Couch 164: Pink Moon

Welcome to the couch, old and new! A place to hang out - sometimes you get immediate feedback, sometimes you don't.

Shouting, "Cool Whip" tends to bring others out from between the cushions if you're feeling lonely.

This is a chatty thread. All are welcome. We're kind of psychologically oriented, sometimes. We try to be supportive. At times we discuss what that means.

It’s a place to plop down on the couch when you come home from work or wherever, or wake up in the middle of the night, or check in at lunch, rant a bit or not, and be among friends.

We advise you not to drink or drug and text your therapist ("T") - we speak from experience...

Sometimes the thread moves fast and you might get overlooked; sometimes it moves slowly and all you hear are crickets. Sometimes you get hugged or thanked pages later. So if it's a bigger question, you might want to start a new thread.

Grab a cushion, a spot on the floor, or an armchair in the corner (or with us) and make yourselves comfy!

Pink Moon by the English musician Nick Drake is currently playing in my background.

Thanks for the new couch, Lemoncake!

Excellent couch naming, Cake! (Brilliant musical taste too...)

Love that song!

Here's my pillow.

Cool pillow

Happy Sunday! Thanks for the new couch.

In a step of many not so dependence on t, he cancelled our session Thursday and it wasn’t a huge deal. Then I realized I have no idea when I am scheduled next and it hasn’t driven me crazy yet. Like, I will get in when I get in and i will manage in the mean time!

That is great! I don't think I'll ever get to that place. I'm way too sensitive to even the smallest changes, and it's not even a year for me yet, close though

Feeling very ...wrong... tonight. How is one supposed to go through life without hope for the future. Hope for something pleasurable eventually. What if all you see is a black hole of nothingness.

I found my ex therapist's email some time back on the register of psychologists of my country. Haven't seen her for more than 3 years. After a lot of thinking over many many many months, I decided to send her an update...

A poem I take comfort in when I despair:

Borrowed Hope

Lend me your hope for awhile,
I seem to have mislaid mine.
Lost and hopeless feelings accompany me daily.
Pain and confusion are my companions.
I know not where to turn.
Looking ahead to the future times
Does not bring forth images of renewed hope.
I see mirthless times, pain-filled days, and more tragedy.
Lend me your hope for awhile,
I seem to have mislaid mine.
Hold my hand and hug me,
Listen to all my ramblings.
I need to unleash the pain and let it tumble out.
Recovery seems so far and distant,
The road to healing, a long and lonely one.
Stand by me. Offer me your presence,
Your ears and your love.
Acknowledge my pain, it is so real and ever present.
I am overwhelmed with sad and conflicting thoughts.
Lend me your hope for awhile.
A time will come when I will heal,
And I will lend my renewed hope to others.

~Eloise Cole

Hi Couch,

I joined another forum looking for additional support, and so far I've just had questions fired at me. Grateful that you folk understand. Unfortunately, this other forum have a policy of not deleting posts.

Frustrated.

LOTT, That sounds intimidating / not welcoming.

Exactly - I joined, and then very quickly afterwards panicked, and requested that they put my account into hibernation. Then I decided that I needed to share my experience, and when I did...that was what happened. 'Do you have any trauma that qualifies you for a PTSD diagnosis?' Urges against self diagnosis...argh.

Sounds so intimidating. And gatekeepingish...

If you like reddit, r/cptsd is generally supportive.

I don't know why I'm always shocked that there's a sub-reddit for everything, yet here I am. I'll have to check out the one for CPTSD.

In other news, it appears that I'm not pregnant again. Oh well. I'm sad, but we'll just try again this month. I'm going to (try to) choose to be optimistic. Plus I get to work from home today, so life's not all bad.

SalingerEsme, I keep being so intrigued by your musings where you're trying to figure out your T. Do you want to be "cured" by your "doctor"? That view of therapy is so foreign to me.

I do NOT want to be cured by a "doctor". It seem so much more about the self image he needs to see in the mirror. I do feel there is an affection there- bc a few times he has tentatively 'taken down the fourth wall" and spoken candidly. I am daydreamy process type, so the compartments and labels make me frightened more than trusting. He believes my boundaries have been grievously violated in childhood, he reads the # metoos, and I believe he is trying to show me he is one of the good guys, safe and boundaried. Instead it makes me baffled. I think he struggles with if a male T should treat female rape victims etc, and he has a big background in PDTS with veterans actually in the midstream of going home. Prolonged exposure therapy - grit your teeth, face your fears, memories and images lose their power over you. He is being much more gentle with me, and I think finding himself being gentle, he wants to make sure that all is beyoind professional . I get some of that, but it hurts my feelings any way. I am not a boundary pusher, and I have a serious relationship outside of therapy. I suppose I feel he doesn't trust me to experience the intensity of language and emotions there with him, without misconstruing it , and more as if he thinks all female patients do. There's an arrogance to it, and a shred of truth and a larger portion of not true- as he isnt a match for BF in my heart. However his voice is powerful in my life, and I think about him too much. I am confused as anything about therapy.

That's terrible.

I didn't want to immediately rush into the gendered aspect of it, but that's what stuck out to me too. There's an inherent male/female power differential that's magnified by his insistence on setting the relationship up in a certain way. I haven't worked with a male therapist since I was a teenager and didn't have much of a choice (he was a "doctor" too, now that I think about it!), and maybe the inherent power differential I perceive is part of what stops me.

I think the intensity of finding a therapist who encourages you to delve into trauma can be so overwhelming. I sometimes feel things about my T that go way beyond how I might be feeling about my spouse at the current moment (and my spouse and I have a lovely relationship). Most of my feelings are really young "mom" feelings, though, so they seem fairly innocent and harmless, even when they are huge.

I think feeling hesitance or uncertainty from a T would be somewhat disquieting. I have a sense of my T being able to take all I can dish out and then some, but she had a couple of decades of experience and I am intense but my case is perhaps not overly complicated.