Tag: psychotherapy

another depressing day, sort of

by Midnight Demon, posted in blogging, Chronic pain, depression

Not having a great day. I had a crappy session with my therapist. We talked about the violations issue and she apologized. She had no idea that her nosiness was hurting me. We talked about having to set boundaries now where I only show her what I want her to read. I just hope that she can stick to them. I am so used to people trampling on me that you would think I am used to it by now. But when it is someone you trust, like a therapist, it kind of throws you out of whack. I still feel down about it and I hope that I get over it. But it’s so hard because I feel so hurt. I cried today for whatever reason, like sobbing hard. I can believe that my therapist would do this, it is just her nature to be nosey. But I told her we have to put a damper on what she reads. I know what I write can be seen by anyone on the internet and she should have the same rights as anyone else. But sometimes I just don’t want her to read what I write. If it something that she needs to read, I always send it to her via text message. Seeing as I no longer see her in person, I think this method has worked pretty well until now. I really think that just her excitement over finding my blog really is what caused her to go over the boundaries without her thinking through about what she was doing. Hell, one time she called me a fucker without thinking about it. We joked about it and she apologized about it. I could tell she felt bad about it. But this time I am not getting that same sense. Maybe I am just too hurt this time to feel her apology. And she knows what my life was like with intrusions left and right. As she put it, it was like she just charged her way into my room without knocking first, which essentially is what she did.

I think I am just down because I have not been able to leave my house since the Bon Jovi concert on Saturday. I did way too much standing and dancing but I had to because there were these two goons in front of me standing for most of the concert so when I sat down, all I saw were their backs. Then I had a marshal standing next to me who stood the whole time with his hand on his hip. It was so annoying. So when I did sit down, I had an elbow in my face. I had a good time. The music was awesome as usual but the sound sucked. I couldn’t make out the words to some songs, especially his new music, which I don’t have yet. I plan on getting it soon.

I have been in bed mostly all weekend and today and still my ankle/foot is acting up. I made it to my sister’s apartment on the first floor to make myself a cup of coffee. My first cup since Saturday. I hope I am able to go out tomorrow. I need to borrow my sister’s car to do some shopping before she goes away for camping. I was invited but I can’t do anything but sit and if I try to do a hike or something I am going to be laid up anyways. It just wouldn’t work for me.

I know I try to write every day so I am sorry for the few days I have not been able to write. I have been hit with the flare up and between sleeping off the pain meds and just being wonky from the meds, I had no inclination to write. Then I got hit with depression and it just killed my writing muse. But hopefully I am back now and won’t miss anymore days. I might make up some with posting twice a day with another paper or two. I have been thinking about it for a while now. I just published the one on therapists who panic when they hear suicide. My muse friend wants me to write one on relationships and suicide but I don’t think it would work. I have always told myself that I wouldn’t kill myself over someone. It just seems silly to me but people feel that they can’t go on unless someone is in their life and I get that. What they don’t know is that they can go on without them. Sure it hurts as hell in the beginning but as the song by Sara Evans says “you get a little but stronger” every day without them.

Today I got an email from a person that runs a Master’s degree in counseling program and she wanted to use my site as a resource for the program’s students. I feel so honored to have her choose my website. I hope that it helps future clinicians.

Today is my second day on my 4th week with the patch and guess what, I got my fucking menses. Though I don’t know how bad it is. I just had some bleeding. I needed this like a hole in the head. Now I know why I have been so down and listless the past few days. I also been getting wicked suicidal urges on and off the past day or so, which the damn menses causes. I don’t know why the bleeding always messes with me but I swear if I ever do attempt to kill myself it will be while bleeding. Just when I thought I could wear my boxers with confidence, this shit happens. I am beyond devastated but I told my doc I would stick it out for three months and at the end of the three months I will try something else. I can’t be having my menses while trying to transition. It just sets me back and makes me wish I was dead.

Mentioning of suicide, therapist panics

by Midnight Demon, posted in depression

Mentioning of suicide, therapist panics

I had been seeing an interim therapist while waiting to go to college after I graduated high school. I was seeing someone in the local mental health center and I was supposed to see her for the summer as my current therapist got laid off due to budget cuts.

Some where in the middle of that summer, I reach the lowest point in my life, about three weeks away from when I was going to leave for college up in Maine. Like anyone else would do, I told my therapist that I was having suicidal feelings. She then did something totally unexpected. She took a deep breath, held it, let it go, and then sat there stunned like I shot her with a taser or something. She didn’t know what to do. She asked if I needed to be seen by someone in the emergency room and I forget if I did or not. I think I did because I got to the local hospital and was admitted for two weeks. I was glad my summer job had come to a close so I didn’t have to worry about work.

What I didn’t realize was that suicide is a big deal in the mental health field. The therapist didn’t want to take me back after my admission so I was stuck seeing a resident who basically said it was her or the hospital. I didn’t have a choice of people to talk about my feelings of being suicidal. Sure they were fine in the confined settings of a hospital stay but were taboo on an outpatient setting. I always knew I was high risk and it wasn’t until I entered into the field of suicidology did I really understand what it meant to be suicidal not just as a patient but as a clinician as well. I am not a clinician but I do have a clinical way of thinking about things. I might not be trained (yet) but I have more experience in therapy than a new graduate or even someone who has spent their lifetime doing this. I like to think of myself as an expert but then all people who have attempted suicide feel that they are.

