Tag: therapist

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”.

random 788

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

Random 788

I just got finished watching “It’s a Wonderful Life”. It’s one of my favorite Christmas movies because it always gives me hope that things can be better than what they are currently.

I was hoping that I would be asleep by now as I took my strong pain pill and my regular pain pill before the movie and I am still awake. I am also still in pain. It doesn’t seem to want to go away despite all the meds that I have taken today. It’s so frustrating to be in pain all day and not find any measure of relief.

I was talking to a friend today about my therapist. I told her how we were breaking up. She wanted to know why so I basically said she was incompetent. She really is a bozo and the hard part of it all is that I am not sure I can find another therapist that I feel comfortable with. I told my friend that I might have to find a male therapist because female ones haven’t been working out for me. I have only had one male therapist of the 13 that I have had. Unfortunately, I had to fire him because after telling him I was going to OD on some pills with the intent on killing myself, he asked if I was suicidal. No, I just like to OD for fun. What the hell.

Being in pain all the time is such a drag. I had to take some more Ativan because my anxiety keeps shooting up whenever I move my ankle because the pain also shoots up. It’s so hard when I you have PTSD on top of everything and this is why I can’t understand why my therapist can’t help me. She is supposedly trained in trauma. She has diagnosed me as having complex PTSD. I just don’t understand why we can’t focus on that. It drives me berserk. But then she likes to talk and talk more than listen. I need a therapist that can listen to me or at least tolerate the silence when I have nothing to say or I am thinking of something to say without being interrupted. I just feel bad that it’s taken me 16 years to figure this out. Or for her to figure this out because of the one blog I sent her, which she continues to read for some reason. She definitely has issues.

I watched RENT, live on Broadway the other night. The songs are still going through my head. And it’s not just one song, it’s the whole damn side A of the CD I always listen to. Tomorrow I need to listen to it again. It’s the only way to get them out of my head. I would listen to it now but I don’t remember where I placed the CD. I think it’s in the Pearl Jam CD holder that I have that is now buried on my night stand.

My friend gave me RENT the movie for my birthday. I still haven’t watched it yet. I will one of these days. I just need the songs in my head to clear out a bit before watching it again. I hate that this has been happening to me for some time now and it puzzles my doctor. She doesn’t know why it happens. And my antipsychotic meds are not helping it. So I just need to live with another puzzling thing. It is annoying as all hell though.

I was talking to this friend last night about being psychotic as we haven’t talked in while and my psychotic symptoms have gotten worse over the last few years. It kind of made things worse for me and caused me to become paranoid. I swear I am watched by the FBI right now, though I don’t really know why. I haven’t said anything about my alien theory to anyone in months. I don’t want to discuss it now because I am being watched.