Couch 229 - Acetominphen and

Hi guys- long time, no see. i read all the threads, just rarely post.

I probably need to hear something that will lessen my (hopefully) fears.

I was driving to my session on Tuesday, when she called. I knew, answering the phone, that something is wrong.

Well she had just received a call from her H saying he needs to go to the er, but when she tried calling back, he didn’t answer.

so we obviously didn’t have session this week, but she told me tuesday that she’s out of town. next week. Selfishly, i am well aware how bad this sounds, but i want her and her H to be ok. Selfish bc i don’t want to lose this fabulous T i have. But I also worry that if the worst thing happens with her H, how could she ever do therapy again? Face people like me. who haven’t gone through any abuse or anything that tough to get through.

Anyway, she called tues evening canceling our appt, but that we’ll talk tomorrow to see if she can fit me in before friday. since it’s late on thursday night, i guess i won’t. which really makes me worry!

has anyone ever dealt with a true medical emergency of either their T or someone they are close with, and they ended up dying? how can i feel like i’m worthy enough under all her pain. assuming she would come back.

Velcro somebody here had that happen to them a couple of years ago. Their name is similar to yours, in that i think there is a c in it and its shortish. I will update if i find them. No wait - it was the t that suddenly passed.

Oh also, @@ (atisketatasket) just had that happen to her t's h.

Lost, some grief can only be carried. So many gentle hugs if you want.

Megan Devine apparently wrote a really good book "It’s OK That You’re Not OK". I was looking into it for a friend.

Hugs if wanted, Velcro. Pain is pain. There's no rule that only people who suffer xyz deserve therapy.

Like QM said pain at the end of the day is still pain. You don't need a reason to be more deserving of therapy.

C have a look at the home edit on instagram for kitchen organisation:

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Hugs, velcro.

When I first met R (my therapist) she explained that she hadn't experienced any loss. About a year into our working together, she experienced a significant bereavement, which meant she didn't work for a couple of months. After that break, she returned, we talked about how she wanted to handle it (aware that a lot of my 'stuff' revolves around loss, she didn't want it to impact on me) and it's not really been brought up again, since 2018.

I understand where you're coming from, because I was petrified at first. I had no idea what had happened, until she got back in touch, and said she was still on compassionate leave - then the penny dropped.

A strong therapeutic relationship can withstand any storm in the therapist's or client's life, I think.

I hope you hear from your T as soon as possible, and maybe that it's not as bad as you are thinking.

Hugs, Velcro. My former marriage counselor lost his wife while we were working with him. But she had been sick for a long time, so it wasn't completely unexpected (she was young, though, in her late 40s--heart condition). He actually returned to work quickly afterward. He seemed a bit different, perhaps, but mostly himself. But again, it may have been a different situation because he knew the death was likely coming.

In terms of guilt, when I learned his wife was sick (maybe 6 months to a year before she passed), I did feel a bit guilty talking about certain things. I mean, even the fact that we were coming for marriage counseling. I worried that he'd think that our problems seem small, that at least we're both healthy. But i never got any sense of that from him.

I hope your T's husband is OK. Maybe it's the sort of thing, like a heart attack, where he had to stay in the hospital a bit (or needed surgery), but then will make a full recovery. Though, if that's the case, it seems odd she's still going on vacation, unless she's just keeping the time off to care for him. I hope she's in touch with you soon to update.

Yes, early last December, suddenly. She took about 6-7 weeks off, then started telesessions, then a few weeks later came back to the office.

We talked a bit at the first session after about how she was doing. She obviously wasn’t always doing well, looking poorly and sad or forgetting things, but she wanted to work. One of the first things I brought up was definitely a grief that paled besides hers, and it felt a little gauche to discuss it at first, but it turned out fine and after that I didn’t worry about it again.

I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced a loss, velcro, but I have, and I think that experience and knowing how people often just want to get back to normal helped me overcome those worries.

