Tag: psychache

Therapy-less

by Midnight Demon, posted in Bipolar Disorder, blogging, depression, mood disorders, suicide

Therapy-less

My airhead therapist got the times wrong for our session. She thought we were meeting today, not tomorrow. I am glad I canceled the Zipcar because I would have been pissed to show up and find I didn’t have an appointment. So we talked today.

She decided that we are going to talk monthly when I can get the zipcar and go out to see her, in person. She gave me names of five therapists, all female, in the area. I have no intention of calling any of them. I am not seeing another therapist again.

We talked about my pain and anxiety levels, my phone fiasco and being phoneless, and that was about it. She didn’t ask about my suicidality and I didn’t tell her. I was tempted to tell her about my dissociation I had last night but I didn’t. I felt like she wanted to keep the conversation light so I didn’t get into anything dark.

Today is our anniversary. I asked her if I could see her tomorrow and she said no. She doesn’t want to fall into her old habits. I was crushed but I didn’t let on about it. She wants to keep this as a monthly thing, fine. I will be dead soon anyways so it doesn’t matter. As we were setting up our next appointment, it was the week after that I would be dead. I felt sad about not telling her this but oh well.

I emailed my psychiatrist to let her know. She responded saying she wants to see me tomorrow but I had already made plans to see some friends. I will just keep our appointment for Friday. It would be nice to see her tomorrow but I really want to see my friends. I haven’t seen them in a long time. It would be good meeting them again.

For the first time in sixteen years, I am without a therapist on a regular basis. I have gone from twice a week to monthly. And it’s not because I have recovered or my symptoms have diminished. It’s because my therapist doesn’t know how to treat me anymore. Frankly, I don’t think the monthly bullshit is going to work out. I mean, why even bother? The least she could have done was wait until I had a therapist set up before going monthly. That would have made more sense, but nope. Not going to happen. So neither is me calling a therapist she gave me. I will check each of the names on Google to see what I can learn about them, though. Maybe if I see something in their profile it might change my mind and I will call her. We’ll see.

my stupid advice

by Midnight Demon, posted in Bipolar Disorder, blogging, chronic physical pain, depression, mood disorders, suicide

My stupid advice

Whenever someone is feeling bad about something and I know it’s more than just the “blues”, I often tell them to seek out professional help. But if I took my own advice, where has that gotten me exactly? There are a million therapists out there, all with different degrees and modes of therapy. You often have to see a few to get chemistry with someone for it to be effective. I saw 11 by the time I was 25. And here it is, 16 years later and I might have to see therapist number 14. It’s getting old. I feel that I should be better by now or that I should have at least feel like I “cured” myself by some magic. I read enough about therapy to know what works and what doesn’t. Doesn’t that count for something?

I have seen psychiatrists, social workers, psychologists, and a psychiatric nurse working toward a doctorate. I can’t really say which profession was the best because they all left me before I could form an opinion on the matter and it hurt too bad. But the one that I am in now, the one with a psychologist, worked out pretty good until things just fizzled out. I think I just became too “smart” for her and she couldn’t keep up. She tried for a while until she realized she couldn’t anymore, that it was hindering my therapy. And now what to do?

The thought of starting over isn’t appealing to me. I really don’t want to go through the process. It’s difficult when you are already used to someone. I have read a lot about suicide yet it still eludes me. I want to act on my feelings of it yet I am still here. I know seeing someone new will have a great burden taking me on. I don’t know if they are willing to take that risk. I don’t know if I am either.

Someone I knew a long time ago and still do took my advice and is still alive today because she took it. She is grateful that I saved her life because she listened to me. I remember she was at a crucial period in her life. She was diagnosed as bipolar and at the time, I wrote a lot about the disorder. I told her she needed to see someone and be on meds to help herself. She is still alive because she took that advice. So sometimes, I don’t give out stupid advice. I just wish I could help myself. I have a great psychiatrist but for things to work in my disorder, you also need a therapist. I have yet to find one that is on the same page as me. I am too smart for my own good. And now another therapist is leaving because of it. Some advice giver I am.

