Dear T: I really need to tell you something XL

Hi T,

I need you. You opened pandora's box. I hope you know that.

Woah. There is a 13 year old girl in here who deserves and needs a little bit of compassion and really needs someone to stick up for her. I feel like I know her. Some young teenage part of me has also been in some place similar, with abusers and psychologists and social workers, and nobody believing her.

It is HARD to be 13! Nearly all 13 year old girls are melodramatic. It isn't just typical of them, it's to be expected as a rite of passage. I know you know what hormones are beginning to make themselves apparent in 13 year old girls. Dealing with all of that new stuff on its own is HARD. No 13 year old girl has mastered coping with the burgeoning hormonal storm within them.
Secondly, 13 year old girls are really far from being adults. Like really, really, really far. The frontal lobes aren't even fully developed until the mid 20s or so. Expecting 13 year old girls to behave or think like adults is a little bit like expecting a newborn baby to walk. They just... can't. Expecting them to do something they can't is silly. 13 year old girls are not adults, they are 13 year old girls. And 13 year old girls really haven't got their **** together yet. That isn't a personal fault of theirs. That's a perfectly normal developmental stage of the female human being.

Look, I don 't know what traumas that 13 year old girl went through. But I do know that as a 13 year old human being she deserved all the things that all 13 year human beings deserve... and top of that list of the most basic human needs is physical and emotional protection and safety. That 13 year old was still physically and emotionally a child, and she deserved to have adults in her life who loved and cared for her and kept her safe from harm. She deserved to NOT be in that position that she was in that day with that psychologist. She deserved to be safe, and she wasn't.

You know what she was, though? She was feisty. In a world where others had failed to protect her it sounds as though she was standing up and fighting for herself. Do you know what that means? It means that 13 year old girl still believed she was worth fighting for. God bless her. I believe she was worth fighting for too.

I know that 13 year old. I've been her. She needs you. She is 13. She is just a kid, with so much growing and living and learning yet to do.

What happened that day? Did the adults come through for her, or abandon her completely?

Do you know what most often happens when adults abandon us when we are only 13 and so desperately need them? We abandon ourselves.

That feisty abandoned 13 year old really, really needs you right now.

My body hurts.

Take two:

18 hours, 10 minutes and 13 seconds.

After today's session...

Dear T,
I know my email about thinking me being pit on the cancellation list because you don’t think I need the appointment is a bit paranoid on my part. I just don’t know how to get rid of the feeling.

Healed

Should we take a break? Or am I trying to run away from something important?

Going to try and study something- i've been in bed since I came back at 3pm ish.

14 hours, 59 minutes and 12 seconds.

Help me!

Why does every email I send feel like it is the straw which will break the camel's back? And why am I such a horror in therapy? I am not this vile in real life. Well, maybe a bit vile.

I want to die!

@susannahsays

I really wish you could talk to me right now.

Dear T,
Can we talk about paternal transference Monday? I mean, that's what you get for talking about how you approach parenting vs. my mom...
Love,
LT

Hi R,

The Critic is being a **** again. I have questions about the end of today's session, and I think it makes sense to put them in an email. The Critic says that's intrusive, even though you have specifically requested that I reach out if I have any questions.

You knew there would be questions.

Thanks,

Lost

I miss you.

Stupid insurance wouldn't refill the cymbalta because of the way the rx was written, so I missed two days of it. Just got it filled. Feel awful. Think I might cry. So stressed. Worried about money. Don't know how we will get by in August when insurance resets. Will probably need to reduce to once weekly. That means C and I will have to go on alternating weeks. So not actually weekly for either of us. Life is so unfair. I wish we didn't need stupid therapy.

T I love you. Thank you for knowing EXACTLY what to say and how to say it to discharge all the emotion. I was in bad shape today but then the emergency with the cat and H not doing anything but letting her suffer... but then you called. Your voice and I knew it would all be ok. And then you said the exact right thing in the exact right tone of voice... you even went beyond. But you were there when I needed you.

Dear T,
And how is it possibly green? It should at least be yellow, right?
Love,
LT

Bye baby t lol

Dear T,

You're pretty much the best. Thank you for being you.

Everything sucks right now, including therapy. Didn't they used to do some sort of treatment that consisted of basically knocking people out for long periods of time? Maybe I'm making that up. It sounds nice. Of course, it seems like you'd have to do some sort of weird prep like you do for a colonoscopy so that you wouldn't **** yourself while you were out. I assume that would be necessary. To be honest, I wouldn't be too excited to be catheterized again. That hurt like hell last time. I'm too young for all that ****.

Yeah, I'm feeling pretty sorry for myself at the moment.

Thank you.
I think you think something happened though? Nothing happened. Just a psychologist who did court-ordered "family counseling" during the divorce writing his report to the court, "well she says her father is abusive, and her mother says her father is abusive, but she doesn't act like some poor innocent abused kid, so clearly her mother is brainwashing her and therefore she should be forced to spend more time with her father to prevent further "parental alienation.""

Sounds like a psychologist who was not being objective.

I agree!
@LabRat27, I didn't know the backstory to what you wrote, but the post still stands - divorce is a trauma as much as any other. That 13 year old was going through a lot!