Let her set the pace is my advice, and once she’s back don’t hold your issues in. Address it with her if you feel like there are things you can’t discuss.

My T told me once that when there is stress and turmoil in her life, it's actually helpful to go to work and get immersed in other people's stories and feel like she can be effective and helpful to them. Also, the vast majority of people who go to the ER come out alive, so I think the odds are good that her husband is okay. I hope you get some answers/reassurance soon, though.

Hugs, Velcro.

Bah, I'm annoyed with my T.

He asked me a few months ago to send him a short update prior to each session b/c I was having difficulty talking with him about a particular topic. A few times I forgot and he seemed annoyed, so I've been trying remember to do it. However, as time went on, the updates have been including things other than the topic that I was having trouble talking about. I also started sending them a bit later at night, though at one point he said this was totally fine.

Last night I sent him a long pre-session update that included a lot of stuff other than the topic in question -- it took me like an hour to write. I woke up at 5:30am (I have to see him early because of my work schedule and the time change) to find that he had not read the email and in fact wants me to stop sending him these long emails before every session. He said he felt bad about telling me that, and didn't want to hurt my feelings, and that of course I can always email him between sessions (though apparently not because that's what I have been doing ffs and now he's telling me to stop), but that he originally asked me to send him these updates for a particular reason and the emails are no longer serving that function. He said that therapy is best when it is a real-time conversation.

I said okay fine, I suppose I can see your point, but I'm tired and groggy and I literally just sent this email to you and it says all of the things that I would want to say to you this session anyway and you had not previously told me that you were not going to read what I wrote and I'm going to be pretty annoyed if I have to repeat what I just spent all of this time writing to you. So how about I log off of zoom, you read the email during my session time, and we log back on in ten minutes or whatever after you've read it. But he wouldn't do it. So I pulled up the effing email myself and used it to determine what we should talk about for the session.

I get his point, that the way in which I was utilizing the update emails had changed beyond their original intention. But if he wasn't going to read the effing thing, he should have told me that *before* I sent it.

Effing. T.

Wow, Chihiro.

I can see how that would be confusing and destablising, to a degree.

I hope that your T doesn't take email contact away entirely, if it's useful to you.

Totally agree that he should have said something before you sent the latest email, too.

H was still feeling good after he dropped off the package in Albuquerque yesterday afternoon, so he headed back home and got here at like 11:30 last night, he said this morning that was one of his longest trips for this company ever, he drove over 900 miles yesterday.

Hugs, chihiro. How confusing. Especially when you offered to let him read it using your paid session time. I can't see why that would have been a big deal, i mean it's your time that you're paying for and stuff.

I agree with all this. Plus you just moved, so it seems like he should wait to make any sort of changes? And it seems completely reasonable for you to give him to read the email for 10 minutes in session--I've handed my T stuff to read before during session, which is basically the same thing.


It's worse because he initially was the one who told you to email--he definitely should have told you in advance if he didn't find them helpful or if he needed them to be shorter or only on a particular topic--not *after* you sent it, like you said. I hope you still had a somewhat helpful session.

Hugs if wanted... And has the fellowship started?

Thanks, all.

He did say that I can keep sending emails (though he will not respond per what he calls "our agreement" but is actually just his policy), he just doesn't want me to continue this routine of night-before-session updates. So I'm mostly annoyed rather than, like, devastated that he's "taking away" my ability to email him.

Fellowship orientation is 7/7 - 7/15 and they still haven't given us a frigging schedule, which is super annoying bc I'd like to fly out to see the BF that weekend and often those orientations have a lot of random free time and if I have, say, Friday afternoon off, or if Monday is all over Zoom, it'd be awfully nice to know.

Shouldn’t he fly to see you if you have something scheduled ?

H got an email that his results are in from the liver scan. That was fast. I logged onto the portal for the radiology place and right now it's just the pictures, which of course mean nothing to us. Maybe later today the report will be there too. But that might not mean anything either, so I'm just trying to let it go until 7/8 when he sees the dr again.

