Couch 162: Let's Play Ball! (The Baseball Couch)

My current instructor gave us a quiz on the syllabus. Easiest points so far. Lol

Hope you all do not mind that what you write here will be used in articles and blog post without your permission or even a citation that it was your stuff.

I don't count the points--they just cannot access the rest of the course website, which includes things like assignment guides and assignment submission links and lecture outlines, until they get a perfect score on the syllabus quiz.

Would you like to explain a little more?

Never mind I see the post.

MoxieDoxie posted here with a more in depth explanation:

https://forums.psychcentral.com/psyc...ml#post6010569

Ahh, good to see that plagiarism is alive and well.

I'm very tired of this flu. As I lay here on the couch I'm running fever still. Which means I can't go to work tomorrow. I'll need to decide soon if I cancel therapy or not for tomorrow. Which sucks because I can't go next week due to prior commitments.

Can your new T do a phone session if you're contagious but otherwise up for it? That's always an option with my T. I think sometimes insurance will still cover it too.

No clue. I'll ask him when I talk to him next, whenever that may be. I don't know that I'd be comfortable with that, though. Plus I'd probably not give the phone call my full attention.

Ah, yeah. It's definitely not the same as an actual session, at least in my experience.

I can't get that song out of my head, I've been singing it quietly at my desk today that ballad to my therapist song. Should I be ashamed that I already know all the words? Haha

Sister's drama update: So she comes in this morning and tells me she's done something bad. She hacked all her boyfriend's accounts, and deleted all their pictures together and all the pictures he had of the baby. She says she knows that it looks like she's crazy, but she doesn't care.

I finally broke down last night crying. My dad is willing to sacrifice his life for my sister, but she doesn't appreciate anything it seems. She told me my dad said he only has a few years left to live. It breaks my heart. He was a hard working man who did his best to provide for his family. None of his dreams ever came true. And now he's willing to sacrifice his life... I wish my family loved me even a percentage of that. It hurts. The only thing I've ever done wrong is suffer from mental health issues.

I was triggered in a big way at university and had a panic attack today. I don't remember ever having a panic attack like that before but when I described it to my husband he said I used to have them when I first met him (18 years old) when I was triggered by stuff relating to my mother. I don't remember that at all which is really strange. I'm starting to doubt myself massively. I just feel really incapable and out of control (internally) while appearing okay on the surface.

That's a terrible feeling, Spoon. I feel that way often; I am a fully capable human being to the world, but inside I feel like my life is eternally collapsing. I hope that you're feeling better now.

Thanks Daisy. I feel like I've been physically hurt or something. I guess the impact of past trauma is coming up now. I've felt nothing for many years.

Same here. I remember at one point in high school, when I was really depressed, one of my friends commented on how I'm always smiling.

I've been good at faking it for a long time...One of the nice things about therapy is that I don't have to fake it in there--I can let all the mess out...

Clearly I still fake it in there. I don't even cry. I don't know how to be anything else.

I think I fake it in therapy at times as well. Or that I overcompensate so that they don't know how bad things actually are. I still contend that RoboT should have had me hospitalized in August, but even at that point I was still not telling him how bad things truly were. It's one of the only good (?) coping mechanisms I have. I'm okay at my job and my marriage is okay and my support system is okay so I must be okay, right?

Yet on the inside I'm screaming.

Sorry if this doesn't make sense. I think my fever is spiking again.

It makes a lot of sense and I relate to it at the moment. Hope you feel better too.

That's true, I do fake it in therapy sometimes, too...Like I feel all upset going there, then don't shed a tear. Other times, I'm a weepy mess. I'm not sure why sometimes I let it out and other times I hide it. I think that's why I end up using outside contact so much, because I realize I didn't let stuff out in session. And it's like I expected the T (or MC) to read my mind and know how much I was suffering.

My therapist just disclosed that she's going through a very hard time, that there had been a tragedy recently, and she wishes she hadn't reacted the way she did to me the other day. So at least I can know that it wasn't necessarily about me. I am not so sure I will ever bring the topic again that I'd been talking about, and was in therapy for, but it does help to know why she was reactive. I wish therapists would do more of that kind of explaining when they're going off on a client.

I'm really glad she was honest with you ruh roh. It's too easy for a therapist to deflect and be defensive. I'm glad she recognised her response to you was unhelpful.

Yeah, the thing I think they miss is that while it's a workday to them, the person across from them is likely being open and vulnerable, the way that therapy seems to dictate. So even if their issues are not as pressing as the therapist's, the therapist is wearing work armor while the client is skinless. Things are going to feel infinitely more intense for the client in that setting (for those who open up in therapy and take that risk, that is). It's so much better to know that there were factors outside of me at play, rather than to take the blame for all of it on myself or to think I imagined it all.

Therapy is too damn hard. I think I hit a personal best today. 0 to crying in under a minute. I feel like I keep screwing everything up. It was so tough today he wants to do a 20 minute phone call Sunday because he's going to be out on Monday and it will be 6 days before our next in-person session. He wants to discuss my feelings about today's session, after I've had time to reflect on it, but my emotions are all over the map right now. I don't know if I can even construct a cohesive narrative about what happened today.

*I don't know where to post this so figured this is good enough place, I will deleted it if belongs somewhere else.

I have been struggling for a while. I'll have moments of feeling better, mostly I'm just so sad, I've lost whatever little interest I did have in things, and my ED is not being managed. I'm shutting down. I can feel how fake I am becoming. I have started to debate even keeping up my journal. I believe T doesn't want me to email her and she doesn't want to keep seeing me at some level forever (the plan was to keep her monthly/every other month as a touchstone around my ED issues once all other things had gotten addressed).

And no T hasn't said anything to indicate these beliefs. In fact, we've been discussion increasing sessions and moving more psychoanalysis/analytical.

I feel like I'm not living a life. That what people see is not me, that I'm not allowed to live.