Couch 208: The Practical Couch

That isn't dumb. If you hear a lie often enough you will start to believe it. You deserve so much better than to be treated like this.

Did she define what she means by more support? Maybe she just means more sessions?

You contradict yourself, however. "She hasn't seen half the **** that T has. Most of you know how bad I can get." Perhaps she realizes this and is just letting you know she is aware that even though you are doing well right now, your status can change and the door to more support needs to remain open at this point. I doubt she thinks anything went wrong; I'm guessing she just realizes that you haven't reached a place of long-term stability yet (which you seem to acknowledge here).

Morning couch,

I had the most unsettling dream last night and woke up crying because of it. It involved my psychiatrist, which is the first time I dreamed of him or his office. Not the way I wanted to start the day. It's snowing out and it's my kids' last day of school before a week off. I dont have T either today. I want to talk to him but it feels silly to call him over an upsetting dream. I'm hoping the rest of the day will be better.

He's the new cellist I'm obsessed since I discovered him last week.

He actually has a London show tomorrow very close to where I live. But it's too late now to get tickets and obviously fly home too. The show on the 29th of december when I would be home anyway is sold out.

He's also coming back to London in Jan so think I could get away with missing one day of internal but the extra travelling also depends if I get the two exams I have left in december done then his other date of March the 15th is the week after I go back for the Hasley concert. Which I'm not sure my mother would be too impressed with that as I'd also have to miss one class of social.

Hopefully next year though. Atleast I have paddington on ice at winter wonderland to look forward too with my sister.

Ha! Shes the princess the thing was wrote about!
Im sure ive mentioned this before, but i saw Pirates in NYC in the 80's with Gary Sandy (of WKRP) as the lead, he was sooo cute!

I'm sorry you've had a rough start to the morning.

Have you managed to calm yourself a bit?

Wow you guys are fancy smanchy. I hadn't heard of it until now.

"The Pirates of Penzance; or, The Slave of Duty is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. "

Gary doesn't do it for me.

I'm sorry you had such an awful dream last night, SheHulk.

I had a sort of nightmare about this orange-colored cat that kept trying to kill me in the house. At one point, I tried to strangle it, but couldn't hold onto it long enough. I invited a bunch of friends over to keep me safe, mostly people I hadn't seen in a long time. They would manage to kill the cat, but then a few minutes later, it would come back to life, like the Terminator or something. I'm not sure why I didn't call the police or animal control or, you know, leave the house, but dream logic often doesn't make sense. I think we managed to finally kill it in the end, though I kept peeking to make sure it wouldn't come back to life again.

Somewhat. I had to get out of the house to drive my oldest to school. Then our cps caseworksr finally called me, and he's coming over on Tuesday. We set up the team meeting but it's not until New Years Eve.
He told me that they were thinking of referring us to in home therapy through the local mental health center where my boys go through for school based therapy. We have already been referred to that but it has a waitlist. It also wasn't helpful last time we had it but that was several years ago. And this means I'll probably have to have my son quit seeing his outside therapist because it'll be in home therapy for him and us. I'm so damn lost and confused and messed up everything.

Counting the hours until Thanksgiving break begins. 4 more to go!

What is everyone up to for Thanksgiving?

Hubby is having a right knee replacement Monday morning, so essentially that will drive our week. Last time it was two nights in the hospital (he's always slow to come out of anesthesia fully), so I'm expecting the same.

This weekend we're doing our Christmas decorating so I don't have to try to do it post-surgery, so we'll look festive for Thanksgiving. The kids are doing all the meal planning and cooking which is really kind of them.

I'm going home with no grading on my plate. The research paper my juniors turned in won't be looked at until after the break; they've been notified so hopefully I won't get those "Did you grade my essay?" emails. Such worry-warts.

I noticed a lot of schools now give like a whole week for Thanksgiving. A million years ago when I was in school we only had a 1/2 day the day before thanksgiving then thanksgiving and Black Friday.

