Couch 239: Cape Coral Couch

I also don't share kitchens well if I'm the one cooking. I just want everyone to stay out!

I'm the same. I find cooking takes so much concentration that I can't focus on anything else, and if people want to meddle...

Had my first physical therapy appointment. I didn't really feel anything while I was there but I'm a bit sore now. Ready to go home and put the heating pad on.

Also T tonight.

Maybe I am wrong but isn't this a second pdoc you are going to? If so is there you can't go back to the first one?

Yes, this is pdoc #2. I don't want to go back to the first one because she won't prescribe me my benzos or my sleep aide (Doxepin). I have an appointment with the pdoc on Monday, so I'm going to express that I didn't give my permission to be subjected to religious information especially because I suffer from religious trauma.

Just hung up from talking to my coach. Turns out today was our last call, not next week, because I worked ahead a week, I've already finished the program so we ended today. I spent about 20 minutes of our call talking about h's health issues and how I'm struggling to deal with him when he gets like he's been today, struggling to hold onto myself and use the tools I learned to the fullest. BUT I realized something while we were talking, and I told her this too; that even though I was struggling with it, I was also coherently talking about it, not crying, had already found my way through what I was feeling earlier (the whole guilt and regret that had begun, I finally remembered to accept and welcome the feelings and identified the thought distortions and core beliefs behind them and so worked my way through them after a few hours) whereas before I started this program, I would have been an emotional mess right now unable to think clearly. She gave me a good suggestion for when h gets like this: that i can ask him what he needs in the moment and if being alone in bed is what he needs, then I can honor it. Yeah, I recall L suggesting the same thing in the past. I tried it once as I recall back then, I had forgotten about it I guess, but it works I guess because all I do is annoy him when I want to follow him and try to fix it. I can't fix it. He has to deal with his own thoughts. I can only deal with my own. I need to learn how to be supportive without trying to fix (ie control) his thoughts. I get so frustrated because i'm trying to control something that isn't mine to control, I think. Artie needs to stay in her own emotional lane, perhaps? Anyway it was such a helpful course and I'm glad I'll be able to continue using the app on my own. Well that was a lot.

She has said SO many things that I know L had told me at one time or other - very little in this program was new to me, I'd heard most of it before and I know I used some of it before but didn't make any of it a habit - the past 7 weeks has taught me that I want to make a few of these things permanent. They really work for me. okay i will stop now.

Artie, this all sounds like a lot of progress! And what you said about how L may have said a bunch of it before, you may just not have been ready to hear it at that time. Or it could be that L presented it in a different way.

Treats! Toys!

I used to help with the coffee cleanup at work. The usual other person and i got along just fine. Her vacation replacement taught me a lot by almost making me cry. She just kept nudging me out of the way. Nudge, nudge nudge. The usual person lived with her mom and her sister and nephew and i thought, she is not nudging me away because she is more used to interacting with humans. Like my mom, i felt. The usual person included me in her circle, within her boundaries. Well also we had graduated from the same charm school - (Montgomery) Wendy Ward.

Belllyyyyy Rubs! Ear scritches. Whooo's a Good Una????

I feel ya on this. So far, most things I am doing in trauma therapy aren't news to me, yet the way she presents the info, the way we process it together, the psychoeducation is all different from my regular T, that it feels different and new in a way.

Y'know as healing in so many ways as the therapy relationship with L was, and I remain so very grateful for that, I think maybe some of the more concrete things like these tools might have kinda got lost in the shuffle if that makes sense? Or, or, maybe the relationship was the fertile ground that those seeds were planted in? And this course was like a spring rain that watered the ground of my psyche and made them bloom? Ok that's a little weird even for me. But it's bedtime since I get up at 4:15 am this week for chat. Besides I gotta go get my nightly Johnny Gage fix (reruns of the old Emergency! is on from 7-9pm here)

I am directing a BA thesis this year, a draft of a novel incorporating aspects of world mythology.

I gave my first feedback today, one point of which was “statistically you use an adverb every 50 words. Stop it.”

She said snappishly. (I am sure you were very polite - I would be snappish).

(there is a lesbian author Katherine V Forrest who wrote several of the earlier girl gets girl and doesn't go back to a man novels -but her use of adverbs is such that one starts to laugh at the writing within the first 3 paragraphs)

I believe you mean, “She said, with a keen edge to her voice.”

I'm hearing the old schoolhouse rock song in my head now "Lolly Lolly Lolly get your adverbs here" haha

I want some ice cream.

When I walked into today's session, Dr. T started with, "The fish is still intact!" Referring to the gift I'd given him last session. I said good and joked that he could have had a client break it, and he said he wouldn't do that. I was saying something about how maybe it was a good thing for me, giving him a gift that I knew was imperfect and being OK with that. To which he said he hadn't thought of it that way, adding, "There is no perfect gift." Me: "I know, but before I gave it to you, I knew, from what you said, it wasn't to your taste." Dr. T: "It was a fine gift." Me: "OK, good."

Productive session today (about stuff other than the gift!). It seems like I'm looking at things with less of a negative view lately, like not immediately catastrophizing (like something negative involving my work). I also told him how I'd started a gratitude journal a few weeks ago, even though I'd been resistant to it for years. Plus listing positive things I'd done each day. He was pleasantly surprised. I'm not sure where this is all coming from, like is stuff that Dr. T had been telling me for ages finally sinking in?

At the end, I said I wasn't sure if he would be OK doing handshakes going forward, or if it had just been for Monday. He said he was fine with continuing handshakes, and that I didn't have to sanitize my hands first either, that we could just do that after. (Well, that fits in the "statements that would have seemed really weird pre-2020" category.) Though his hand was a bit sweaty today, so maybe sanitizing would have been better!

Sounds like you had a good session, LT, I'm glad.

C (former cbt coach) suggested i start a gratitude journal. I kinda keep a running one in my head, but maybe I'll start an actual written one, that way i don't have to try to remember stuff from day to day.

Even though I lost it briefly this morning over the handyman yelling at me over a payment issue and i was crying and freaking out over trying to multitask (getting yelled at by him on the phone while trying to handle a member chat at work because h is hopeless at computer stuff and can't hear on the phone), I did get myself calmed down and back in control of my thoughts much more quickly than I would have prior to doing that program. So first thing in my gratitude journal is that.

My next project is going to be to remove the folding door-let on my office that doesn't lock or cover the entire opening, and replace it with a solid wood door with a lock so h cannot come in here while I'm working and bother me with **** he needs to learn how to handle his own damn self.



eta: I'm really not a very nice person anymore am I.

Hugs, Artie. I read your Dear T--that sounded really rough! He was really out of line in acting that way toward you when you were trying to find a solution. It's great that you were able to calm yourself more quickly than you'd have been able to in the past.

I do think the journal is helping me change my mindset a little, as I can usually find at least something positive in most days, even something really tiny. Dr. T has said there have been research studies showing that it helps. So it could be worth trying, even if it sounds a little cheesy.

You are a nice person with boundaries and expectation that an adult man can handle his own damn self. And soon a nice person with a door that locks.