More Reflections about Therapy

by Midnight Demon, posted in Bipolar Disorder, blogging, chronic physical pain, depression, mood disorders

More reflections about therapy

I started a Twitter rant and before I knew it, I was crying as I thinking about how my therapist of 15 years is suddenly realizing, now, that she isn’t the one for me. I feel that I am the blame for this though I don’t know how exactly I am. I just feel that if I kept that transference blog to myself instead of sharing it, things wouldn’t be like this.

I had thought about what I was going to do with therapy. I figure I would give her a symptom of something of PTSD nature that we could work on and sort out. But now that has gone to crap as we are breaking up. I don’t know if there are any resolutions to us staying together. It is really sad that in her bag of tricks she has run out of things to help me, even though I have offered her many over the years of working together.

From the start, I always thought of treatment plans to help us get going and she was amenable to these ideas. I never thought that she would depend on me so much. I honestly have no idea when we stopped being client and professional to being something along the lines of being “friends”. We care for one another deeply, there is no denying that. But I think we got too close for comfort and that is what is destroying the therapeutic relationship.

I still can’t understand why she cannot take time out of her schedule to become a CAMS trained therapist. Maybe she thinks it will cost too much or that it will take too long. I don’t know. She never said why. All she has said was that she is not a “suicidologist”. You don’t have to be one to get trained. Maybe this pressure is what is tearing us apart. My suicidality is too tough for her to handle anymore. Maybe she is just burned out like any therapist would be with chronic suicidality. I don’t know. I just know that you can’t “expect different results with the same experiments”. Or something like that. It’s by Albert Einstein. I wrote it in one of the book I read on suicidality. Much good my book did for her.

I keep thinking where did I go wrong. I just don’t know. I just know that I was tired of her anxiety interfering with our therapy. Even when we were talking about my PTSD she was anxious and she didn’t even know it. I had to bring it up. What the hell is that about? I’m a sensitive person so I pick up others emotions pretty quick. In my household growing up, you had to or you got smacked. I’m not saying my therapist is abusive in anyway. Not at all. But she definitely has issues that are not my issues to control. I am just a patient in her care. Not for that much longer.

It hurts like hell that after 16 years in January (that is our anniversary month), we will be saying good-bye. We haven’t discussed formal termination. We are just on a break right now. I wanted to talk to her today or tomorrow but I am being a stubborn fuck and not going to call her. I can manage on my own without her. Hell I have done it before, I will do so again. I know I need a therapist that handles PTSD symptoms and other stuff. I won’t say suicide because that freaks therapists out and I won’t be able to get a therapist if I tell them I am suicidal or have a suicidal history. It’s just the way the therapist world works. The care you need the most is not given due to fear. And I have scared the shit out of my therapist so many times she is having anxiety attacks over it.

I also need a collaborative therapist that won’t be up my ass about their treatment style is the best in the world for me. Horseshit. I don’t work that way. Either we work together or see ya later. I don’t know if I can trust someone just out of the gate again. It took at least five years of working together before I was able to let my guard down with her. I can’t imagine how long it will be for another therapist. That is, if I decide to see a new one. I haven’t completely decided to go ahead with someone new. My therapist has a few names for me, which I will take but I doubt they will work out. I’m just a high risk suicidal case with PTSD out of control with chronic pain that makes it difficult to work through. I am anything but “easy”.

Incompetence and needs: A story of transference

by Midnight Demon, posted in Bipolar Disorder, blogging, chronic physical pain, depression, mood disorders, suicide

Incompetence and needs: A story of transference

My therapist read my Thanksgiving Eve blog and was basically horrified to find that she is inadequate for my needs. She wanted me, again, to see another therapist that was local as seeing someone in person on a regular basis might be more helpful to me. I nixed the idea because I don’t want to start over with someone new. She said it would be more as an adjunctive way. I don’t give a fuck, I am not setting out to see a new therapist. Then she brought up the whole CBT therapist idea. Nixed that too.

