrenaline to flee or fight, I remain a casualty in waiting, one to be counted.
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