Couch 237: Social Rules

Thanks, EM. I think I am afraid to get even a little bit attached to her because I remember how painful it was when I had to end with former T (when she got sick). I want to spare myself that pain. So I am holding back some but I know that is interfering with my therapy. I'm just not sure how to work through it. I think yesterday was a step forward though in that we talked about potentially being able to be less dependent/attached to my parents. HUGS Kit

Thanks, LT. I am fighting I think the word is inertia, where I have little motivation, so I am trying to get myself out of the house on Saturday. I do have to get fasting blood work done at 7:15 AM but then I have to come home and be ready for my Zoom class. I'm afraid I will spend all day inside ruminating. I thought about maybe taking myself to lunch and going to Hobby Lobby. I have something that I need to get framed and they do framing there. But that seems a bit overwhelming at the moment to actually pull off. I know if I stay inside all day I am going to end up feeling bad, but that is what I have been doing most weekends because I haven't been feeling good. I'm trying to decide between planning and just letting things happen. Saturday will be the tough day as I have work on Friday and I have Church on Sunday. It's also kind of hard for me to reach out to Julieanne because I don't want to be dependent on her. But it would be better than relapsing. HUGS Kit

Obviously i need to do more of this and less of that. Sorry.

Hugs, Kit. I completely understand the inertia thing. It's part of why I want Dr. T to stay in person, because it's getting me out of the house a few days a week, with something actually on the schedule.

With Saturday, could you maybe plan for either lunch OR Hobby Lobby? Or go to Hobby Lobby earlier and get carryout lunch or dinner? If it's overwhelming to be in public that long. Or, I have no idea what your weather is there, but go to a park or other outdoor place, just to sit on a bench for a bit.

Mini Couch poll - if you're bringing a personal achievement into a therapy session, how important is it to you to have tangible evidence?

I'd like to share my art exhibition news with R, but I won't receive my copy of the booklet until after next session. I could print the page from the digital booklet, but I don't think it would have the same impact.

I wouldn't think you'd need evidence. I mean, you could print the page if you wanted to maybe. In case she wanted to see it. I think she'll be proud regardless!

It turns out there was a misunderstanding at the new Therapy place, my first session will be tomorrow via Skype.

Hope it goes well RTerroni!

Lost, I think it depends on what will make you happiest to share. When I finished my dissertation, I brought in the acknowledgments page, but that was only because I thanked her on it. In general, I just tell her about things I'm excited about or proud of.

I would not need to show evidence to a therapist. I never would have involved them in anything positive as it is not why I hired those people, but if I had for some reason,I would have just told them.

I am not feeling well now. I am starting to feel suicidal and wanting to self harm. Ugh. I am supposed to go to Church tonight but I don't think I am going to. I don't feel like socializing.

Hugs, Kit.

And to anyone else who wants/needs.

I have started counting down the days until our trip to the Oregon coast to visit one of my friends (the one who used to host the sister weekends every year back in MO). We fly up there in 37 days woohoo! Can't wait to walk on the beach and hike in what she calls the 'fairy forest' there. This trip is the only reason I'm not totally dreading turning 60 anymore just before we leave.

I still can't believe that I'm going to be 60

Cool I've sort of been counting down to a trip I plan to take next July for my 40th Birthday, nothing is officially planned yet but I hope to start doing so in the coming months.

I am so sorry you are feeling this way right now. One thing I learned at the crisis center I was just at, was that reaching out despite your entire being telling you "NO," helped. Even if it was just for 10 minutes. It helped ease the anxiety and SI.

If reaching out looks like talking in here, that is great. It is okay to reach out to your T when you are feeling this low. They want to know.

Velcro, how was your stay at the crisis center? Was it helpful? I know you were really unsure about going there...

Thanks for asking, EM. I was very ambivalent for the first few days. But, I was honest to my T’s there. I do think it was helpful in the sense that I got to experience different modalities of therapy, all which gave me a different perspective on my life.

I also really saw that having support 24/7 was extremely beneficial for me. There was a T there every day until 10. So if I was really upset about something, I could talk to that T for a bit. I am pretty sure I cried to all of their T’s-and there are lot.

One of my T’s told me that she doesn’t see just depression in me, that she suspects I have trauma, specifically relational trauma, in my life.

