Tag Archives: psychologist

A Return Forged in Need

I need to Blog.  It is how I communicate with the world.  I can not stop it now… when I need it more than ever.

You see… I have been gradually falling apart the last month or so.  Things were getting difficult before that, but I have had a more and more difficult time holding myself together.  It has become hard to get thru a whole day without some kind of crash to deal with.

Now I spend pretty much all my time just trying to hold my brain and thoughts together.  That is about all I do… and the dishes.

I do not need advice here – I know my options, and I know I will have to make a major decision very soon.  So I do not need any extra distractions.  There will be times when I will need, and ask for advice, but right now I can not handle it.

I know I need help.  The current situation in untenable.  So all the options I am looking at involve getting that help.

For me… part of getting any help includes this Blog.  I am going to use it to share what I am doing, and dealing with.  As I have done.

There may be some dark times ahead.  But I will always be able to communicate here… at least most of the time.  I may need breaks, but I now realize that my Blogs are part of my therapy.  I need them.

Anger is a Symptom

Anger may, and does cause problems, but anger is a symptom of something deeper going on.  Find that thing, and anger can be resolved.

I found that thing.

I do have trouble with anger from time to time, but who doesn’t?  Once I understood where it was coming from, I was able to put solutions in place.  And I was able to understand.  My anger stopped being such a problem.

But there was a time when it was.  A horrible time in my life.

So I work on these issues every day.  I work myself slowly closer to where I want to be.  And with the help of my friends, and Lori, I will get there.  I can almost see it now.

From an Ignorant Comment

This was written by someone with NO understanding of the facts of the situation.  This person was my “Domineering Parent” growing up.  It has been discussed many times in therapy.

“So many of your social problems, including the loss of your therapist and friends and family, are the result of lashing out at people.”

I may have lost friends because of my past anger issues, but not family.  My mother and I talked about this many times.  She could see what I was talking about for herself.  And she tried to help me understand it.

My loss of my therapist had nothing to do with my losing my temper.  YES, I was angry – as I have said – but I did not lash out at anyone.

This person is one of the main reasons I am where I am – not thru malice, but thru action.

Me and Anger

It has been pointed out to me that I used to have an anger issue, and I have not written much about it.  That is true.  When I started seeing a psychologist, it was the first thing we worked on.  I also had a year of group therapy on balancing my emotions.  The big difference came from the meds I started taking, and my sessions with my psychologist (hundreds of them).

Anger is no longer a part of my problem.  Once I knew where the anger was coming from, and how to channel it, the anger mostly went away.  I learned how to properly integrate my anger into my whole self.

My anger came from extreme anxiety – I take 3 meds now for anxiety with pretty good results.  I do not lose my temper like that anymore… not for about 9 years now.  For those who have it, you know what very high anxiety can do to your brain, especially when you do not know what it is.

The person who suggested this is many years behind in what has been happening in my life.  That person has no way of seeing how I have changed and improved, and learned to look inward. 

For the last 8+ years I have been working on the causes of the anger in my life.  Once I understood it, I was able to start working on the real problems.  That is what this Blog is about.

That person has ABSOLUTELY no place in my life, and should mind her own business.  She is one of THE major causes of that anger while I was growing up.  She is “toxic” to me – as a psychologist, and a psychiatrist have both pointed out.

The Light at the End of the Tunnel, is an Oncoming Train…

I need to stay home.

We have all figured that out by now.  I have about half the anxiety during the week if I do not have to do major shopping.  Got it…

My biggest problem right now though is that I no longer have a psychologist, and I no longer have any faith in the system.

So what do I do?

I Love my wife very much, and can not imagine life without her, but she does not understand the choices I have to make.  And she resents any change that makes her life more difficult.  She sees no need for any real lifestyle changes for the worse.

This is not because she is selfish.  She is actually a very giving person.  But… she does not understand the limitations imposed by anxiety, depression, phobias… and all sorts of social problems.  She does not see that simply getting older makes everything harder.

