Couch 141: The Inversional Hexachordal Combinatorial Couch

I figure someday some poor graduate student will have them piled all around her, and she'll be saying, "ah, this is all just pure gold!"

I think I still have journals from middle school in my attic; those probably need to be burned immediately.

An extremely weird thing: I've always detested my name. Hate writing it, hate hearing people call it, hate the sound of it, have zero connection to it... I'd rather have people call me nothing at all... but ever since I came up with the Anais moniker for this forum I've been referring to myself in my head as Anais. I actually rather like the name.

I have an extreme fear of reading the stuff I've already written. I can't even read what I wrote yesterday. But getting rid of the notebooks is out of the question for some reason. And I always buy the same brand/style/color, so it's like I just have the same perpetual one, except for the huge pile of ones just like it.

I used to journal a lot...and I used to write AbusivePDoc a lot...I had many thoughts and secret feelings written down for him. Then there was a lawsuit. My writings and MH chart were released to AbusivePDoc's lawyers. The other side picked and chose whichever dab of information supported their case...they left out a lot of helpful communications (of course) and exaggerated and lied about whatever they could. That's what made me stop journaling..knowing (now) how they are. My own private thoughts, dreams and were used against me.

I got rid of all the lawsuit stuff. I didn't want my family to have to sort through those details one day. And, ha! I'm writing about it all over again on this message board and in emails to PrevT and T. I hope my family will wipe my computer and iPad clean without reading all this.

That's a valid opinion, sure, but I don't think any of my therapists would agree with you.

It's expensive all right. But I've bought thirty years of relative happiness and comparative normality.

((Precaryous))

This sounds like a perfectly normal response from someone who has just learned she might die. I suggest you cut her some slack and make huge allowances. She's not in her normal state of mind.

Sometime the kindest thing you can do is to put up with temporary insanity and not hold it against them, now or ever.

PS:
And remember, you may not be in your normal state of mind, either. Cut yourself some slack, too.

PPS:
Stopdog said it better.

I would have welcomed that with Madame T.

I'm getting really tired of people invalidating my feelings. Argument with H just now:

Me: I'm getting really frustrated right now.
H: You don't have any reason to get frustrated.
Me:

NOOOOOOOO....CW is going downhill rapidly
YAS. Love it.
He is soooo cuuute. What a gorgeous cat <3
LOL.

Speaking of keeping journals. I have 5.5 years worth that I've been keeping since starting therapy, 2 sets of them actually one set of dream journals, the other just journals. The only writing I kept from when I was younger was my poetry and half a dozen or so stories. And here I will treat ya'll to one of my poems from early 1979 when I was a Junior in high school, the title is "Who Am I?" and was our first assignment in Creative Writing class (I still know it by heart lol):

I'm a flower swaying in a gentle breeze
a bird gliding over the silver seas
a silent night
an early morn,
a child of nature, too late born.

A person who needs very much to be free
to be around friends, but to always be me.
Just a loner
already known
always in between, and yet, alone.

I have an online journal from the time period I was with my former T. I locked it from public view though.. This was in the notebook I posted earlier. It was a couple months after I reported him

Well I have come completely full circle after how I felt last night post-session. I was ready to quit therapy for good last night (sorry to anyone who read my temper tantrums before I deleted them!) but after a whole lot of thinking and self-reflection today and a very very helpful response from t (I had emailed her yesterday when I got home before I started on the wine lol, told her a little how I felt and that I was mad at her for doing her job so well in drawing that stuff out of me) I am back on the "I can DO this" bandwagon. I had another insight on the way to work this morning and even thought about calling her to tell her - I just wanted to hear her voice for some reason - but she sent the email before I went to break so after I read her email, I didn't need to call her anymore.

She's really changing the way she works with me. And even though I'm kind of sad about it, I know it's for the best, because the way we were going, I was never going to leave. Maybe she finally caught on to that. Anyway she's morphing into this Super-Traditional T role that she's never been before! And there's a part of me that likes it and responds to it believe it or not. Maybe it was intentional all along... like, it took all the non-traditional stuff to get me to finally totally open up to her and stop trying to pretend I was something else. It took a very long time for me to get to where I don't care what she thinks about me and I "just say it" with everything. Even yesterday. I didn't even feel embarrassed which is sososo weird but instead I was looking right at her and just said what I realized about myself right out loud as I realized it and put my hand over my mouth as my tears started...

Therapy is hard, hard work. I can't believe I'm saying this but I'm thankful for the attachment I have to her because it got me through last night without actually quitting so now we can get down to the business of working through this last big 'thing'. (I say "last", of course it might not be, but then again it's a pretty big thing and encompasses a few other smaller things so.... who knows.) Anyway I love my t. Again.

I am constantly gobsmacked at how I do not understand what other people do with therapists. And how batshit crazy therapists are. And how, for some reason, that seems to be a surprise to a large number of clients. And how no matter how incompetent, lazy, misguided and just dead flat guessing a therapist is - some people report will still give a therapist credit. (this is not about any therapist written about in the last hour or so here on the couch)

Well, I am constantly flabbergasted at your relationship with your T's

I know - people don't understand what I do either. It is just that I don't see how so many do it so differently than I do. And some of it just seems to defy common sense.

I have stopped with the second one for the most part. With person gone, I don't need to rail about western medicine and its horrors at two people who don't care each week.

I'd hazard a guess that your brain may be wired a tad differently than the people who post here (for a large part). I really enjoy reading your thoughts and opinions on all things therapy and whatever else you bring to the couch. It is always very interesting and thought-provoking for me. Also a reminder that humans are just very different in how they perceive the world.

Other possible uses for therapists include:

- decorative garden statues
- living caryatids
- battering rams

Personally I totally see why they are better when they stay quiet.

And---GASP, I used a smiley face responding to your post!!

So sorry for the lapse in judgement.

Googles "caryatid" thinking it is some sort of gross bug...is quite wrong

And yet so many seem to understand and identify with each other over things that I simply don't know how it happens.
Or why one would want it that way.
Why would one think a therapist had a better life than anyone else? How does that even happen in one's brain. And why when it turns out not to be true (of course) is one upset? Why are people upset that therapy is a business? Why do people twist themselves into all sorts of knots to justify what a therapist does to them?
I don't expect anyone to be able to answer it - I just can't comprehend it. I am not trying to stop anyone from doing it - but it is like watching a foreign horror movie sometimes

Is one really sorry when one does not go back and simply edit the post with the little picture? And then compounds the situation by using all capital letters and exclamation points?
I think not.

Don't do it, velcro. Stand your ground.

It is the sorry I question - not the picture

But, a couchies gotta do what a couchies gotta do! 😁