What strikes me is the legality of the dreaded no-suicide contracts, the risk for malpractice, the ethical responsibility of the patient in the course of therapy, and the risk of losing the patient. Those are some pretty big reasons NOT to take on a client but what if you were in the situation that I was in. I already had an “established” therapist and she got cold feet when I told her I was thinking about killing myself. And in the age of the internet, I find that I am not the only one who has had this experience. I also have had trouble finding another therapist. My current therapist, though she still gets anxious when I talk about suicide, is thirty miles from me and I don’t have a car. We communicate solely by phone unless I can take my sister’s car every so often to drive out the forty-five minute to hour drive both ways. I have tried to find a therapist within a five mile radius of my house and have failed, not once, not twice, not three time, but ten fucking times!!! That is right, I called ten different therapists and they all turned me down because I had a history of being suicidal. It hurts and sucks. They just asked the question, I answered honestly, and got either referred to another therapist or was turned down outright. So I was stuck with the far away therapist. I then got hospitalized during the course of trying to find a therapist I could see face to face and when I did, he was scared of me. I mean beads of sweat were coming down his face and he had a high pitched, nervous laugh. I could tell he did not want to treat me. He didn’t want to lose me because I was such a high risk person. What makes you high risk? Having a significant history of suicide attempts, history of being abused either physically, emotionally or sexually or all three, constant suicide thoughts, and feeling hopeless. There are other criteria but those jump out at me as the most significant. I once went to a suicidology conference where I listed the prominent symptoms of my condition and had it reviewed by one of the suicidologists at the conference. He didn’t want to touch this person with a ten foot pole. I never felt so hopeless before in my life. I knew at that point that there was no hope for me, that I was destined to always be suicidal, or at least have suicidal thoughts. But it shocked me that this expert had no advice for me other than good luck.

To be a suicidal patient and have no where to go is a tough situation. You depend on the therapist to be there for you and to talk openly about any topic you want to talk about, including suicide. But what do you do when the therapist has no clue? You would think that the therapist would know how to handle the situation. You are after all trusting this person to give you advice about your life. It seems kind of too late to start the training now while you are in crisis on what to do. It’s not like you can put your life on hold while the therapist gets a clue. All I can say is to be patient. Don’t buy into a no suicide contract, they don’t work. Go to the American Association of Suicidology’s website to help both you and your therapist. There are not too many therapists that know how to handle suicidal crises every where and each state has their own rules regarding suicidal safety. The best advice I can offer is to both be honest with one another and to listen to each to whether out the storm of the suicidal feelings. Have a safety plan in place. Use a crisis response plan. Pick up a book on Managing Suicidal Risk by David Jobes and give it to your therapist. If the therapist says she or he cannot work with you anymore, find someone who can. That might take some doing and some time but you can find someone that is not afraid of suicide.

feeling broken

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

Today I have been thinking about Lincoln. I read a passage in the book I am reading and one of Harvard’s psychiatrist mentioned that “no mere prescription [can teach us] about how to live a successful life in the face of suffering”(Lester Havens, MD).

I admire Lincoln for working through his suffering yet being successful in what he did. It was so painful and others around him could see and palpate his pain. I think if Lincoln grew up in another time period, he might have been either institutionalized or he would have killed himself. He would not have become the 16th president. But I think, as I am a depressive myself and can totally relate to what he went through, even if antidepressant were available, he would not take them. There have been notions that he might have dabbled in laudanum or cocaine even, but give his strict stance on temperance, I sincerely doubt he would have used any type of drug to ease his suffering. In fact, given the his profound pain, I think he would have ended up overdosing on these. I have thought of making laudanum. There are recipes on the internet on how to make it but it takes time, like all things. And you need the right equipment, though this equipment is much cheaper than that used of say a meth lab. I doubt I could do it, not with my family around, especially as I would need the darkness of the basement to “cook” the stuff in. My brother in law would find it as the basement is his area. I don’t think he would take too kindly to me having a little space to make something illegal. But I have thought about it. Mostly, I just wanted to make the stuff to OD on not to really use as a pain reliever.

I still am broken up about the violation my therapist did yesterday. I am trying not to think about it because I know ruminating about it is not going to help. I have thought of writing her a letter, but seeing as I don’t see her in person and it will be a week or so before she gets it, I don’t think that is going to help me. Yes, I might read it to her on Tuesday on our next session. But I have to stifle these feelings until then and it just doesn’t seem right. I know she didn’t mean to harm me. Hell, I didn’t even think she would KNOW how to get on the web with her phone while we were talking. But the little nitwit did. I have texted her saying she is in deep shit with me. That somehow made me feel a little better as we can open the session with that. But I don’t know how to get through the weekend feeling like this. I know I will, I always do. I am going to the Bon Jovi concert tomorrow so that will get things off my mind, least for a day or so. My only worry tomorrow will be standing too long and getting dehydrated as we are in the middle of a heat wave.