Velcro, FWIW, I agree with EM here -- the vast majority of people who go to the ED come out alive (despite the presence of Western medical practitioners as SD might say). It's possible that he was hospitalized for something like, I don't know, a broken hip or a skin infection or a temporary exacerbation of some chronic disease, and that he'll be fine in the end but it's currently a stressor on your T. I know it doesn't make sense to speculate all that much, but I just wanted to say that there are plenty of temporary and non-deathly reasons for your T's partner to be in the hospital, and that having one's partner in the hospital for *any* reason is crazy stressful and may preclude one's ability to work.

Also, not sure if this'll be helpful to you or not, I had something happen that was a tiny bit similar -- not the same situation, but had some similar themes. A few years ago, my ex-T's mother had a recurrence of cancer and eventually died. That resulted in my T being out of the country for a month, during which time I had no therapy at all. At nearly the same time, my ex-podc was found to have a brain tumor; he stopped working six months later and died six months after that. It was all weird and awful. I remember about a month after T returned, I was talking about something problematic that my mother had done and it felt really weird. So I just said, "I feel really weird talking about my mother who is still alive when you've just lost yours." I don't remember exactly what she said in response but it was reassuring and we ended up continuing to discuss whatever thing my mother had done.

Here are a few threads of mine from that time period in case that would be helpful:
-pdoc's gonna be away for a while... (trigger warning for accidental abandonment)
-Pdoc's got a brain tumor and T's mom is sick
-When something awful is going on in your T's life... do you ask about it?

Artie, if it's from Advanced Radiology, my experience (with the types of scans I've had, not liver), that they'll post images on the portal, then maybe a day later, the actual report from the radiologist will show up. Though with today being Friday, might not be until Monday. But I'd check back on there some (don't be like me and google what different images can mean).

I will say that if it looked to be something really serious, I would think they'd contact his doctor immediately, and he/she would reach out to your H. At least that's what I've heard from other people. I hope you hear soon (at least before 7/8) and that it's nothing, or at least nothing serious.

Sending you love artie bean whilst you're waiting.

Oh, I have a fun Dr. T fashion report for today. He was wearing a Marvel Comics T-shirt (like it said "Marvel" at the top with various characters under it--I think I saw Spiderman?). He said, "You're getting very casual Friday today." It made me feel particularly relaxed with him.

Not necessarily -- that week, we both have to work M-F and have Sa/Su off (unless my orientation schedule turns out to have some flexibility). In that instance, I don't think that there is any reason for him to fly to see me vs the other way around. And given that I make 2-3x more money than he does, it's less of a financial burden for me to fly to him than for him to fly to me (I've offered to pay for him to fly out here but he's way too proud to accept that).

The idea is for us to trade off visiting the other person, but as it stands now he's coming here for Labor Day and for my vacation in November, and I don't have any plans to see him yet.

It is interesting being in a relationship where our incomes are so different. I don't think it bothers either of us in the abstract -- he's not one of those men who can't tolerate his female partner making more money than he does -- but it does result in some interesting situations. E.g. when I wanted to spend upwards $700 to buy a plane ticket to see him this weekend and he was like "WHAT" -- for me that's less than a day's work, but for him that's almost half his monthly rent.

And, like, if we end up eventually moving in together, how are we going to decide what we can pay for rent? I'd rather split it according to ability (like, we each contribute x percent of our income) because then we can get a nicer place, but he'd probably rather split it evenly (we each contribute x dollars) because he doesn't want there to be any risk of me feeling like he's taking advantage of me.

Interesting . Well I just made a post that said I realized I liked being treated like a lady and that was important to me.
My last relationship my ex bf had this attitude that he was against gender stereotypes however I think a) he was lazy and b) his mother was meeting some of his emotional needs that a female companion would like validation, support, approval, etc.
Of course he would disagree however having been married, I know how these things work.
Your relationship sounds positive. I’m glad for you.