Tag: psychotherapy

Alka-Selzer and therapists

by Midnight Demon, posted in blogging, depression

I nearly just had a heart attack…not a real one just an OMFG YOU GOT TO BE F*N KIDDING ME one. I started word and instead of it loading right away, I got an install thingy, meaning it had to reinstall itself. HUH?? I know I uninstalled office 2013 earlier in the day, but that should not affect 2010, should it? Well, crisis averted because it seems to be working.

I have had a rough day. I again spent most of my session talking to my therapist about writing. Apparently she thinks I should be working on another book, like now. My first one hasn’t even been edited or published and she wants me working on another. Well, that’s a NO. I don’t think she gets that I am not a writer. Sure, I blog and I think I am good at that, but I am not a writer per se. Anyway, all this stress about writing books is making me want to drink. I would actually drink but my stomach is doing flip flops after the burger I had for lunch and my head is spinning because I haven’t worn my glasses for a couple of hours. HELLO Alka-selzer. Because isn’t that what you take when you have a headache and stomachache? I actually like drinking it. It is fizzy and usually tastes good. And it works fairly quickly.

Tomorrow I get to deal with my father. Got to take him for his blood work. I called him today and he was a little irate. Tough shit. I know if I was him, I would opt for a different medication but unfortunately he is (well, will be) 82 and has liver problems so it is kind of limiting what meds he can be on. So I have the aggravation of dealing with him every week for his blood test, unless I hear back otherwise. Did I mention I hate my parents this week?

I usually don’t deal with them on a regular basis. But since I have been getting up early, before 9 am, I have been dealing with my mother. She hasn’t learned that don’t talk to me before I am fully awake yet. So when she tries to have conversation with me that early, I am usually in a pissy mood. I am not a morning person. Today wasn’t so bad because I was actually really awake when I woke up from another weird fricken dream. I don’t remember it but think it had something to do with farms. I made coffee today that was a little stronger than the cup I made the other day. It was good but unfortunately, once I brought it to my room, aka freezer, it got cold really fast and I couldn’t finish drinking it. I had half a cup and that seemed to do it’s magic. It got me working on one of the manuscripts that I have been crafting…and I found that I repeated myself multiple times. UGH. Each time, I worded it differently so that made editing soooo much easier, NOT. I talked about it in therapy. Wrong thing to be talking about. She didn’t understand my dilemma. It didn’t piss me off but it just annoyed me because we were again talking about writing, rather than other stuff.

I don’t know what exactly I wanted to talk about today so I just let her lead me to what she wanted to talk about than what I wanted to talk about. We also discussed writing a book about my therapist experiences. That would be one interesting book. I have had 12 therapists over the course of a ten year span. She is number 12, and she almost wasn’t. After number 11 left me, I wasn’t sure I was going to go back to therapy. I was tired of therapists leaving me. Granted not all 12 left me. A couple I fired, but the majority moved on from their practice and so left me behind. It hurt every time. And that is a big hurt when you are trying to let someone in, you do, and then they leave. Moving on is harder because it just closes you up more. Today, my therapist can’t imagine her life without me in it. And I can’t imagine my life without her, though there are times I wish I could sever the connection. But after 13 years of dealing with her, I think she is a permanent fungus. There is no cure for her.

cabin fever and psychoanalysis

by Midnight Demon, posted in blogging, depression, mood disorders

I have been feeling cooped up as I have not gone out of the house, with the exception of picking up my prescriptions yesterday. That didn’t take too long, I might have been out of the house for at least thirty minutes or so, maybe less. Today I had no intention of going out but I have been stuck in my room because I really don’t want to eat all the food in the house. My appetite is crazy and I don’t know why that is. I know part of it has to be because of boredom. I am also alternating with eating and sleeping so I know the depression is still kicking around. But I need to get out of the house. The weatherman say a storm might hit tomorrow. He isn’t sure. Guess it depends on the currents and such. I hope it doesn’t as I really want to get out of the house tomorrow and have a jittery latte. I will be a bundle of nerves when I see my pdoc. That will be great! My not having coffee or caffeinated drinks is making me intolerant when I do have them.