It got me thinking about what I need from my therapist. Frankly I don’t know. We have been struggling with my suicidality for so long that it just goes on without a resolution. It got me thinking about the CAMS philosophy and frankly, even though my therapist has been collaborative, she really hasn’t been. She acts more like a friend than a therapist at times. It has been driving me crazy since she took up the majority of the session with her guilt talk, whether it was directed towards me or her, I am not sure. She feels like she is failing me. Hence her incompetence.

There is more to solving suicidality than filling out the SSF forms. Again she brought up if she only knew how to get me to “open up” and write the answers she needs on the stupid forms, she will feel better. But that is not how it works. The SSF just provides you with problems that need solving so that you don’t end your life. The therapist and client are to work together to solve these issues so that life becomes more tolerable rather than intolerable, a “life worth living”. I’m never going to reach that stage of treatment because maybe I am too stubborn to give up my suicidality long enough to find a life worth living. I just go about my daily business of drinking coffee, writing this blog, taking care of my family and then dealing with a stupid therapist twice a week that drives me absolutely fucking insane with her idiocy.

Maybe we have been together too long and can’t see the forest for the trees. We are wrapped up in something and our path has gone so far astray that we just can meet anymore eye to eye. Maybe we are too close because my heart was really breaking today while she was droning on and on about seeing another therapist and how she was basically failing me. Yes, she is a pain in the ass. She is an idiot, but who isn’t really? I texted her that tomorrow will be our last session. I seriously doubt she will take me seriously. I don’t even know what no therapy will look like. I don’t want to know but what else can I do? Go on with a therapist that hates me on some level for calling her out?

Usually you bring up stuff and it gets dealt with and then you move on from it somehow, someway. A few years ago, we were at this impasse. The same issues were covered today. They haven’t moved on because they haven’t been dealt with. I know what needs to be done but I am just too much of a chicken shit. And there we have the needs piece again. I could list them and they would have NOTHING to do with the list from Shneidman. But I feel insecure and my therapist, even though she won’t admit it, does too. That was evident today and it was killing me inside. It broke my heart.

I know I have called my therapist a lot of names in this blog today, but I still believe she is right for me because we have a connection. Granted right now, that connection is a little frail but we are still tethered. The last time we talk about this, we went over Shneidman’s needs. He had 20 of them and I think I boiled them down to less than 10 that affected me, because part of his theory was that frustrated needs causes suicidal thinking. A lot has happened to me this year, more than any other year to date. Problem is that we just talk about shit in circles and we just go around and around because we are just on this merry-go-round that doesn’t have a stop.

People go to therapy for different reasons. I have a whole slew of them that are basically being neglected and possibly fueling my suicidality. I could list them but if you read my blog or my tweets every day you can probably figure out what the major ones are. I know my therapist can’t do shit about my physical pain, neither can my psychiatrist. I have trauma history, a death in my family that still hasn’t been quite dealt with, PTSD that I don’t think is managed, etc. just to name a few. I read blogs from fellow friends that suffer the same kinds of things that I struggle with yet they are dealing with differently. One of my blog friends has severe PTSD and has anxiety that tears her apart at times. My anxiety, though not a principle symptom, has becoming more of a problem lately because of my damn pain syndrome. It drives me to suicidal thinking. And there is no cut off valve when that level has been reached. So far I have managed but I still plan and strategize my suicidal plan because it comforts me to know I have a way out. I still don’t know what is going to happen this week. I know I have put off my plan but it’s back on again because, why the hell not if my therapist is pulling away from me, even though she says she is not.

In my head, I think I have spoiled my therapist. I bring her treats and indulge in her fantasy that I won’t kill myself. Maybe we both are trapped in that fantasy because I am still here either way you look at it. I have tried to bring her the reality my death will bring and even tried to say if I die, here is the help you need to find. I once brought her an article about it that she refused to read. She doesn’t think I will kill myself. Maybe that is what is keeping me going but it is also draining me to keep up this front week after week. I want to die very badly, to get away from myself because there are so many things I can’t stand about me. Being in pain every single day and night is also taxing me. Knowing the fact that my pain syndrome has changed course on me hasn’t helped matters. All I can do is what the voices tell me to do at the end of the day. So far I have ignored them, but one of these days, I will give in and things will finally be at peace. For me anyways.