Couch 177: I Get a Strange Magic - ELO

I booked my ticket home for saturday. I told him that I felt closer to him at the end of last session. I see R online when I'm away during term time and in person when I'm in London. I said I wanted to take a holiday/break from therapy until october the 1st when term starts again, so around two weeks. He said something like I was devaluating/casting him aside now that I didn't need him. He said he would charge me for the missed sessions, when he's never done that before. Said that I had a habit of saying I didn't want the session, can I have it back 20 mins later.

I brought up his holiday and why did hey get to go away but I didn't and that he couldn't make me go to therapy. Why did he get to decide. He said that he did. He said something about why didn't I take a holiday before. Then he said he might not want to continue working with someone who did that and it felt like I was bullying him.

Something about me being manipulative to see how he'd react. That he thought I was lying when I said I lied about feeling closer to him.Then we talked about why I didn't want to see him (i've been before- right now it just makes me sad his house feels like a home, mine is just a house yada yada.

Yeah I'm still probably in a grumpy mood I guess I said i'd go if I was going be charged anyway, but I really didn't like today session. I know how my home situation is $**t- that I'll probably end up sad and down and want to go back to seeing him anyway but I feel like I'm done with talking about the past.

Send it out again and keep sending it out! Don't stop writing.

Frequency and stem and leaf tables - they are just counting stuff. Setting ranges. Its arithmetic, not math.

Whatever it is, she went through it too fast where to put different variables on the tables and what they mean on the graphs and curves

I am a dunce

How'd I ever get a bachelors

Is calling yourself names easier than the idea that this is simply going to take more work from you to learn it?

I was just trying to be funny

And, yes.

I dunno if this is gonna be helpful to you, Artie, but here it is anyway: when I started my first chemistry course as an undergrad I was scared that I was too dumb to learn it, that I was too dumb to get into medical school and that this chemistry class was going to be the thing that would weed me out. But my chem professor said, "all you need to learn chemistry is a sharp pencil and a good chair"--you don't have to be a genius, but you do have to put your butt in the seat and spend some quality time with the material. And she was right. Once I tamped down the terror and sat down with the textbook/homework/Kahn academy videos (sometimes at half speed, or several times right in a row until I really "got it") I learned the stuff in the end. And in two years I ended up tutoring for her organic chem class--not because I was some kind of natural-born chemist (lolllll) but because I'd worked my tush off and had looked at the material backwards and forwards and upside-down until it was stuck in my brain.

Something that made it really hard for me in the beginning is that if I didn't *immediately* grasp a concept when the prof was explaining it I'd jump right into despair/catastrophizing and think, "omgomgomg I am just too stupid I'm never gonna learn this." And then I'd panic a little, and when I'm a little panicked my brain stops functioning properly and there's no way in hell that I'm gonna learn anything in that state. So I made an agreement with myself that I'd give it a solid try and not worry about whether or not I was too stupid... and once I put that worry on the shelf, it was waaaay easier to learn the stuff. (Ironic, no?)

I ended up taking some stats classes later in my educational career and found the learning process in those courses to be reasonably similar to chemistry--the stuff isn't always intuitive (and some of it was just plain odd--especially those effing stem and leaf plots) but there's definitely hope.

I think math phobia is a real thing. I'm not saying you have it, it just seems like a lot of people get scared taking math classes even though they are really smart people. The nice thing about stats in my opinion is that you can see how it's used irl. I hope you end up loving stats as much as I do.

The cats are throwing shade at me from different corners of the living room. I think they did not enjoy my exuberant, Broadway-worthy rendition of “Yes! We Have No Bananas Today.”

Philistines.

I'm still crying. Will this never end?

Thank you. That is helpful! And gives me hope! I just need to DO it and not give up. More to say shortly cuz this ties into my t appt I just got home from. Wanna go make dinner then will be back

HAHAHAAAA omg atat I never knew this was a real song--I have fond childhood memories of my parents singing the phrase, "Yes! We have no bananas / We have no bananas today"... but somehow (how???) it never occurred to me that it was a real with lyrics beyond that initial phrase.

Thank you, atat. Thank you for correcting this 29-year-old misunderstanding.

wow. sorry that got so long.

Actually its probably LESS work - i googled it, and im really surprised they even have a name for the concept.

Like in one example, they list about twenty nbrs from 1 to 99. The stem is the tens digit, and the leaf is the units digit. Its ridiculous. Like there were 2 units, 4 teens, 5 twenties (in their sample) - who even looks at nbrs like that, unless youre in kindergarten??

Cats are notoriously harsh critics.

Rumor has it Dorothy Parker and Pauline Kael were actually cats.

SlumberKitty,
I hope things get better for you. Feel free to PM if you ever need to. Sending tons of hugs.

If so, you're a lot more aggressive in session than I've ever seen you on PC!

I'm not impressed by what your T says here.

Im confused by LC's constant (to me, anyway) cancelling and rescheduling. Is she - are you acting out? Do you really want to be a dr? Did you have a choice?

Ahhhhhh I've always turned up in the end,but you are right it's always after an email saying I'm not coming in. I've only missed 4 sessions in 20 months, when I know I've chosen to act out.

I know that I have a lot of ambivalence about therapy. The main thing that's bugging me is that I told my mother I stopped therapy, and he lives an hour away from me. It's kind of hard to just disappear for 3 hours without anyone noticing.

Re medicine, honestly I've always felt like I've been pushed into it. There is no real choice as that's always been the goal and expectation from me, I have a lot of doctors in my family. At seven I knew what I was supposed to say when someone asked me what I wanted to be when I was older.

Every exam is such a emotional rollercoaster for me and it's exhausting.I will have 9 this year not the 8 I previously thought! Part of me, can really see myself as a doctor, other times I just want to quit already. I live around 6 hours away from home so I go after long stretches. It's not the being sworn at that I miss, mainly it's just my sister. It takes a lot of you and it's emotionally draining. My day revolves around studying and just trying to keep afloat. I've told R it feels like my mother only cares about me when I'm passing exams.

I met with someone from grad program #1 today. It sounds like it would be a good match for my goals and interests.

Buuuuut...money. And time, of course. I cannot pull those out of thin air.

The whole idea is still a little daunting to me.

Are there any scholarships or grants you could apply for?

(((LC))) Going to school SEEMS like a kid thing, but after a certain point, its an adult thing. But its like you still are a kid to your family, which makes doing adult school esp hard. Like, which one are you? When do you get to decide? Plus, girls never get to decide.

I get some money from my grandmother and aunt.But I'm 100% financially dependent on my mother. More than anything I just want to be looked after, to feel truly feel like I matter and that I have value. So maybe that's still the child me taking center stage.

I realize that I'm mad at R because he's making me feel like I don't have choice.

I emailed him that line above this morning.

Then again saying that I quit. That I sent a payment for tuesday's session, that I didn't want anymore therapy an that I felt trapped and smothered in this relationship.