My increased physical issues are okay, but my mental decline is not.  I should still be able to deal with all the stresses, and anxieties, and depressions, I did when I was younger.  I can not decline.

Those are all things that cannot be solved just by wanting to… with a little effort… or with any amount of effort.  It hurts me when I think about the mental things I can’t do anymore.  It really is a terrible loss – I even often struggle to fully visualize 3D objects… and rotate them around.  It used to be easy.  My brain can not do what it could do 20 years ago.

It is nothing of anyone’s fault.  The great majority of people simply can not relate to any of it.  We are so far out of their experience, that they can not even imagine it.  So everything we say, can be dismissed… or worse.

But… I love her, so things go on, and will be really wonderful for us.  I just need somewhere else to connect with where I am, and can get help guiding me thru all the crap.  Right… I no longer have that person… sure, sure…

Life goes on.

These Long Days

I have had a lot of ups and downs the last week.  I am not sure why I have not written, except I have been really struggling with several issues.  The most direct is my growing slowly more depressed about problems I am dealing with at home.

There has been progress on some projects, but I am constantly dragged down by caring for sick animals – making sure they eat the right foods, and tube-feeding one cat.  But it does not stop there.  That is just how my day starts.

This whole situation with my former psychologist is eating at me more too.  I know I would find things easier if I still had session to talk about all the issues that swim thru my thoughts.  I do not have as much clarity of thought now.  I will figure out how to go forward, but for now I am still too hurt.

The main problem I am having is that I feel totally overwhelmed by everything happening, and I have nowhere to turn.  All I can do is push a little harder every day, to try to do the same things I did yesterday.  And I know tomorrow I will have to push even harder to do those same things yet again.

But every now and then, I break.  I fall apart for a while, then pull myself back together, and start going again.  It has left me feeling alone, tired, and empty. 

I have been able to fight off depression most of the time… and I am keeping my anxiety under control.  But the cost is staggering.  All I can do is keep pushing myself forward until I finally break down.

When Thinking is Too Much

I think too much.  Just like the Paul Simon song – “Maybe I Think Too Much”.  There are times when I can not control the direction my thoughts will take.

When I have things to get done, I have to build a careful plan.  I need to consider every aspect of what I need to do, and set priorities for each thing.  This helps me get thru tasks without having to rethink them too much.

So I have a sort of outline for the day – when to think about what.  I can put off thinking about something, if I schedule when to think about it, and I already know the basics.  It works pretty well for me usually.  (“when” means in what order, not what time).

If I do not plan, and control where my thoughts go, and when, then my brain runs rampant, and I can not control where it goes.  All other considerations get pushed aside.  I get stuck in a loop of over thinking.

So this plan works… some of the time.

The problem comes when something upsets the “plan”.  It can be any of a number of things (yes… zero is a number, but I mean a bigger number).  Once that happens, everything falls apart, and the planning has to start from scratch.  And that usually means planning on the fly, which is almost always doomed to failure.

Last second planning takes on a life of it’s own.  My mind becomes swamped with some new direction of thought.  And I can not control where it will go.  But for sure, the old plan is dead.

This is how things I really want to do, don’t get done.  Those things invariable fall to the end of whatever “list” I might have, and those things usually do not get done at all.  There will not be enough energy to fill in for that planning by late in the day.

Sometimes the upheaval is so strong that I end up getting nothing done, because the planning stage burns me out, and I shut down.  This happens a lot!!

This is where most of my least productive days come from.  One small event, and the whole thing – water, tub, and baby – all get thrown out, and I fail.

Sadly… this is one of the things I had been working on in session before it’s early demise.  I will slowly figure it out though – it actually is a lot better than it used to be.  Removing the grocery shopping has taken away a lot of my Stoppers.  That alone accounted for at least 2 lost days per week.