To me, trauma is such a BIG word. That’s used for war veterans, people who are abused physically or sexually. Serious stuff. I never experienced anything like that.

The only real thing is that I have no memories of childhood. I don’t start having a narrative of my life until I was about 11 or 12. That is a LOT of years to not remember.

overall, it was beneficial. i am not suicidal currently, and so far have avoided the unhealthy coping mechanisms I fall back on when I go down that spiral.

I had a hard time with the word "trauma" too. Things weren't great when I was growing up, but it could have been much, much worse. I was never beaten and I was never, like, a child soldier. When I talk about the lack of classic traumatizing events with my EMDR T, she has mentioned that those are actually much easier to recover from, especially with EMDR, because you reprocess one big event and it takes a handful of sessions and then it's done. Relational trauma is tougher because it affects your development of a sense of self and your feelings about being close to people. If you had your feelings invalidated, you just think that that's normal and continue to do it to yourself as an adult, which makes life infinitely harder than it has to be.

One thing I think about a lot as a parent of young kids is how memory works in early childhood. Basically you don't form long-term episodic memories until preschool age (like, we lived here, this happened at school, etc) but you form implicit memories from birth (I'm not actually sure about prenatally, but I wouldn't be surprised). So even if you don't remember specific events, you have a TON of feelings, impressions, sensations etc that have been stored but are not accessible to your conscious mind. I do think adults respond in characteristic ways when they were traumatized as children (particularly relational trauma), so I wouldn't be surprised that therapists who observe your symptoms and personality might have some clues about your past based solely on that.

I'm glad it was helpful, even though it sounds like it gave you some heavy things to think about.

People often tend to say "it wasn't as bad as X...", and the thing is, you could have been physically abused or sexually abused as a child for many years, and likely you would still have said "other people have it worse, I at least wasn't starving", for example.

What matters most for you is the impact of your lived experiences (whether it's trauma or not) on you, so that perhaps working through them can help ease the chronic symptoms.

You don't have to use the word "trauma" if you don't feel it fits.

People seem to have awkward responses to the word/concept of trauma. Some people don't feel entitled to use it for fear of being fraudulent; some people want to claim it in order to validate their painful experiences. I think trauma is over used and misapplied in some circumstances. Experiences can be painful and distressing without being traumatic. Societally, I think we marginalise pain and distress and this leads people to need bigger and more serious words to evidence how much they are struggling. We should take our pain seriously and not play a game where we need to up the ante in order to describe our "ordinary" wounds. The ordinary pain is painfully real enough.

I also have a hard time with the word "trauma". But when L describes it as relational, it makes more sense to me. T, L, and Pdoc have all agreed I suffer from trauma. T and L know me best, so I'm trying to understand the word and see if/how it fits me.

Ex-T, ex-MC, and Dr. T have all said that I act/react like someone who has suffered trauma. I used to think it had to be what I called "capital-T trauma." (And ex-T seemed puzzled that there was no big thing jumping out, even wondering if I'd repressed something.) But I've come to learn through talking to them that it can be "lowercase-t trauma," where a bunch of things that may seem minor from the outside (compared to much worse stuff) can add up over time. Including relational trauma, like EM mentioned.

Dr. T has also said it can have to do with one's natural emotional temperament (I forget the actual term he used) how they respond to such things, where two people could have the exact same experiences, but one has lasting effects and the other doesn't (to use a more stereotypical example, why two soldiers could be in the exact same battle, and one gets PTSD, while the other doesn't).

And that's all helped me to understand myself better and feel less like I'm overreacting (as so many others had it much worse) and should just get over things.

There's a brilliant book by a therapist called Aundi Kolber - the book is called Try Softer. It discusses big-T and 'little T' trauma in quite some detail, whilst offering some useful exercises to increase self-compassion.

Thanks for this, Lost.

I can't decide if I am feeling better today. I think I need to get more into the day to find out. I stayed home from Church last night but I admitted to my friend who leads the group that I was isolating. I also told my parents what was going on. Not that they were particularly helpful, but at least they knew. I'm wavering on texting my T to let her know about my feelings of the past couple of days. Her response likely won't be all that helpful. She'll do the mushy gushy thing and the I wish I could make it better for you thing and I don't think that is what I want. But I don't know what I want. I just want to feel better.