Therapy isn’t always awesome.

Today I feel like both me and my therapist were “off”. I could tell what she was trying to do with some techniques and they just didn’t work the way she wanted.

I left feeling like I am not going to be able to solve my problems this lifetime. I should die so I stop hurting everyone. That’s very much not wanted my therapist wanted me to get out of the appointment.

“You don’t change because you like being this way.”

I should try harder to be ashamed of myself and not like anything about the effectiveness of my personality.

Me getting angry is scary to people. My interpretation of today’s session is that since I know that my anger scares people it is all my fault if bad things happen if I express anger.

She would argue with that characterization. She would say, “I’m just trying to point out that you have a blind spot. When you get angry people get scared and that isn’t something that is going to change. You have to deal with that.”

I have to deal with people calling the police to report that I am threatening to stab people. Despite the fact that I did not threaten to harm anyone.

According to my shrink, me being angry is enough to cause people to call the police and I just can’t allow myself to get that dysregulated in public.

Which sounds to me like: unless you have perfect control stay home.

I will not have perfect control this lifetime.

I feel like I should die.

It really didn’t help that she tried to get me to see how unreasonable I was by comparing it to when she wants to take her dog into any restaurant with her. Uhm, I’m not trying to do something that violates health code so your analogy isn’t really working for me.

I feel like I should die so I stop hurting everyone.

This hurts a lot. I want to cut. Instead I am going to have alcohol. It’s going to fuck over my digestion. I don’t give a flying fuck.

I can only lose so many forms of self harm today. Alcohol is legal. I won’t be drinking enough to count as illegally impaired around my children. But I will be hurting myself. The funny thing is: this is the only legal method I have. So today I’m going to fucking have some.

I can’t pretend I like me today.

One thought on “Therapy isn’t always awesome.

  1. Michelle

    See, this is why I’m so hesistant to start the search for a new therapist. My last therapist dropped me because she couldn’t handle me talking about current relationships, and the previous one dropped me because she thought I was too unstable. It’s been surreal that the medical professionals I liked the least were the most influential in me getting on disability.

    I thought I had seen you angry twice and I didn’t think it was scary but maybe my perspective is skewed. It was intense and dead serious but I wasn’t ‘scared’. I’m angry at the doctor who treated you that way. I think some (most?) doctors just can’t handle anyone breaking the illusion of them being infallible. I’m confused reading your blog though…what exactly does your therapist think you are being unreasonable about?

    I also have a complicated relationship with alcohol. Both my parents are children of alcoholics, and there was zero alcohol in the house except once or twice when my mom made french onion soup or cheese fondue and she’d buy less than two servings of cooking wine. Every time I pick up a drink a voice in my head asks “Is it now? Does the ‘gene’ have me now’?” And it’s odd because I have been legit hooked on pills with physiological and psychological withdrawal, but alcohol has still always made me more sad when I think for example of my mom crying when I had two beers once. My drinking isn’t always healthy. Sometimes I drink to excess or not to excess but too frequently, but I did an experiment where I quit drinking for a month and discovered that the mood swings, occasional poor impulse control, crying in the middle of the day or night had nothing to do with the alcohol but (surprise!) so much more to do with PTSD and dissociation. They rarely interact well, though. I avoid drinking when it seems appealing as a method of self harm but only because the lowered inhibition creates a positive feedback loop. :/

    I’ve been thinking so much about the poop stuff. Not as much as I had planned because things are overwhelming with Jonno visiting for so many reasons. I want to do more research on the different colors…..you aren’t taking any random supplements that might cause them, right?….But for now the common thread that strikes me when I read your food diaries is the issue of timing. For me my digestion is similar to my skin disease: There are some things I react to immediately, some where there is a short delay, and some where it takes months or even years of exposure before I start having reactions. Time delays could certainly complicate identifying the food culprits of your symptoms. For example it took a decade or so before I developed a latex allergy, which is admittedly mild. I suspect coconut is the mystery allergen in Thai food for me, even though I grew up eating coconut. I can handle menthol and hot peppers in moderation but ONLY IF I am diligent about taking my Singulair and Omeprazole every day. I wonder if you are like me: what I can handle eating is correlated to how my stomach and intestines are feeling that day/week, and perhaps there are some things you can enjoy in limited frequency (frequency, not quantity…it’s about giving the antibodies time to dissipate and/or your body time to heal) with less consequences….in your case I am wondering if gluten, eggs, and carbonation fall in that camp. On the other hand that could be conflated if for example you had a bad reaction to carbonation within an hour, a bad reaction to gluten if you have it more than once a month, and a bad reaction to eggs every time but with a 12 hour delay. It all depends on your metabolism and the location/ultimate cause(s) of what’s bugging you. It’s also possible that you have one or more main irritants that make you more sensitive to other things. Like for me when I quit shaving my legs I got less staph infections on them but I also had less peeling on my face and hands, same deal when I stopped using latex gloves at work. Digestive wise, for me, the ‘magic pill’ was taking omeprazole every day, quitting grad school, and stopping taking Aleve every day. If I were suddenly in your shoes I think I’d probably stick to the FODMAPS diet for a few months to try to decrease general inflammation, and then watch and see if you have any bad reactions and look backwards at your diet to see if there’s any more specific common things you ate 5-12 hours before. Like for me if I’m already sensitized then I find I have to avoid citrus and anything acidic for a week or two. Omeprazole and the other proton pump inhibitors, all OTC were lifesavers for me, but then, so was Aleve and it gave me lifelong consequences.

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