But I can not eliminate all the Stoppers, so I need to find a way to deal with them.  I will keep looking.

Still Here!

I know I have not written for too long… but it has been a mentally busy time.  I have had a lot of ups and downs.

I tried very hard to be involved in a 4th of July party, but ultimately, I did not have the energy to go.  It was a big down point for me.

And I have been dragged down farther because of my loss of my therapist.  It all seems so surreal.  After 8-1/2 years to be just put off so easily – by email.  It all seems like I will wake up from it at any moment.

But I won’t…

I think I am doing okay, but I know there are many things I need help with – I keep thinking of things I need to talk about in session.  And I have barely scratched the surface.

So I will try to move forward, and write more here.  I just feel abandoned, and more alone.  That will not pass.

The Long Depression

About a year ago, I started taking a new med for depression… it did a very good job.  My depressive episodes decreased in number, and became much shorter.  I had forgotten what more than a week of depression felt like.

Now I remember.

I find myself just sitting much of the time… not really even looking at anything.  I would be in bed, but there are things I need to be doing throughout the day.  So I sit here.

I am not sad, or bored, or much of anything.  I am empty… but still there are things I have to do.  There are errands I need to run.  I should be doing “fun” things with Lori on her day off.  But in reality, it is hard to care about any of it.  The not caring is part of depression.  A part that hurts those around me.

Most of the time I am here alone.  So I can stare at my desk all I want.  But I feel some guilt when Lori is here.  There is not much I can do about it…  People can get mad at me, or feel let down, or discouraged.  I hate it, but it is not something I can fix.

The last 3 days have been the worst.  We had to cancel a trip because of things I need to be here for – 2 sick cats.  And it is all my fault.  At least it is my fault that I can not substitute anything for that trip… I am not prepared to go anywhere.

Fortunately the pattern in my desk has some interesting contrasts.  I sort of watch TV some of the time.  I am not really interested, so it has to be something good, and something I know well enough to ignore.

I don’t care.

All of that is just to help the time pass more quickly…

I Know How to Find a Needle in a Haystack…

Patience

I have been working on getting to my image of what I want, for over 40 years now.  I am closer than I have ever been.  Until 2004, I did not make much of an effort towards this goal… I could not because I did not know what was holding me back..

There have been a few times when I had some small bits of progress.  But it has only been the last few years that I have started to feel like I really can move towards the life I want.  It gets a little more complicated because the things I want, sound defeatist to some people.

I want something so very simple.

I have taken a huge detour now, and I do not know where it will lead.  I can not see the path ahead of me, and my hopes have dimmed.  Right now I feel a lot of despair, and grief.  And I am not sure how to get started again.

There is a plan I have been working on that I will continue to follow – then what?  The plan does not go very far into the future… there was so much more to develop.  And that option is gone now.

I will have to find a new way to work out how to move forward, and how to get better.  I am not optimistic.

What Nightmares Are Made Of

These are the times that nightmares are made of.  As time goes by, I am increasingly feeling cut-off.  It has only been a week since I “lost” my psychologist, and I have not yet seen its full impact.  I know that will come…

This is all my own fault… I should have been more clear why I was not coming back to session at times.  But whatever the cause, I am now cut-off from anyone impartial to share with.  There is nowhere to discuss my ideas… and no-one to help me refine them.  Friends are too close, or too far away.

That is my greatest loss.  That can not be replaced, and it will bring me to a halt before I can implement new ideas.  And the biggest loss, is my loss of trust in anyone.

I am sure this is just the beginning of a decline.  At least it will be far more difficult, if not impossible, to move forward.  Why would I risk going out of my safety zone?  Why bother trying to make changes if I have no test in reality?

The way ahead is dark, and nothing but mystery to me now.  I have felt some anger about it, but that is overwhelmed by fear.  And this will only get worse…

I Still Have a Plan

I have been hurt by the events of last week.  It still echoes thru my thoughts.  I have a deep sense of having been abandoned by someone I really needed to be able to rely on.  And it will have long term affects.

