Dear T: I really need to tell you something XLVIII

I'm trying to decide the best time to get to the office without running into anyone. Normally I get there 10 minutes early. But I think tommorow I need to get there 5-3 minutes early instead.

Dear T and E: You guys really have been great the past week and a half. I would probably be much worse off if I didn’t have your support. Now, I need my kitty back.

Dear T,
I really do very much appreciate how invested you seem in D. You seem to genuinely care about her, even though you've only "met" her for 1 minute over Zoom. I mean...I guess it's sort of by proxy of your caring about me. And your talking about her as "engaging" today, how it would make others care about her and want to be around her--that meant a lot.

Also helps to know that I'll be talking to you a couple hours after the IEP meeting tomorrow.

Love,
LT

The news today wasn't what we'd hoped to hear, but I will be okay. I wish I had someone to talk to about it. H doesn't want to talk about it. Maybe I can call my sister.

I just wish this stupid overtime would end, already. I'm just too flippin' tired to do anything much as far as self-care except going for walks. I had to work until 7pm this evening and I start again at 6am tomorrow so not even 12 hours away from it. Meh.

I miss us.

I don't understand how a developed country can have so little laws to protect their people. You shouldn't have to put up with that. I am very sorry

Dear K,

I hope you are on holiday. It is half term and the weather is beautiful today. I hope you are having a relaxing week. I hope that you are feeling good. I hope that you aren't thinking of me. (I seriously doubt you would be, more than a fleeting thought, anyway). I hope that you are safe and well and loved and feeling hopeful and happy. I sincerely wish the very best for you. And you know what? I reckon you would wish the same for me. But it isn't true for me and I don't know how to make it true. I don't know how to get you out of my head. I don't know how to do it. I wish I could. I wish I could, but I can't. I can't not miss you. I can't not think of you. I can't not love you.

Have a good holiday and don't worry about me while you're gone :-)

Today is the one year anniversary of my last session with my transference therapist and if she were to say "do you want to work together again?" I'd turn her down. I never thought I'd say that. I feel like things are going good with my current therapist. But what a ****ing hell of a ride it was with my transference T. That was a good 2 years of my life I spent on her. I hope to never go through that again with anyone else.

I don't want you to go on vacation. What am I going to do for the 14 days until my next appointment? That feels like forever...

I don't think I've ever been so upset about you being away. I don't know why I'm in such a panic. I was doing badly last December when you canceled that one time and then I couldn't get myself to call and make another appointment and didn't see you for a while. And I didn't feel bothered. But right now it feels like the end of the world.

In less than 7 hours, my appointment will be over and I will be facing two weeks by myself. I wish it wouldn't happen.

Dear T,
Well, that conversation actually went...well! I think we both understood the other's perspective for the most part. I like that you seem willing to try an experiment next time you travel, in sharing something with me to see if it helps. I feel like the obvious solution to your being concerned I'll then feel I'll need to ask you about the trip on your return is just to say, "Please don't ask me about the trip." Or "No longer than 1 minute can be spent talking about it, then back to you."

And like I said, it helps to know you're not just avoiding sharing for the sake of avoiding it, like as a control thing. Or to make it very clear I'm a part of your professional life only. That you're doing that in an attempt to better serve me as a client, it makes me feel better. Also, good to know your wife is not dying!

Anyway, I feel OK about what we discussed (hoping no grenade later!), and I'm glad you said at the end that you felt OK about it, too, that you weren't irritated or anything. I will just do my best to hold onto that through this time Friday.

Love,
LT

Julieanne, I think I love you a little bit. Kit

Please don't yell at me again if I do call to check in later this week okay? pretty please? I'm trying to talk myself out of it again but I've a feeling I won't succeed this week.

Thank you for knowing what I needed to hear in that moment.

Please help me stay out of the hospital for at least a year. I want that to be my goal. This whole going IP every other month is getting old fast.

I liked how you asked me if I rememebered the movie Slumdog Millionaire and I said yes. I felt connected to you for once being the same age.

I really hate it when you bring up the previous place we did our sessions. It's all bad memories for me. I felt like I was getting somewhere when we were there, and since it all ended I've just failed over and over.

The dog will probably outlive you. Then what? The dog becomes my therapist? You are so ridiculous.

Thanks for forcing me basically to accept your help. I do not think it will actually help to find him, but I begrudgingly agreed.

I wish our session before your vacation had felt less painful. I don't have a huge fear of abandonment, but I've nonetheless been fearing just that since last week's session and that was really reinforced today. I think I assumed that it would be more obvious than it was that talking about how maybe you're not helping me would amplify my feelings. Part of me feels like you should have known that. I mean, I texted you several times over fear that you're about to retire and this afternoon I literally texted "don't leave me." So... did you really have to start talking about me seeing somebody else? Especially right before you go on vacation, which you know I'm struggling with?

Maybe I'm completely overthinking this but the more I think about it, the more I feel like you're fed up and hoping to get rid of me and make me think it was my idea.

You cried because it's just too frustrating to watch me be stuck, not because it makes you sad. You wouldn't be frustrated if you didn't care, but I just can't believe you would cry because you're sad for me.

Or did Dr. S say something that made you feel bad? I know she thinks meds can't help and that I need to be working in therapy, but I think that's easier said than done. Just because there's nothing more she can think of with the meds doesn't mean therapy must be capable of helping me. Sometimes neither can help. And the person she wanted me to see is a CBT therapist. Tbh, I feel like that could go extremely wrong, especially right now. Challenging my thoughts and feelings would make me feel even more misunderstood, helpless, and hopeless. I fundamentally disagree with the CBT idea that my suffering is due to cognitive distortions and changing my thoughts is the answer. My thoughts are not distortions, they are well supported by the evidence. You don't get to call unpleasant realities cognitive distortions just because they feel bad.

Anyway, following our session I've decided to go ahead and order the substances I've self-prescribed. I probably would have anyway, but it's also true that I feel under pressure from you and Dr. S and that isn't helping. I feel like I can't be honest about how I'm doing because neither of you can accept that this is the way things are right now.

I feel really alone and it has nothing to do with your vacation. If I wanted to feel punished for disclosure, I wouldn't need you and Dr. S. I could just tell my family if I wanted to feel alone, misunderstood, and blamed.

Dear K, and T, I guess,

I need to remember that grief, and feelings in general, are like waves. As sure as they come, they will recede again at some point

I decided to refocus my mind today, and am spending the time rebranding my website and social media channels. I can't be still right now, in my mind. Work is quiet and I have simply had too much time thinking of nothing, which then gets filled with thinking of you. So, out you go, please, I am having a fun day in Canva redesigning everything. Catch up with again later!

I needed to feel seen today, and you gave me that. Thank you.

You told me to just focus on one thing at a time but theres 2 very real anxiety provoking things going on at the same time and its hard to stay calm about both of them. But I really wish this were a morning doctors appointment.

I don't have words for how bad I feel.

L,
I hate my body! It teases me, gives me false hopes, and then betrays me. I should just kill what little hope is left in me, but I can't. I guess that I'm still clinging onto my 1%.

I don't feel needy with you today. I don't feel the need for a second session the way I did yesterday. This morning I did brefily wonder if you were thinking of me and what is going on with my health. I am about to go through my candy and give my family my Aero chocolate and Aero mint bars and chocolate Smarties. We talked about getting rid of them and I am ready to. I don't feel the need to eat them anymore. I'm trying to find my own stuff that I like for me and not because of anyone else.