I also have been craving alcohol, and not the rubbing kind. I have been having a drink here and there but now I seem to want it every day. I am really craving whiskey and I know it has to do with the increase in seeing my father more. He brings out the best in me. I tolerate him by drinking. Bad habit, I know, but I very rarely drink otherwise. And being stuck in the house is not helping the craving. I also want gin. I actually bought a whole bottle but only have had a sip of it. I like these drinks straight up, with no other liquid or juice, unless it’s other alcohol. Then it’s ok. I am not an alcoholic. I drink infrequently to be one. But when I do, it’s like the flood gates open. I drink until I get sick and then I stop drinking. I am a binge drinker, I will admit to that. I don’t know how I am going to handle dealing with my father’s illness and taking him to the doctors every couple of weeks for his blood test. I just want to drink. If I can’t kill myself, I will drink. I still owe my adoptive father a shot when he passed away. I will drink to his memory too.

Because I was bored out of my tree, I decided to pick up “the Savage God” and read where I left off. It was interesting reading this book when you are not so suicidal. Things actually make sense. Though the author was talking about Freud and his ideas of suicide and some other psychoanalyst I have never heard of, the concepts were valid in a weird way. Now I have not been in the psych field long enough to really give Freud his due. I did study psychology as an undergrad but it has been years since psych 101. I do actually plan on taking the course again so I can refresh my memory a bit. The author was also talking about the ego, superego, and Id. I forget which is which so I was just going by what the author was saying. And that is why I need to take this course again. I will break down and go to the community college down the street from me. I just hope I can enroll as a non-degree student. Or even take it as a, damn I forget the word. It’s when you take a class but you don’t receive credit for it. I know I will remember this at two in the morning. GGRRR.

The gist of what I am trying to say was that Freud had no clue about suicide anymore than anyone else. He used the term death instinct but there was really no basis for this as other people who followed him found out. So the big psychoanalyst couldn’t explain suicide like he could his other theories. I find that a little disturbing but I really want to read his work on melancholia. I am fascinated by Freud. I once read his book on humor. It was dry as all hell and at times difficult to follow but it showed the analytical side of why people crack jokes. It was very interesting. Course I have no idea where that book is today as I would love to re-read it. I think it is my only book about Freud. I hope to own his collections one day. Though I know there are not that many psychoanalysts in the world today. You are more likely to find an eclectic therapist than you are a traditional psychodynamic one. Though there are other modes of therapy. You have cognitive, cognitive behavioral, and then behavioral therapy. There are others, such as humanistic and something that begins with an “ex” that I always forget but they are not so much around here.

I have an eclectic therapist which means she doesn’t focus on any specific form of therapy but knows of the different kinds of therapy. It helps to have this type of therapist because you can talk more freely, I think anyways. And there is less therapeutic interference such as homework and such. Usually, I am bringing material to her more than she brings the material to me. And usually I give her the homework. HA how is that!

exhaustion, pain, and therapy

by Midnight Demon, posted in blogging, mood disorders, suicide

As my mother would say, I did nothing at all today to warrant feeling utterly exhausted. What she didn’t know is that I woke up three times during the night because of pain and had to take my pain medication each time I woke up. She doesn’t get that I don’t sleep at night, ever. It is a rare event now to get at least 6 straight hours of sleep at night. I have been managing only 3-4 so far for the past week. It’s only seven o’clock and I feel like I have been up all day even though I did get up at noon, a half hour before my therapy session. I made breakfast even though my ankle was killing me. It started last night when I got home from the party and hasn’t really let up. Today I got a compression sleeve for the ankle and put it on. It really helped with pain control. I have had it on for a couple of hours and had to take it off because the material was annoying me. Now the pain is returning. You can wear the compression sleeve for 24 hrs but I don’t want my skin to get annoyed with me. Because my foot/ankle is nerve damage, even socks annoy me after a length of time.

I really want to take a nap but then I will be up in a few hours and won’t sleep through the night. It is a vicious cycle.

I talked with my therapist today. She read both my blogs on my rant about her and my transgender. She really wants me to see this transgender doctor at the LGBTQ health center in town. But I told her I can’t. We were supposed to get back to the other blog, where we come up with something different than how she is handling my suicidal crisis and I suggested that she have her doctor prescribe her valium. I was sort of half joking/being serious. I don’t know what is going to ease her anxiety about me being in a suicidal crisis. I just know that it is interfering with me telling her what I need to tell her. I remember a time where I could tell her my plans and she might not agree with them and I know she certainly didn’t want me to go through with them but she listened to it. Now it’s literally like she panics soon as I get another hair brained idea to kill myself. Oh and I wanted tomorrow off just so I could sleep in. You would have thought I was trying to steal the Hope diamond. SHE went berserk on that plan so I countered with a session for Thursday. She is like the mother hen from psycho land or something. She always wants to know what I am doing. My own mother could care less what I am doing and where I am going.

