Couch 173: The Odiferous One

Unhelpful!

I binge watch my 600lb life.

You might like Eastenders or the Australian show Neighbors.

The email reply back makes them sound like a fruit loop.

I would be tempted to get a huge dog and let him deal with their "help".

Could he not be examined by an on call psychiatrist whilst he's still at the hospital?

Good point. There ought to be someone on duty to decide which patients are a danger to themselves or others.

The Schizophrenia and Psychosis gang has its own couch. They are up to Roll Call 129.

I tried to tell them about his health anxiety, and all they said was "oh, your poor husband".

Binge-watch being the operative term, pardon the puns. I dont think i can ever eat cake again, after The food closeups seem very effective in this latest season!

What do you have to do, stage an intervention? Hey, write to Dr Phil.

Perhaps it's time to get firm with these doctors and kick up a bit of a fuss if you have to. This is not normal behavior and his recent number of admissions should tell them something is wrong. This is not something that should be brushed off with a "poor H".

Ah sorry that is the wrong word to be using. xD

The single cake piece caused her to gain 82lbs?!?

The coffee shop where I normally study have a new lemon cake with pistachios-I haven't tried it yet though as the price put me off if I'm being honest (£2.10) with a single iced coffee would be £4.50 easily. I got up late at 10am think I made the mistake of trying to study at home as you can obviously see. (( that I'm here getting distracted.))

I've decided to email new T D and cancel my next session. Then I'd have an extra £39 to waste on food. I work so hard because my anxiety has always been pushing me. I kinda want to do try to do it alone now, but at the same time I'm kinda worried if I'm making the right choice. I am not a baby and I am stronger than I think I am yet that email still hasn't been sent.

Edit: email sent.

My dog is catlike in that he perches on top of my head and blocks my view of my phone and/or computer.

I feel like eating certain things sometimes make me gain several pounds - not 82, but a few. I am not fat, but my endo does tell me my thyroid is completely atrophied and nonfunctional at this point.

Scarlet, I would start rolling out the ultimatums. Of course, that's me, and the therapist says that it's never good to use ultimatums and threats with bad consequences to get my way... yet your h needs to be reigned in.

Lemoncake, I thought you liked Daniel?

Wow, NP, I'm sorry for the response you got. This part in particular makes her sound really nutty: "It saddens me when I see shrubs, plants, trees neglected and left to die. We live in such a beautiful State where things are easy to grow and be beautiful." Like she cares more about plants than people??? I mean, nothing wrong with plants, but... And I can't believe she tried to look up the blue flowering plants in her books and claims they aren't there.


HOA's can be a pain to deal with. We have a condo association (even though we're in townhouses) and were written up once for our garden being overgrown (waiting to get written up again any day now...) and once for having to repaint our steps. Meanwhile, at the time, there were a couple abandoned houses on the block in much worse shape. Plus there was random garbage laying around in common areas, people not cleaning up their dog poop, etc., and it's like, "You complain about this and aren't taking care of that stuff?" The one good thing is they take care of mowing the grass, except sometimes they let that go for a long time. OK, I'll stop ranting. But anyway, HOA's can be really random in what they do or don't enforce.

I agree with the suggestion to maybe hire a gardening person for next time it's getting overgrown, though I totally get that you wouldn't want to deal with them. Maybe you could hire someone online and pay online as well? And then, since it's all outside stuff, you wouldn't even have to come in contact with them.

How could he possibly tell it's his aorta, unless he's a trained medical professional or had some issue with it in the past? That to me should make the doctors wonder what's going on. Like it's one thing to come in saying you have chest pain or you can feel your blood pumping stronger than usual, but to go in and say, "I think there's something wrong with my aorta" just sort of suggests health anxiety and overgoogling to me...

I do wonder if he could have been going to the hospital hoping to be admitted to avoid seeing the T? I hope he does go and actually is open with the T and that he/she can help him.


The crisis line sounds pretty useless... I guess you could try the depression group once and see what they're like?

Just had T. 90 minute session. Didn't help too much. I have noticed we're both happiest when I am reassuring him, even though he says I don't need to reassure him. An hour and 20 mins of criticising him and then 10 minutes of telling him I still think he's the right therapist for me and those were the best 10 minutes. I wish he weren't so receptive to the praise because it makes me want to reassure him more.

I really did, he was really nice and didn't make me feel like I was crazy. But to be honest I kinda expected myself to be a crying wreck at this point and I'm surprised that I'm actually enjoying myself.

The thing with R was that I wanted a safety net just in case. This time around he actually gave that to me by saying to please email him if I needed to and that we could have a one off session. Now I know that I can message him I don't actually need to.

Maybe it's because it's still early days and I'm in denial, but I don't miss him.

I don't know how to phrase this properly so I'm sorry If I come out sounding harsh- but why did you feel you told him the stuff at the end?

Creepy guy who farted from HOA, showed up at my home last night after 9pm. I live alone and creeper wanted to come in! Ummm no.... anyway that spooked me and I took ages to fall asleep.

Una I'm watching making of the mob on Netflix.

"We maybe criminals, but we are not savages"

Oh that sounds scary, no wonder you couldn't sleep.

Because I wanted it to end on a good note.

Oh that is a lot different to saying I wanted to make him happy.

Earlier in the session:

[About 50 minutes of criticising him]

T: Does everybody in your life become a disappointment?
Me: You're not a disappointment.
T: It feels like you are saying I am.
Me: You've done things that disappoint me, that's not the same as being a disappointment. I feel myself wanting to reassure you... I want to say I still love you.

[20 more minutes of me saying therapy feels pointless]

Me: but that said, I have never met another human being who I think could be a better therapist for me than you.
T: [silence] thank you.
Me: You know I think highly of you.
T: Yes I do know that. And I also know that you are frustrated with me. I don't know if you were trying to reassure me or not, but when you are so frustrated with me it's nice to hear you still think highly of me.

I don't know if this if what's happening with you, EMr, but sometimes I find that warm, buzzy, connected feeling so incredibly intoxicating that I kind of chase it a little. My T and I went through something similar to your Father's Day thing, and it was terrible and definitely the worst thing that has ever happened in therapy, but it has provided me with a lot of good/awful therapy work. I have no doubt that the two of you can find your way out of whatever is happening right now.

Thanks EM. A lot of this is about how he steps out of the therapeutic role sometimes. He admitted to looking at the father's day email "from the point of view of a father" when he said I was "putting myself alongside his kids".
I take that to mean I was somehow encroaching upon and threatening his relationship with his kids in his eyes. That does frustrate me cos it's nonsense. It was supposed to be a nice gesture and that he is so quick to step out of the role of therapist in those moments is a real limitation (his word).

I said what's the point in the transference if we can't use it in the therapy. He said we don't have to do anything with it, maybe it just needs to be expressed. We don't have to act on it but just allow myself to feel it. I sat back and sort of scoffed. He asked how I received that.

I said it's ambiguous, fuzzy, meaningless crap. Expressing It IS acting on it and acting on it is expressing it. How do I know when I go from expressing it (which is okay) to acting on it (which isn't). He said do we need to be more explicit around boundaries? I said no because a) we can't cover every eventually and b) it's incredibly shaming to do that as a reaction.

In the end he said he doesn't know what to do and that he thinks of it like we're on a boat with no paddle. We just need to stop and take in where we are rather than try to go anywhere.