Couch 214: The chihiro couch

QM, you are so brave.

The thing about not returning home is that whatever her reaction to your chosen version of "Mum, I don't intend to return home," you won't be home to have to deal with it.

Had a nightmare earlier. It was something that in retrospect sounds stupid—needing to call my T because a dinosaur was out to get me but my phone wouldn’t work properly—but I woke up with my heart pounding so hard it felt like it was jostling my ribs. I had to go back to sleep with the lights on.

Then I woke up at 3 for no discernible reason.

Ugh.

I don’t think I’ll ever be cured. (The traditional joke here is “only ham gets cured” har de har har *eye roll*,) I think that I’ll have difficulties for the rest of my life. I don’t think that therapy will lead to some magical moment of enlightenment or conversion or fixing.

I do hope that therapy will one day make me “fixed enough,” where the amount of jacked BS in my life is manageable and not significantly more in quantity or quality than the average Joe. I’m not really sure if that will ever happen or what that might feel like. But I guess that’s my assumption about where this is all going.

I woke up again at 6:30 feeling bored and lonely. Not my favorite way to start the day.

I don't think therapy cures anything. Therapists are not scientists or health care providers really. They just make **** up as they go along. I think it is more that at best they provide some sort of distraction while time does the trick. Therapy itself is like the emperor's new clothes.

This reminds me! Back in the 80's there was a thing that if you tell yourself before bedtime to wake up happy, you will.

Boy, what sparked THAT dried up old synapse tendril?!

Re cure - i consider myself cured. It took facing a lot of ugly facts. It also took the ancient ones dying.

I'm not sure if I will ever be cured so to speak, but I do believe I will be healed. I believe I am on that journey right now. For me it took hospitalization (which scared the bejeebees out of me), a change in DX, some different meds, some same health and mental health providers and some different ones, and some lay people coming alongside me as well. All of that said, I'm the best I've ever been. It's only been like what 15 years of therapy with some of that being two practitioners at the same time. But there was a time when I didn't think I would be healed. I think I have turned that corner and hopefully turned it for good! Best of luck to you on your journey. HUGS Kit

I don't think there will ever be a day of enlightenment for me unless I somehow figure out how to make life not complicated and not difficult. There will always be losses, disappointments, and problems that come up and threaten to throw me off balance. Therapy helps give me the personal resources to better face challenges in my life. Eventually I might feel like I don't need therapy anymore, or I might stop for a while and start again later. Who knows?

I have also found that therapy has helped me open up my life more, which is rewarding but inevitably leads to more challenges and struggles. A few years ago I dealt with my childhood stuff enough to suddenly realize that I did want to be a parent after all. Now I have a one-year-old who is a delight and also brings more challenges into my everyday life and adds puzzling new levels of complexity to my childhood stuff. I probably wouldn't have had her without the healing that came from therapy, but I bet I still could have been happy on that child-free alternate timeline of my life. So... complicated. Probably forever. But that can be okay.

I never thought about it as a state of being "cured." Some things are just what they are, and we have to learn to work within the context of our reality.

This thing happened to me and left me this way; thus, I have to work with how it has left me so that I don't stay limited by that event/experience, etc.

I DO feel pretty much free of those past events now, and I DO credit my therapy in great part to getting me there. That does NOT mean it requires therapy to get there though. I was fortunate to have several great therapists who walked with me to this point. But I have friends and family members who have also worked through/past their own experiences to a place of some peace and healing, without therapy.

I'm having the same problem, LT. I keep thinking about going to campus every day when school was in session and I don't know how I could bear it, or how I will bear it again. I can't even get myself together to go to the store that's 1-2 miles away.

My goal today is to actually walk my dog.

For some reason, my dog smells like a lemon poppyseed muffin.

There are abundant wild blackberries growing on my street. The street is a dead end with only one other small house besides mine. I think the county water authority owns the great stretch of empty land past the two houses. Anyway, there are so many blackberries on the county land. It's great.

ETA - I do not care for balsamic vinegar. Blech.

Man, I wish loan dog smelled like a lemon poppyseed muffin.

Do his feet smell like Fritos?

What do you take me for, some kind of pervy dog foot fetishist?

(Adds “smell dog’s feet” to to-do list.)

Did anyone watch the Sarah Silverman Show? She licked her dog.
(Warning - do not watch if you are iffy on crudeness)

Thanks for the warning, SD.

It is Sarah Silverman -so the warning might not have been necessary- but one never knows.

Oh, clickbait! SD, im surprised at you! Nay, disappointed!

Dont you guys remember last summer, before covid, when people were losing limbs after kissing their dogs? Boy those were the good ole days.

Where I'm at right now, I believe that I reached the state of saying "F*k it" when I left therapy in October because by that point, after almost 8 years of seeing/talking with L, the convolutedness of our particular therapeutic dyad-slash-"relationship" had begun to cause much more pain than good, and I just couldn't be in it anymore.


Of course, there was a preponderance of good that came from it too and I remain hugely grateful for the experience overall... so now, about 7 months later I am beginning to look back on said relationship quite fondly and almost want to go back for help dealing with the current world situation.

Almost. But no. I'm learning how to get by with the support of my small group of friends, and also learning how to be there for them, too and so far anyway, despite a hiccup here and there, it's okay. I'm okay. And I'm okay with okay.

Hmmm. Where was I? I let Emma kiss me all the time!

I'm also beginning to see just how much I can learn from my friends. For instance, a couple weeks ago the main facilitator of my drumming group told us in an online circle that because of covid she's made the decision to terminate her lease for the meeting space we've been using the last 18 months at the end of May. I watched her on zoom telling us that with such a calm acceptance in her voice and on her face of what is and gratitude for our group that is us, not the space we happen to meet in, and looking forward to what we can make of the future together. I felt like wow, that was amazing, I can really learn from that.

Didn’t the Knights Templar require kissing a cat’s, ah, perineum for initiation?

ATAT (to loan dog): I would never lick you.
Loan dog (thumping tail): Excellent.

Anyone rock back and forth when they are anxious? I do it all the time. I try to restrict myself from doing it at work but that's usually a giant failure. It's just really comforting to me.

I do not understand why my roommate thinks it’s a good idea to start conversations with me when I am trying to bridge the three yards from the shower to my bedroom. But something about me dripping in a towel seems to bring out some of the copious amounts of Chatty Kathy in her. She literally doesn’t shut up until I close the door to my bedroom, and even then she doesn’t always quit. Wtf is wrong with her?