CheshireCatGrin: I can so relate. I felt that way at 16 - I was NOT going to talk to anyone about what I felt. I held on to that until the big crash at age 27. At that point, since it was the most frightening thing to me - (I envisioned a plastic bracelet on my arm saying 'Psyche Ward - No Visitors) - I decided that all bets were off with everyone at that point. I owed no one anything then. To have put me in a position to have to do the one thing I was so frightened of sent me into a 'screw you' mode to everyone - friends, family, my children, husband, bosses - the entire lot.

I think that attitude as you enter this may help you. You're doing this for no one but yourself, and 'screw 'em' if they don't get your fear. Just go, breathe, and finally tell every weird thing you've been holding in. My first shrink, whom I call 'God John Bovey', told me when I first went in -- that if your world isn't going as you like and you are behaving badly all you have to do is stop it. He said when I understood that, my time with him would end. It took three years.

You can do it too. Trust him/her. Believe me, there are stranger people on the planet than you are. I guarantee it.

Now as to me today --- I'm sort of loopy. I've been put on this new drug for the back problem I have - pretty bad, up to morphine and more - now I have the generic of lyrica and they're phasing it in for me - 1 a day for a week, 2 a day for a week, 3 a day - and then I'm on it for good.

What frightens me is the side effects - suicidal thoughts - for me, they are there every damned day - so I've asked my dad, who lives with me, to keep an eye on me to see if I'm stranger than my normal strange.

At the moment, I seem to be sort of scattered - and I can prove it - I'm doing laundry ----- LAUNDRY? ARE YOU KIDDING ME? OMG, I HATE LAUNDRY!!