It gets really confusing who to talk to about what. I've talked to my supervisor about what happened with my clients, but I severely limit what I tell my supervisor about my own issues. I really want to tell her about reacting this way to what she said though. Unfortunately, I have such delayed reactions to things that I don't realize how I feel until at least an hour or two later, and then it's too late to talk about it. The next week I tend to forget. I'm thinking about switching internships entirely since there is very little left for me to do now at this site, but I'm attached to this supervisor now and I don't want to give her up. I have told her that I have Seasonal Affective Disorder and that I was going through relationship problems the last several weeks, but have not dared to tell her that I have personality disorders and lifetime chronic depression and anxiety. I don't know if I should tell her more about that or not.

I don't think that T even believes in SAD, btw. She's not into anything that might make a convenient excuse. I have told T about my clients not wanting to see me, and she knows that I am in trouble on all fronts right now. In fact, I broke down and cried at work because my annual evaluation was going to go very poorly - I keep missing work and not getting things done because I can't focus and I am in slow motion all the time and tired and not coping. I took a day off from work a while back to go to a retreat. It was the first time I ever asked for or used personal time off from work. I've never had it available before, and it feels like I need a really good excuse to ask for it. I feel guilty about taking time off. But something happened that triggered me, and that day that I took off, I was plunged into depression that still hasn't gone away. Okay, it's not exactly a new issue, but it was a crisis that I haven't found my way out of yet. I couldn't even go to the retreat because I was not functional enough to get ready and leave the house.

T knows about that. I have told her about my car crash and the tooth I broke (grinding my teeth on my way home after therapy the day after the missed retreat). I told her about losing my clients. BTW, when I have missed work, I have had these things as cover stories - needing to shop for a car, go to the dentist, etc., but haven't really come out and told anyone that I wouldn't have been able to function on those days anyway. I might not have lost my internship clients if I hadn't tried to push myself to keep going when I wasn't up to it. I thought I could handle it, and thought that being reliable for them and maintaining continuity was better than not seeing them at that point, but I was so wrong about that.

Work offered me partial FMLA to give me time to recover and catch up with things. It would have just let me reduce my hours for a while and have some breathing room. But I had to have documentation from T, and T refused to sign the paperwork for me. Apparently, if I have personal leave available I should just schedule a day off without making excuses for it, and if I run out of leave then I will need to go to part-time status. For some reason those options seem impossible to me and I'm most likely to keep on running myself right into the ground.

So, I guess I haven't exactly shared this particular question with T. I was reading that book yesterday, and I won't see T for almost two weeks now. She is taking a week off because she said that she needed to, and I said that I wished that I could do that, because I really need a break, but I don't get one. In the coming month, I will not have one single day that isn't scheduled. There is no time that will be just mine. So, I'm trying not to bother T while she is taking time off. She said she wouldn't answer me if I emailed her anyway.

Somehow this is supposed to make me start to cope more effectively. She keeps telling me to start coping. I'm also supposed to start being competent and figure out how to do that and how to solve my own problems. Most of the solutions that come to mind are pretty certainly not what she would consider good coping.

I rambled a lot. Sorry. I'm not sure I even answered the question.