But I still have a plan to help get more done, and feel better about my life.  I will continue on that plan.

Yesterday was a turn-around day for me ~ I had a wonderfully relaxing day, and feel more optimistic.  Things will get better, and I will find a way to get back to “normal”.

Start Again!

Now I feel like I have to start over… from the beginning.  My confidence in the system has failed, and with it I have lost most of my faith in what I have learned.  I am not seeing therapy as a positive experience.

I can not trust anyone enough for therapy now.

It is entirely possible that I should have started to transition to a new therapist, but it should have been done in session.  It would have taken a lot of time to do, but would have been possible.  The email was not the way to go.  Also she made it sound like a done deal… I was shocked.

I know session helped me, but it still feels like it did not matter.  And I am not up to starting over, from the very beginning.  Actually, it is worse now, because I doubt the effectiveness of sessions.  The meds work though.

There is no way I am going out the front door to any kind of session, or to see any kind of therapist.  I’m done.

So basically… Start again?  Not going to happen.

Therapy for having No Therapy?

This story goes back a ways, so follow along.

I started seeing my psychologist in late 2004, and for several years went every week.  I got better.  I cut down how often I went, but kept going.

Over the last year and a half, there were 3 times I went for appointments that were not to be.  One was a misunderstanding, and the other 2 were mistakes she made.

I’m agoraphobic, so going for a 40 minutes trip each way is difficult.  After each of those episodes, I did not go back for a while – almost 3 months in one case.  But each time, I eventually got back into my sessions.

At the beginning of May, I asked about an appointment for the next week.  She said she might have to testify in court (she is a forensic psychologist) so she would get back to me in a couple of days.  A week later she emailed that she could do it.

By then it was too late for me to get ready to go on such short notice, and I figured it would then be at least another week.  I was angry.  So I said “Too late.  I will not be coming back.”  I also canceled my disclosure agreements.  So I assume I was no longer a real patient of hers.

Last Sunday I emailed saying I would like to see her again after the 4th.  She emailed back that she thought it was time for me to move to a new psychologist, and she could help me transition.  Her reasoning was the the gaps in session indicated we were at a plateau, and I needed a different approach.

I was quite taken aback.  In April, I had brought up that I thought I was sort of at a plateau in improving my anxieties, and I wanted to start working more on implementation – I even wrote a Blog about this.  And it was going very well.  We figured out a plan to reduce my weekly anxiety, and help me get more done at the same time.

It worked better than I had hoped!  I’m still doing this new stuff.

But I not longer have a psychologist.  I feel abandoned, and turned away.  I even feel anger.  But I have completely collapsed mentally.  I get nothing done… and just try to accept where I am now.

Follow-Up From Yesterday.

When I went to be last night, I spent about an hour going over my plans to go to Walgreen’s.  I will try to go in about 2+ hours, so I will have to go thru it again… probably 3 or 4 times.

I can visualize the store in my mind.  I can see the isles, and the items on the shelve – sans any writing on them. I can walk down each isle, and see what is around me.

I need to map out my visit.  Where am I going to go first, and what path will I follow?  Where is each item I need?  At what point do I go get my prescriptions at the back of the store?  And most importantly, what do I do if they are out of something – I am only getting things I know then carry.

I visualize the people I who work there, and what to expect from them.  It is all very carefully planned.

And I plan it over, and over, and over, to make sure I have every option covered.  I even plan for changes I might have to make if they are restocking some place, and I have to come back to it.

The plan must be precise, and cover all possible changes that I might have to make.  I also have developed a plan for each item they may not have – what will I get, or use instead?

I takes a lot of time.  All together, I fully expect this trip to take about 6 hours of prep time.

AND: I should get better at this, I am out of practice.  This trip should only take 3-4 hours to plan.