[unaluna]

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 and make yourselves comfy.

-- Because life should be transformative, and grammar is life! Right?

[Lemoncake]

Will this transformation also apply to me?



P.s Fanx for the new couch.

[SlumberKitty]

Thanks for the new couch @unaluna

[stopdog]

Looks like a bit of jumped the gun on starting this thread with the other one not being finished yet.

[unaluna]

Well its coming up on my naptime

[Omers]

Thanks for the new couch!

ETA I just emailed T and was noticing my random and incorrect use of commas.

[SlumberKitty]

Brief mention without details of abuse.

Possible trigger:

I've been thinking a lot about an incident with my former T. She was at her first office so I hadn't been going to her all that long, but long enough to tell her about some of my abuse history. She came and got me from the waiting room but then there was a male T in her office waiting to talk to her. She went in, but I stayed in the hall because I worried it was some sort of trap. She kept telling me to come in and I eventually did but I never told her that I was afraid it was a trap and that the male T would somehow harm me. Like she was delivering me to him to be hurt. I eventually came in, and he went out, and nothing bad happened. In fact, I ended up seeing him for a couple of sessions later on when she was out of country and he was just the nicest guy. I just feel bad that I thought that way. That I thought she would let someone hurt me.

I never apologized to her and I never told her about it. I just still feel guilty about it.

[SlumberKitty]

Ranting. Sorry. This salesman at my office is bugging me about commission that was determined by the higher ups to belong to another salesman. And the first salesman keeps calling me and talking to me about it, and telling me all the stuff he did for the project, but it was already determined by the higher ups that it went to the other salesman. First salesman keeps saying he's tired of giving this guy stuff and doing all the work and not getting paid. And on and on. And I keep telling him to go to the higher ups because it's not my call. And he still keeps trying to talk to me about it. Sigh. HUGS Kit

[Omers]

Originally Posted by SlumberKitty

Brief mention without details of abuse.

Possible trigger:

I've been thinking a lot about an incident with my former T. She was at her first office so I hadn't been going to her all that long, but long enough to tell her about some of my abuse history. She came and got me from the waiting room but then there was a male T in her office waiting to talk to her. She went in, but I stayed in the hall because I worried it was some sort of trap. She kept telling me to come in and I eventually did but I never told her that I was afraid it was a trap and that the male T would somehow harm me. Like she was delivering me to him to be hurt. I eventually came in, and he went out, and nothing bad happened. In fact, I ended up seeing him for a couple of sessions later on when she was out of country and he was just the nicest guy. I just feel bad that I thought that way. That I thought she would let someone hurt me.

I never apologized to her and I never told her about it. I just still feel guilty about it.

Don’t be hard on yourself SlumberKitty, I would have thought the same exact thing. I would have been so triggered I might not have ever been able to work with her again. It seems like an awkward moment for anyone though.

[Omers]

lost my post... hope I didn’t put it in a random place or send it as an email to anyone...

My son is harassing me again today and I don’t know what time H gets home.
I seem to have lost that space I wanted to be in with T Monday. I sent him this email:

I’m frustrated. I have been able to hold that space I wanted to work with you from within on Monday all the way to today and now I am afraid I lost it. I’m discouraged. Before I knew what I wanted and needed Monday so that we could work together. Now I want to be back in the chairs, in the middle of the room not touching anything, back in my head, high above the experience and separated from you and that infant part of me and the possibility of the feelings. Up to today I had very little anxiety about asking you for what I needed Monday. Now there is a yucky ambivalence about it and I can feel myself checking out (more disconnected, closer to blacked out, than my normal dissociation). I’m also noticing that I am having trouble regulating my temperature, my feet are really cold. I don’t know what shifted but I’m feeling disappointed.

I hope he has some magical way of knowing where I was and how to get me back there... but then that might make me suspicious that getting me there the first time was planned rather than a happy accident. I like happy accident better.

[atisketatasket]

Originally Posted by stopdog

Looks like a bit of jumped the gun on starting this thread with the other one not being finished yet.

Marshmallow test.

[LonesomeTonight]

Originally Posted by Omers

Thanks for the new couch!

ETA I just emailed T and was noticing my random and incorrect use of commas.

Ex-T had an English degree, and I once printed out an email I'd sent to ex-MC for her to read. She read through it, and I commented on an error in it, like I'd used "they're" instead of "their," something like that. And she was like, "Yeah, I noticed that." I was super careful with future emails to her. Ex-MC sucked at grammar and stuff. Current T seems to have a pretty good grasp on the English language, thought does some random stuff like unnecessary hyphens in "I've been in private practice for 15-years." But he's otherwise a really good writer, like in email replies, so I let it go. I am careful in what I send him though. (I'm a copy editor by trade.)

[Elio]

Originally Posted by Omers

Don’t be hard on yourself SlumberKitty, I would have thought the same exact thing. I would have been so triggered I might not have ever been able to work with her again. It seems like an awkward moment for anyone though.

You guys aren't alone.

Shortly before T and I had our rupture this past spring, I finally told her about my fears of a male T in the same suite as her. When I was trying to work through our rupture, she brought up something in relationship to my fears. I was so mad because those fears started like a year prior, it had taken me that long to bring it up to her and it felt like she treated it as if it was some how related to the rupture.