I can’t help but feel broken inside. The one person that I trusted the most in the world violated it in three minutes. She even read the other blog that I didn’t want her to read. So that makes two blogs she read without my consent. I don’t know why I didn’t stop her or say something while we were talking. I know that if were talking in person this probably wouldn’t have happened. She might have goaded me into getting the blog on my phone and sharing it but that would have been different. I could control what she saw. I guess that is it, I feel out of control in a situation I should have had control of. And the blog didn’t contain anything real worthy of the violation. It wasn’t as if my safety was in jeopardy. I just jotted down some thoughts that I thought would go into a suicide note. That is what started the whole “let’s read the blog then” action. I think her possessiveness is getting out of control. Everything I write she thinks is free rein to her. I wrote a letter to Dr. Jobes and she wanted me to read it to her. I was like sorry, it’s not addressed to you so you do not have permission. She wanted to get behind the thinking of the letter but I had the letter at home and there was no way for her to get at it. It wasn’t like I was waving it around in her face or something. I just don’t know what to do. I am stuck with her as no other therapist wants me in the area I live in. They are too afraid of my suicidality. The hardest part is that I can’t even talk to my psychiatrist about this because I don’t see her till next Friday. And I don’t want to email this to her because I just don’t even know what to say. I don’t even know if she (my therapist) truly did violate boundaries. And even if I did call my pdoc, you know she is going to say just work it out with her. Or wonder why I am calling her (pdoc) to begin with.

I guess in this age of blogs and internet there are no more boundary limits anymore and I never thought for one second I would feel this way. Makes me wonder if I should stop blogging all together and just keep a written journal.

constriction and rationality

by Midnight Demon, posted in blogging, cauda equina syndrome, chronic physical pain, depression

Been in an angry mood today after therapy. I just realized that if I kill myself on the date I was planning on, it won’t mess with the statistics like I thought it would. I tried to find another Friday with a 17 this year and there isn’t so now I am permanently retired with the suicidal planning, for now. I am so friggin pissed off. And to make it worse, my therapist talked me into another fricken session for tomorrow.

I’m listening to Bon Jovi to try and calm down but it’s making me a little more agitated as I really love their music and sing along to it. But it is distracting me from writing. I might be a little hoarse tomorrow from singing…

I got up early today and made myself breakfast. I had like two hours to kill before I had therapy so decided to get my coffee earlier than I usually do. I had to do something as this heat is intolerable. I am stuck in my room because it is the only cool place in the house. AND I am bored as hell. I might watch a movie today or MASH. I haven’t had my MASH fix in a while. I miss seeing Alan Alda and the guy that plays Frank Burns. It cracks me up. And I need some laughter.

I just read a blog about a parent that lost her daughter to suicide recently. The girl was 23 and was in med school. She wrote a two paged suicide note so suicide was on her mind for quite some time to write such a detailed note. Funny, with all my planning, I thought of writing on but I have yet to do so. I figured when the time came I would do it. I would have to write several, for each family member, except my father. He doesn’t deserve one. Nor would he be able to read it as he is illiterate when it comes to the English language. I don’t know how he has been in this country for more than forty years and has yet to pick up the basic words or even try to learn the language. He speaks it ok but now that he is older he some times forget to speak English and will rattle off in Italian. But I digress…

I don’t know what I would say in my letters. That I am sorry that I couldn’t be around and take the pain anymore. That the depression was too much and I couldn’t stand it. That no one is to blame for my death. My treatment team did the best they could in treating me but still couldn’t get through this resistant depression that I have. No medication really worked. I still suffered despite being medicated. No hospitalization worked to the full effect, especially the last few times I was in. The whole system is a failure but that is another issue. I love each of you dearly but sadly that love is not enough to suffice the pain I feel every day. Even with the courageous help of my therapist she couldn’t break through to me that I mean something to someone. I am a nothing and always will be.

Something like that anyways. There will be no need to mention that I feel like and was meant to be a boy. It just seems like a mute point. I know that I will never be a male nor will I ever be seen as one. I will always be seen as a daughter or a sister. And that is painful to me.

My therapist said that I am being irrational even though I am feeling rational because I am so constricted with feeling suicidal. I do feel rational. She even went as far as calling me borderline psychotic. I had to laugh. I do feel rational about my decision to kill myself. It seems logical that if I am suffering as much as I am, I have the decision to end my life because I want my suffering to end. It doesn’t have to make sense to anyone but me. Like that girl that killed herself, I am happy for her because she is no longer suffering. I know her parents are and her friends. Depression hurts. There is no denying that. It affects more than just the sufferer. My therapist was trying to get me to see that I matter to people but I don’t think I really do sometimes. I think I am the scumbag of the universe and I deserve to die. I don’t know why I think that way but I do. Even with the accomplishment of having 10,000 readers, I still feel useless. I might help one person with my writings but I think about the ones that I can’t reach. Like the people that ask questions about cauda equina syndrome. Those people are more at risk for suicide than those suffering from depression alone. But I guess I can’t save the world.