Couch 141: The Inversional Hexachordal Combinatorial Couch

I know, right. lol

Vent-
DD, 37yo, just learned she is very sick with heart failure. Went with her yesterday to meet cardiologist and find out their treatment plan. It was distressing for both us to learn how sick she is, but she behaved appropriately. Went to the lab next, They treated her very unprofessionally. We dealt with it. I thought she had calmed down but I see, now, this is when her emotions began to ramp up. She went back to work, I went home.

She called me when she got home rehashing the day and figuring out questions she needs to ask at her next appointment in a week. Understandable. But she had a meltdown. My T calls it being "dysregulated." I didn't even know "dysregulated" was a real term. T told me earlier when DD's emotions become "dysregulated," she's not going to be able to listen to logic or explanations. She misinterpreted and found offense with every sentence or phrase I tried to say. I never see it coming, it's so abrupt.
I became so frustrated, I hung up on her.

I don't know how I'm going to be able to be supportive through her illness and recovery. She's my baby and this could be a life threatening illness- of course I want to be there and help her.

Btw, she has ADHD.

Hugs hugs hugs... This sounds so hard for both of you. I hope you'll find a way through it. I wish you both all the best.
Please remember to take care of yourself first - you can't help your daughter if you're not well enough yourself

Highlight of my session yesterday -- current T told me that she "felt a yearning" to be "closer" to me and "deepen the relationship".

This after my latest blow-up had involved my accusing her of not understanding my generally awful state of mind.

I am rather pleased that I kept a straight face.

How does she want to do this, with a weekend at a B&B in New Hampshire?

I would have asked, "So, can I get to second base then?"

Oh yes. Same here. I have been growing more and more attached to my t, so that it's bordering on all-consuming. That feels all kinds of wrong, but I haven't wanted to rip myself away from her, because still, it's clearly not all about her as a person. She just taps into all these really powerful and conflicting feelings in me, and I have been processing my entire being and life and memories and gained a lot of insight. But now I was seriously thinking of ditching her for a couple of days...even looked for a replacement. The thought of having to leave her now just felt like being broken all over again. I couldn't stop crying, and the all day travel to my wife's family yesterday was seriously horrible. It can be such a heartbreaking struggle. I really wasn't sure if she's being cold and rigid in a downright abusive way, and I'm just drawn to that in a very dysfunctional way, (I have been before, in non-therapy relationships) or if I'm just so attached that I take any kinda signs of dismissal from her unreasonably hard. And then I read a blog post about the process of traumatic memories being converted into biographical ones and how it's important for a therapist to not disturb the process by offering comfort, which would just cater to the needs of avoidance and immediate gratification instead of helping the healing process along. I don't know if this is actually her reasoning or not, and it certainly would have been nice to be told if it is. Put it does put things in a new perspective.

I feel like I shouldn't put out for anything less than a trip to say, Hawaii?

I am sorry to hear about your daughter.

I don't know if this will be useful or not -but when my person was going through horrible chemo or had been told some horrible news about her cancer = I had to remember that her lashing out at me was because I was safe - I was not going to leave her; that it was not personal; and to sometimes just not say anything - and when she would accuse me of not saying anything - I would explain that I while I could not fully understand how she felt - that I felt so bad that I could not fix it - and all I could do at that moment was be with her because I could not say anything to make it better.
And there were times when I had to say - now wait - I have to step back for an hour or so because although you get to feel how you feel, I get to take a break when you start taking it out on me.

There was one really bad chemo period where she would cry and yell at me to leave and she never wanted to see me again and then by the time I got down the hall - she was texting me about where was I and when was I coming back.

It was trying.

my roommates are at church
..party!! (until 8:30ish PM)

Two things I learned today: my car (VW) has something called a "sunroof drain." And it being clogged is the reason my car was leaking.

Also, if your iPhone is stuck in headphone mode despite not having headphones in, using a Q-tip with some of the cotton pulled off and wiping inside the headphone jack, then turning it off and back on again can fix the problem (thanks, Internet!)

not having a job is fun for about 24 hours

((precaryous))
((everyone else who wants one))

Today has been a Bad Day

I hurt my foot on Tuesday, and I had to walk from my school to our high school and back for graduation practice (1 mile).
Then we had field day, which my colleague who has taught for 30+ years said it was one of the most disorganized things she'd ever witnessed. One of the kids on my caseload was recommended for expulsion today. Plus our school ordered pizza for the students who are placed in long term suspension as a reward.

That's when the migraine started. I ended up falling asleep briefly at work waiting for the pain meds to kick in. Home late, now I'm icing my foot and want to cry.

Sorry, rant over.

Precarious - the other thing is - this is the one area where the therapist has been useful. I would go in and rail about it to her so that I could go back and deal with my person calmly.

Daisy can I tack my own rant onto yours? I'm too tired to go into details and all I can manage to express right now is

I HAVE ****ING HAD IT WITH ALL YOU PEOPLE*!!!!!

*not PC people. Just the people I've had it with. If you were one of them you would know**

**except probably not because I don't know actually how to communicate my needs and emotions to people

Oh my god,

breathe
breathe
breathe

Feel free to bandwagon. I sat with a few of my coworkers after school and we basically had a **** ALL OF THIS session. I've never seen one of them so angry ever.

And I wouldn't say how I feel to the people who make me irritated like this. Mainly because it's administrators who are in charge of my evaluations.

((anais))

One of the handful of ****-this situations that I'm juggling right now falls squarely face-first into that school administrators boat

Ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Admins are the worst. If you want to yell about it (via text) feel free to post or PM me. I can probably relate.

Ahh thank you ((daisy)) I so appreciate that... I think for now I'll do the adult thing: ignore it all and have some wine in bed...

Wine would be nice. But I'll settle for going to sleep early. Today was both stupid and exhausting.

SD, that was very insightful. I'm glad you could back up and understand what your person might be going through. I'm sure you were very helpful and your person appreciated you very much.

I'm going to rail at T's tomorrow afternoon! I've already been railing at T over the phone yesterday and today.

Today I took the phone off the hook and was going to clean. Brother and nephew are coming over Saturday. But...the dog got sick all over the carpet.. Everywhere! I'm glad I covered the sofa and dog beds with towels and throws. I railed pretty good at no one in particular, too, as I cleaned up and threw things in the washer. I used up all my energy reserves yesterday. I'm watching the dog closely. She's acting better now. I took her food away for today but left her water out. Not sure why she got sick but sure didn't need that to happen today.

So far, T has said to wait for a moment of calm then tell DD that I want to be there to support and help her AND that I will need to limit my exposure to her meltdowns when she becomes belligerent with me ...that I will end the conversation when I deem necessary ...that I will not be gone forever but I need to take a break. Basically, what you just said, SD.

This is so stressful. T says I don't need to allow DD to get away with her behavior just because she's sick. I hope somehow DD can catch herself before she melts down and stops this illogical raging at me.

My life 8 years ago

I have so many notebooks and journals of this stuff but I never get rid of them... I don't get it. I just lug them from house to house

Me too. Hence the anais thing, like anais nin.

But this way you can see where you were then, compared to now...

I should start keeping a journal again...