Maybe that was part of the need for the long break from therapizing. I know a big part was that I needed her to stop bringing up things I had said - felt like she was weaponizing my own words. Ok, so I got issues

[SlumberKitty]

Originally Posted by LonesomeTonight

Ex-T had an English degree, and I once printed out an email I'd sent to ex-MC for her to read. She read through it, and I commented on an error in it, like I'd used "they're" instead of "their," something like that. And she was like, "Yeah, I noticed that." I was super careful with future emails to her. Ex-MC sucked at grammar and stuff. Current T seems to have a pretty good grasp on the English language, thought does some random stuff like unnecessary hyphens in "I've been in private practice for 15-years." But he's otherwise a really good writer, like in email replies, so I let it go. I am careful in what I send him though. (I'm a copy editor by trade.)

I didn't get a degree in English but my emails to former T tended to be more or less correct based on my current mood and whether or not I was in crises. The more out of control I was, the less I cared that my writing made sense. Former T didn't mind, unless I wrote her in Latin. Then she would tell me she does not read Latin and stick to English. Sometimes I would sneak in a Yiddish or Spanish word or phrase and that didn't seem to bother her. When I was really out of it, dissociated, or in crisis, I would look back on the emails afterward and even I couldn't decipher them. She often told me she didn't know what I was talking about. But if I was clear headed, the emails were pretty good I thought.

[feralkittymom]

Grammar may not be the stuff of life, but it's the glue that lets us make sense of it.

And that sounds like a fractured fortune cookie message.

[unaluna]

Originally Posted by feralkittymom

Grammar may not be the stuff of life, but it's the glue that lets us make sense of it.
And that sounds like a fractured fortune cookie message.

I was reading grammar quotes for this thread, and do you know who ELSE loved diagramming sentences???

Pause for effect...

Gertrude Stein!!!

You'd never guess it from that "A rose..." nonsense!

ETA - LT - re 15-years: ooh that grates especially!

[feralkittymom]

"Colorless green ideas sleep furiously."

Chomsky's generative grammar that supports this^ sentence as both grammatically correct and meaningless.

Maybe Stein was ahead of her time!

re 15-years: ooh that grates especially!

I agree that this looks awful, but at least at one time, it was correct usage: compound adjectives used before a noun, like "15-year career." But you've got to state the noun.

[stopdog]

Miss Furr and Miss Skeene

"They stayed there and were gay there, not very gay there, just gay there. They were both gay there, they were regularly working there both of them cultivating their voices there, they were both gay there. Georgine Skeene was gay there and she was regular, regular in being gay, regular in not being gay, regular in being a gay one who was one not being gay longer than was needed to be one being quite a gay one. They were both gay then there and both working there then."

Read “Miss Furr and Miss Skeene,” a fiction by Gertrude Stein – Biblioklept


re 15-years: ooh that grates especially!
It is the exclamation mark that I find offensive.

[88Butterfly88]

Thanks for the new couch Una! I've got the perfect pillow.

[atisketatasket]

And while we’re on the grammar, it’s “fourth century” when a noun (In the fourth century) and fourth-century when an adjective (the fourth-century basilica).

All therapists should know Latin. IMHO.

[SlumberKitty]

I just wrote an email at work and didn't use a comma when I should have! Doh! I wrote, "In the meantime we will do xyz." It should have been, "In the meantime, we will do xyz." I was very annoyed while writing that email so my annoyed self did not take note of where the commas should be.

[ArtleyWilkins]

I had to take a transformational grammar course for my degree (some professor's pet course). My big memory was being called out for a perfect score on a test. He said he tried to find even a minor spelling error and had no luck. I don't think the other English majors in the class were pleased with me. For some reason, people struggled with the course. I found it stupidly easy but not particularly practical for actually teaching English.

My issue isn't so much with grammar as with typos. I think and type faster than my brain proofs at times (and I suck at typing on a phone or iPad).

I used to do some diagramming with my students back in the days when I taught middle schoolers. They would diagram on individual white boards. I fondly remember students turning their white boards into protest signs: NO MORE DIAGRAMMING! LOL! One of those students is now a news anchor for a major station here, and he is a frequent supporter of our high school (his alma mater). I always have to give him a hard time. I remember him in MC Hammer parachute pants. LOL!

[unaluna]

Originally Posted by 88Butterfly88

Thanks for the new couch Una! I've got the perfect pillow.

I was wondering if this one would be a challenge. That is perfect!

[feralkittymom]

SlumberKitty, the fact that you even thought about it puts you in a proud--and rapidly shrinking--pool!

[feralkittymom]

I found transformational grammar very frustrating in many ways. But the biggest problem for me was that I can't see spatial relationships in my head. I can create them on paper, and evaluate them as drawn, but I have to see each step on the page before I can assess it. So when I had to create transformative diagrams, I couldn't know how much room on the page I'd need, and where, until I drew it. I personally killed more trees that semester than in the rest of my life!

I don't think I'd find it useful for teaching high school English, either; but I found it very informative for teaching non-native speakers.