Also for Christmas the kids I nanny get off Dec 16th and don’t go back to school until January 6th. What the heck. Give me strength.

Those old Thanksgiving weeks were useless. Lots of parents took kids out a day or so early, so we were just babysitting. My son says his university is probably going to finally give the week off. He says so many professors end up bringing their kids to campus that the push is to get with the public and private school trend on this one. It makes sense. I remember it made it really hard to get home to family for Thanksgiving; it sucks being left behind in the dorm as one of the few who couldn't get home.

Hi Couchies, Regular T went well last night. We didn't really discuss much of any great consequence. Work, hallucinations, not having SH-ed since I've seen her. Stuff like that. It was kind of a light session which I needed because I was so exhausted. She talked a little about the office she is moving to at the beginning of the year. Not so much the office, but where it is. I left feeling good, feeling content, feeling supported, and sometimes I think those sessions are necessary. Even if they aren't deep, it's confidence building, and trust building. HUGS Kit

Mine have the whole week of Thanksgiving off and 2 weeks for Christmas/New Years.

My D has two half days next week (partly for parent-teacher conferences) and the rest off. That's a crazy amount of time off for Christmas, though! My D gets the full week of Christmas off (with it falling on Wednesday), then I think returns day after New Year's.

Funny moment at end of session today. You all probably recall "standing-gate" (my request to him near start of summer that he stand up to shake my hand when I leave, which led to a big conflict. Except that now he's been doing that since then, so apparently it wasn't such an imposition after all...?) T has this red betta fish (he got it maybe 5 months ago) that's in a bowl in the table next to me. There's a flat rock in there that she'll sort of "sit on" sometimes, like it's a couch or something. Once T pointed it out to me and was like, "Look at how she's sitting, it's so weird!" So today, she'd been sitting there. At end of session, I stood up to leave, and the fish suddenly started swimming around frantically. T (smiling): "She's standing up to say goodbye to you. Apparently, she gets it!" I laughed and moved my finger along the side of the bowl like I do with the fish (I seriously need a pet...) Then did the usual shaking hand thing with T.

Hahaha....that's brilliant, LT.

What that means is that the teachers' break is shorter because they are working on those conference days.

Our Thanksgiving week is somewhat like that. The first two days are designated as teacher inservice days. We have to earn two trade days of workshops in the previous summer or sometime during the school year (after school or on weekends) to count for those trade days or we are docked for those two days (at full pay -- not at the pro-rated full-year rate). That's A LOT of money if we don't take care of those trade day hours.

Our Christmas breaks are always at least two weeks -- preferably 2 1/2. One year they only gave us a week and a half. That completely sucked (and they heard about it - never to be repeated again).

Yep, exactly re: conference days. (I have some teacher friends!) That's nice on the Christmas breaks from the teacher perspective--gives some time to actually relax and travel if you want.

I do my extra credit scavenger hunts the day before Thanksgiving, so they have to be in class. If they complain, I tell them it’s not a university holiday.

I tell mine it that when they became law students it meant they were to put away childish things.
1 Stopdog 13:11

Betta fish are pretty smart, imo. I used to fish-sit one at work. He kept me company when i worked on saturdays. I played Carly Simon and Judy Garland for him. I thought he would like "Comin' around again" but he seemed to prefer "Somewhere over the rainbow".

LT, I don't intend this as a criticism but I think the imposition was maybe that he sensed that you felt entitled to ask him to do something with his body and had an expectation that he would just do it - as if he's a puppet on a string. I don't think it was about standing itself - as I think he said, he didn't want to be controlled.

Fish-sit...you slay me @unaluna!

Teacher win today. Working on Metaphysical poetry which is a bit of a beast for high schoolers. Students created one-pagers demonstrating their understanding of various poems. Their take-away: "This was like writing a poetry analysis essay without the essay." SCORE! They were fantastic: creative and very insightful. Nice way to end the week before a holiday.