Couch 227 - The Safe Couch

Oh, thanks @MobiusPsyche. That makes a little more sense. I was trying to figure out how I was supposed to control thoughts when thoughts are rather spontaneous little buggers. I thought that is what he said but I know I was confused in the session so perhaps I had it wrong.


Reading something positive when I have a negative thought doesn't feel too hard. I have a hard time knowing my thoughts which all the doctors that I have ever told that to told me I think really fast and I am not capturing the thoughts. I don't know. My head feels empty. It didn't used to before I had two Antipsychotics added but now it's like, thoughts? What thoughts? I know I get some like thoughts to SH or something like that and in those moments, sure I can read an affirmation. I have two written on my desk calendar that I read every day anyway and one on my computer monitor at work. I also have two (one is a Bible verse) on my mirror at home. So affirmations are not new to me. It's just I have to incorporate it with the bad/negative thoughts.


Hmmm. In writing this, I just had the thought that I'm never going to be able to do this. So I recognized that as a negative thought and I read the two affirmations that are on my desk calendar "I am okay." "I am loved." Regardless of if I fail at this homework, at first, I am okay and I am loved. I'm sure I will get the hang of it with some practice.


Thanks for the clarification. I was REALLY confused during/after our session. I'm glad the couch is here to straighten me out.

RE: Sick leave.


Where is live in Southern California the law requires three days of sick leave. My workplace also has us accrue personal time (3 days per year) and vacation time (depends how long you've been with the company but starting is 10 days per year.) They don't really care if you are sick and use vacation or personal or sick or whatever. They prefer vacation time be notified in advance but when I was hospitalized I used vacation time and sick time to cover the time I was gone and that was acceptable. I also use sick time to cover my therapy appointments if I cannot get them late enough. I lucked out in that I was able to get one for 4 PM next time so I won't miss any work. We have to take sick leave in no less than 2 hour increments. So you can't say, just take an hour off, you have to take two. But it's something.

When I worked retail I found it really depended on the company. One company I worked for gave us 5 days of sick leave. The other gave us the mandatory 3 days.

Kit, there are page a day calendars with affirmations and inspirational quotes. Maybe one of those would be helpful too, so you’re not reading the same ones all the time.

Oh, that's smart @@, I hadn't thought of that. Thanks for the suggestion.

My mom worked for a hospital, this was like 10 years ago, but they had sick leave... but they required you to use 2 days of PTO (personal leave) before you could use your sick time!! So you had to be sick for 3 days before you could even start to use your sick time. It was so punitive. I couldn't believe it. Why have sick time at all, then, if you can't use it?

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So I texted my boss to let him know that I wasn't feeling well and might have to call in sick for tonight (this was a courtesy b/c it can take time to find someone to cover) and he said that actually they're not making people make up missed shifts and not to worry about it; he'll find someone to cover for me. I hadn't even told him definitively that I couldn't come in!

I was super confused and texted one of my co-workers who has been around longer than I have and has a better idea of the dynamics at play. She thinks that a) he probably got permission to pay people for sick leave due to COVID, but that permission is going to expire soon because our COVID numbers are going down (plus most of the docs are vaccinated and therefore less likely to get sick) b) during COVID they hired too many people and there actually aren't enough shifts to go around, so there is probably someone who is dying to take my shift.

So all's well that ends well? Except that I still feel like crap :/

What's the difference between PTO and sick leave?

(I know I should know this stuff by now...)

PTO is personal leave, like vacation time. I think it stands for personal time off? Paid time off? You start with 10 days each year and get more for however long you've worked there. You can use that time to take off for any reason. You're supposed to give two weeks' advanced notice, so they can cover your shifts, but sometimes an emergency comes up and people take PTO to cover that.

Sick leave is separate and can only be used if you're ill. Some companies even require you to bring in a doctor's note to prove it before they'll approve you using sick leave. Treating their employees like children.

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Ah, okay got it. Thank you!

Becoming a Freaking Fully-Informed Adult, one day at a time...

At my current job, we have just one bucket of PTO (paid time off) that we can use for vacation or if we're sick. At my previous job, we had a PTO bucket and a sick days bucket. I think I have a slight preference for having just one bucket of time off. It feels like you're not losing hours off if you don't use your sick days.

PTO is paid time off, I think. You can usually know in advance when you'll take it, and it's supposed to be used for 'relaxation' time, so to recover from working, basically.

Meanwhile sick leave is unforeseen and you can't really relax during it either, I mean you should relax but it won't be like going on vacation. So most companies (or well, all companies in my country, but in the US I have no idea) separate the two, so that one is a 'you may ask to take off, you will get paid time off and can do whatever you want' and one is 'you got sick and can't come in, but that's none of your fault and you're still getting paid'. The good thing about solving it like that is that you don't really have an allocated number of sick leave. Some people get sick twice a year, some three times, some never. It's a nice thing to make people not use up their vacation time for being unfortunate enough to be ill. Otherwise some would eat through all their time off real quick, will never be able to take real time off because they were really just in bed, and in the end maybe they even have to come in sick.

Honestly, I'm just grateful to have any PTO. I worked in the service industry for years and we had no such thing. You had to choose between lost wages/pissing off your boss or coming in sick.

Gonna say I think it makes sense to require a doctor's note at some point. Here, we don't have it from day one since that just creates unnecessary work for the doctor, he would have to sign off a lot of people who have a slight fever that's gone in a day and stuff like that. But if you don't require one at all, I'm sure a lot of people would just say they are sick and not come in at all. It still happens if you want a note, of course, but if a business can't deal with the employee being gone for two days, maybe they should close down. But I can understand not being able to pay for an employee for a whole month if they aren't even really sick, just wanting to go to the beach or something.

Yes... I did try to swim crawl stroke but could not without pain, sadly. So, I swam breaststroke only which did not bother my shoulder. It actually felt good, and it feels pretty okay today too, so hopefully I didn't overdo it.

You are by law required to give your workers 4 weeks paid time off if they work 42 hours a week here. And it scales with how much you work, normally more than 42 hours is not allowed. The time is increased to 5 weeks once you hit 50 and 6 once you're 60. It's the same for all industries too, whether you work in a restaurant, shop or anything else. And even if you are self-employed you are required to get an insurance which will cover your salary in case you get sick, though I think those people usually don't like to fill out all the paperwork and are more inclined to still work if they just have a cold or something like that.

Oh, absolutely, if someone is out for a whole week or something, require a doctor's note. But if they're only out for a day or two, I don't think it should be required. Unless it's someone who always gets sick the Friday before a 3-day weekend...!

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SO not true!

Btw, i WAS swimming to Cuba during the Obama administration, then T**** changed the rules and i had to turn around and come back. I'm not home yet!!

Honestly glad you're okay CNS. That sounds so frightful.

Start small . Grow tall.

I had an appointment with my care coordinator today. She just did a questionnaire about anxiety and depression and asked me what was going on. It was a short call maybe 10 minutes. She said I scored severe on depression and moderate on anxiety. And she asked when I see pdoc next and when the last time I had been hospitalized was. She's calling me back in a week and a half.

You know you can turn around again now, right?

Oh, carp!

I believe that about 90% of the time, you can't get in to see an md within a week. I never go to one until something has been going on for at least two weeks and usually more. I don't believe in notes from mds. Don't give them that power.

Our state and city have lifted the mask mandate for vaccinated people. Tonight I had to go to the grocery and there were giant street parties going on all along a couple of major streets.

Wait, they didn’t authorize giant street parties!

All the places I visited today required masks, so I wore mine. The state I’m in hasn’t relaxed its requirement yet. (Knowing the CDC, they’ll say something else next week.)