So the reason I bring this up is to try and think of a way in my exhausted state to tell my therapist she really needs valium or another way of handling me. But what does that look like? I am not her so I can’t just tell her to fuck off, I mean I can but it’s not going to get me anywhere. How am I supposed to get her to calm down? And why am I the one to think of these things?? Shouldn’t therapists already know how to handle shit? It’s not like I am confessing a gruesome murder or something. Well, maybe. In a sense I am telling her how I am completing my own murder of self. But it’s not like I am chopping off my head and body parts. Though right now the only body part I would LOVE to chop off would be my ankle. I got to seriously think about this one because I don’t know what to do. I generally like to be on my own about this stuff and she doesn’t want me to be alone. Maybe that is what she should do, leave me alone and let me tell her whatever it is that is running through my rabbit brained mind. I know the chance of me acting on such thoughts are small. But thinking those thoughts give me a release that helps me get through the darkness. But as we were talking about today, if I don’t talk about the dark thoughts, if I keep them inside without anyone hearing them, Then Mr. Hyde is going to come out and start with the suicide notes, and this time it might be more people out there than just my blog can reach.

A Special Blog Post

by Midnight Demon, posted in blogging, suicide

This is my 500th blog post. I wanted it to be memorable. And it will be, I hope, to me anyways.

I thought I would talk about David Jobes. He is my idol in the field of suicidology. I talk a lot about his work on my blog because I want to spread the word that there are treatment plans and assessment scales available for those who are suicidal. It took twenty-five years for this to happen. It might not catch on like DBT (Dialectical Behavior Therapy) did for borderline personality disorder but I am hoping that through my blog, someone has at least an inkling about it.

His work is CAMS: the Collaborating Assessment and Managing of Suicide. It is a framework that allows the suicidal patient/client to work with the therapist in his or her treatment plan. By working together, therapist and client, it is hoped that suicidal thinking will decrease enough so a completed suicide is avoided. This does not mean that the suicidal thinking will go away completely. Nor does it totally prevent a suicide. During one of his talks, he spoke of a clinician in Texas that followed the CAMS and the assessment tool, SSF (suicide Status Form) to the letter with one of his suicidal clients. The client ended up killing himself. The clinician did everything that he could. But sometimes, there is still the risk.

The SSF is a seven page form that uses an initial, tracking, and outcome form to monitor and assess suicidality. It is based on the work of several clinicians. I won’t go into great detail about this because you can find out more in Dr. Jobes’s book, Managing Suicidal Risk. The link it to the Amazon website where you can purchase it. I would love to post the SSF one day but I would be violating copyrights, though in the book you can make copies of the form. I just can’t do it electronically, yet.

The wonderful thing about this form is that it is a self report about the client’s thinking about suicide and also has clinical information in the end so that both client and clinician fill it out to assess and document the suicide risk. It doesn’t take more than 10-15 minutes to fill it out (might take longer if the person has trouble understanding reading and writing English or has a disability that prevents that from happening, such as dyslexia). It is individualized for the client and that is a huge thing Jobes tries to do. It is not a fit all in one box, so to speak. It should broaden the thinking of the client and clinician to help bring together and work together to prevent the client from committing suicide. In the SSF, it talks about reasons for living and dying, assess psychological pain, hopelessness, the need to escape, and also asks the question, what would make you not kill yourself? I have used this form in my therapy sessions and that is the first question my therapist asks me when I am in the throws of a suicidal crisis, which happens more times than not for various reasons.
Mostly it has been my word that has kept me alive and I do hate myself for it at times. I have told my therapist that I would keep myself safe and I have, though sometimes, I overmedicate to do so.

Background information of Jobes is that he is a professor at the Catholic University of America and also has a private practice in the Washington, D.C. He has written in at least a half dozen books (some of which I own, if I could afford it I would own all) and countless research articles relating to his work and also to the field of suicidology. He not only write about his work but also about the legality and ethical matters of dealing with a suicidal client.