Couch 211: The Stoffle couch

I think this new med cocktail might be helping some. I dont know if it is the Cymbalta generic or the increased rexulti dose. My T said she could see some positive changes in me this week. I'm really tired on the meds but my T said to give it time. Had a good T appointment. I'm too tired to write about it now but I will try to later or another day. Gave her the DX from my psychiatrist. She only seemed surprised about one. She's hopeful the hallucinations will be better on these meds. Hugs to anyone who wants one. Kit

@SlumberKitty I really hope the meds help.

For my coming of age writing class this week, we have to design a writing exercise. I’m blanking.

What does that mean? Like, first love, first car, first bra?

I think the instructor wants more. One of the given examples is "write a story in which every sentence begins with a letter of the alphabet, in order. One sentence must be one word. One must be exactly 100 words." That sort of thing.

So youre blanking on the exercise portion? The coming of age part was confusing me.

Plus i think your instructor is making the class do her work for her.

Yeah, it's a general exercise. Doesn't have to be about a coming of age.

How about, Write a dialogue between a character and their therapist?

My motivation to do anything is up and down. I slept for a few hour last night, but couldn't stay asleep because . He left around midnight to pick his mom and aunt up from the casinos, so I got up and deep cleaned until 3am right before he got home.
Today I a took a few a few hour nap in the evening. H is now out driving so I did one of my discussions and cleaned more.

My 10 year old had another meltdown earlier for an hour that I thought was going to result in another crisis walk in visit. Thankfully I was able to calm him down after a while and we played cards.

Really weird that given how things have been lately that it's been 2 weeks since we heard anything from our CPS caseworker. It's really unusual and my anxiety is in overdrive thinking the worst outcome.

An update regarding my situation since around the time I disappeared in the fall. This is a long story, not all that related to my therapy, but I promise if you like drama or plot twists it's worth reading. I swear on my cat's life that everything in this post is 100% true.
There is some discussion of self harm, not in any kind of graphic detail.

Some of you may remember I was getting into dealing with my "trauma," asking myself if it was really that bad, etc. Those are still questions I ask myself, and my T, repeatedly.

But about six months ago I was on a subreddit for self harm content, mostly jokes about self harm though there are some serious posts. It was 4am. I saw a post asking "does anyone else feel guilty if they go a while without self harming because they're such a terrible awful bad person who deserves to be punished?"
I replied with "yeah, turns out that's the childhood trauma." The original poster replied "ditto :c"
If I believed in greater forces in the universe I'd say that was some cosmic foreshadowing.

I recommended some cptsd resources to the original poster and talked a bit about the work I'd done in therapy on shame and guilt and not believing I deserved to be punished.
They responded saying their therapist had beat me to it, and talked a bit about their shame and guilt. The way they wrote about it felt like something I could have written.
I clicked on their profile and found a few older posts. On one they talked about being a terrible person but at least "having the decency" to hate and punish themselves. I replied to this post as well, and my comment began with "are you me?" and saying that I use literally the same phrase. There were a lot of eery similarities and it even occured to me that if I didn't know better it was almost like talking to myself.
Once again, foreshadowing.

Then silence.
We'd been going back and forth and just as things got interesting they stopped replying. Half an hour went by. It was like 5 or 6 am and I hadn't slept.

Half an hour later, their response to my paragraphs delving into trauma and guilt and shame and self harm as penance is "is your name [my name]?" It was first name last initial from before I'd changed my name a year prior, so it wasn't someone in my everyday life at least.
My mind started running through all the people who might have known me from my IOP or the recovery meetings I attend.

I message them, "do I know you?"
I see them typing. My heart is racing in my chest. I just spilled some of my deepest secrets to a stranger who then correctly guessed my real name.
"Well, the good news is I think I figured out why we have so much in common"
A second later
"It's almost like we're twins or something."
My jaw dropped. I responded "[twin's name?]" and got the reply "unfortunately yes."
the only thing I could think to say back was "Jesus ****ing Christ"

My fraternal twin and I had not spoken since 2012, when we were 17 and graduated high school.
She didn't know I'd been self harming in high school, and I didn't know she'd started in college.
She put things together from various autobiographical details in some earlier posts I'd made that were pretty uncommon, mention of a twin, mention of our parents' uncommon occupations, mentions of words our father had used a lot.

So that was fun. It happened when my therapist was gone for a month and when he came back I told him a lot had happened so I didn't have time to be upset, and to just pretend that I'd sulked for at least the first half of the session. Then I handed over printouts of my convo with my sister. My therapist's comments were "this sounds familiar. Wow, this sounds really familiar" and I was like yeah just keep reading. When he got to the big reveal he just put the papers down and stared at me and said "no. Really?" And I was like "yep."

So now my therapist kind of has a trump card whenever I say maybe my childhood wasn't really that bad and I'm just being melodramatic or I made everything up.
Because my twin uses the exact same words and concepts. Despite having grown up in a secular household we both independently compared our guilt to a feeling of having original sin, both independently used the word "penance," both independently decided that different things about us were so shameful and bad and wrong that we were irredeemably bad and deserved to be punished. Oh and we both have BPD and PTSD.
Because y'know our childhood was so great.

* If anyone has a scarily good memory, you may remember that I used different pronouns and gendered language for my sister before. My story isn't changing, she's just trans, which I didn't find out until we started speaking again.

Gonna go to a class at Church today before the service. Hmmm wanting to interact with people. This has to be the meds. Lol. I bet Pastor T would be proud of me, but does it count if it's the meds? Hugs Kit

It's a great sign that the meds are helping you. Progress is progress, Kit.

Wow, LabRat, that's kind of amazing and also sounds very painful and difficult. Have you talked to your sister any more since then? Hugs if wanted. Thanks for sharing that.

LabRat, I'm glad to see you back. Wow. How has it been reconnecting with your sister?

Here's my therapy-related thought for the day: I remembered when the kids' dad and I first went to see my t and she said that sometimes it takes a couple sessions, sometimes longer. I wanted to know what "longer" meant, and she said six months.

I want to go back and pat myself on the head and say "There, there, dear."

It's been 4 1/2 years.

That's how they get you.

Changing topics, does anyone else deliberately select the orphan bananas at the grocery store? You know, the one or two people tear off the bunch they select and leave behind? Usually they pile up towards the ends of the stand.

Anyway, I do, because generally they are of the same quality and they also are a little less ripe so they'll last longer (bananas ripen more slowly when detached from their bunch), but apparently the women staring at me this morning in the store thought it was odd.

You mean "All the single ladies, all the single ladies! Woo-hoo-hoo, woo-hoo-hoo!"

They were probably wondering why you werent doing the dance I always do.

I go for the whole bunch. We go through them quickly anyway. I LOVE bananas and believe they are at their peak deliciousness when they are bright yellow. My wife likes bananas but thinks they taste best at the somewhat brown stage.

My wife doesn't usually get to eat very many bananas...

Of course you do.

I just feel sorry for the orphans.

It depends on how many bananas I am buying. I don't have any aversion to the loose ones, but if I am getting a lot (which I usually do because my dogs love them and I never get to eat one by myself - I have to share with two dogs) I just get a bunch. Also I usually get them at costco because they are a lot cheaper there and they only come in bunches

The two-weeks-late NYT Sunday crossword I’m working on today has clues in emoji. Gak.