Project 365 (Day 8): Water Therapy

Since the beginning of December, I’ve been going twice a week to physical therapy in this warm water pool to treat my fibromyalgia. This week I’m switching to once a week on land and once a week in the water. I’m going to miss the comfort of not sweating during my aerobic workout.

However, an hour in warm water always makes me a little “rushed” afterward…just saying.

Edited using pxn8.com - The online image editor.

Tags: project365, photoaday, oneaday, photo blogging, pxn8, physical therapy, water therapy, fibromyalgia

Shoe Shopping Therapy

I’ve been so impressed with my Keen Newport H2’s that I decided I had to get some more Keens for Winter-wear now that it’s cooling off. I finally settled on the Keen Vienna in walnut and the Keen Sydney II in brown, which is the one that looks like a Mary Jane — though I was mighty tempted to get the funky rust-colored ones.

Doing a little research, I found a deal using dealcatcher.com for shoes.com:

$10 off $75 Online Order
Use this Shoes.com coupon during checkout and receive $10 off your online order of $75 or more. Excluded brands are Allen-Edmonds, Bragano, Brunomagli, Cole Haan, Donald J Pliner, K-Swiss, Kenneth Cole, Lucchese, Merrell, Royal Elastics, and Ugg.

Shoes.com Coupon: SEPTDEAL - Expires: 10/12/2006

Plus:

Free Shipping + Free Returns
Shoes.com carries hundreds of namebrand shoes like Adidas, Naturalizer, New Balance, DKNY and many more. Shoes.com also offers free returns.
Expires: Unknown

So, I got $10 off and free shipping on the shoes! I love deals. (Plus, I used my Amazon rewards card. Heheheh.)

Anyway, I got two really good pairs of comfortable shoes for less than $160. I’ve checked out both shoes in person and both have the kind of soles my weird feet need for comfort, not pain. Plus, they’re kind of cute. I say, when you find a brand that works for you, stick with it.

I should probably also buy an oxford or a slip-on in black, hmmmm…

Of course, now I need to get rid of two pairs of shoes from my closet. Anyone wear a size 6 shoe? I have 2 pairs of practically new, hardly worn very cute shoes that are a tad too small for me and not good for someone with muscular issues…but they are really cute.

Tags: shoes, shopping therapy

A Personal Victory

SQ pointed out something to me this afternoon.  She said that in my personal life, I tend to avoid conflict by waiting for things to happen to me rather than causing things to happen.  For example, I should have left my old job long before the axe came down or I tend to stay in unhealthy relationships and put up with crap way longer than I should because I’d rather not rock the boat and actually stir up shit myself.

So, she said while N2 might not realize the big deal that my sending the email to her last weekend was, SQ realizes that it really was a big deal for me.  I hadn’t thought about it that way, but she’s right.  It was quite an accomplishment for me.  I wrote that email because I was tired of the status quo and I thought that the relationship was unhealthy and heading in an unhealthy direction for me.  Rather than let it continue, I faced the fact that there might be conflict…and trust me, the fact that there is unrest does bother me…the fact that there’s someone all pissed off because of me kind of eats at me.  I prefer to have everyone happy happy joy joy.

I guess I need to accept that not everyone’s going to be happy with me all of the time and in the end, I’ve got to do what makes me happy most of the time, which sounds selfish, but I don’t think I do it enough.

So, I’m giving myself a pat on my back, literally.

Tags: wellness, therapy, depression

Trust No One

Remember that was one of the slogans from The X-Files? “Trust no one.”

Apparently, it’s one of my “Core Beliefs”. My Cognative Thinking Therapy Group is over now and the last two weeks was about “Core Beliefs”. My understanding is that these are the inner beliefs that we have that shape our lives and how we deal with ourselves, others, and the world. In fact, that is how they are broken down — beliefs about ourselves, beliefs about others, and beliefs about the world.

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Tags: wellness, therapy, anxiety, depression

You May Pat My Back Now

I really need a pat-myself-on-the-back moment right now. (I’ll explain later in another more lengthy post).

I’ve been mening to make of list of recenent sucesses and accomplishments as far as pulling myself out of this last big depressive episode. That way they’re all in one big place.

• Started making to-do lists on my Palm Pilot and maintaining them daily. I’ve divided them into Home, Personal, Financial, PBeM, and Work. Each one has 1 to 3 things that are the top priority for the day and I have given myself permission to be able to move them to tomorrow if they can’t be accomplished today. I’ve set up recurring items like laundry, taking out the trash, the litterboxes, posting on the pbem, etc. so they automatically show back up on the next due date.
• I’ve started getting up between 6am and 6:45am at my leisure and I try to do one little chore during that time, plus answer any PBeM emails I owe before getting ready for work — not to mention make coffee.
• Working with the personal organizer has been very theraputic and is helping me set up new systems to get through the daily. Plus, clean kitchen and hall!
• I’ve even lost a few more pounds since I saw the doctor a few weeks ago.
• I’ve been working hard in that Cognitive Therapy class. While I’m having trouble decifering the “evidence” chapter, I’m looking forward to the chapter on balancing thoughts. I have great hope that somehow this therapy class will be of significant help in teaching me to deal with these rampant out-of-control automatic thoughts that seem to poison and overwhelm me sometimes on a day-to-day basis. Maybe I’ll never think like normal people, but maybe I can counter my brain’s runaway train thoughts somehow and fake it out.
• I’ve been buying bright shiny colored things for the apartment and sitting in the sun and enjoying it.
• I’ve been smiling a lot more and up until Tuesday night was in a very good mood. I even told my mother that I was feeling better.
• I’m very excited about the puppy.
• I’ve been working with my mother with some success to delve into memories of my childhood to try to figure out what makes me tick, what went wrong way back when.
• I’ve been getting out of the house fairly regularly to go to the Sunday write-ins, even if I haven’t always been writing.

The shrink says that I should worry less about what hasn’t been accomplished and be proud of what has so there’s my list of accomplishments for the last month or so and it’s not so bad at all.

N2 rudely told me that she thought I was getting worse the other day, but I think she’s wrong. I think maybe my life is a little more chaotic right now because I’m trying to pull myself out of the bog and I’m trying to find a place for the things I love — sometimes when you’re sorting out something, it looks a little messier before things clean up, you know?

Tags: anxiety, depression, wellness, therapy, personal organizer, PBeM

Automatic Thoughts

I really got something out of my therapy group/class on Monday night.  It was the first time I really understood that there really are people out there just like me.  People who really do think just like me.  Actually, I feel kind of bad for them really.

I related mostly to two in particular who had completed their “automatic thoughts” exercises using experiences similar to mine and who had pretty much had similar or exactly the same thought patterns.  It’s comforting in some way to know that I’m not the only one who automatically thinks I’m going to be fired just because someone says something, anything, or that I think people are talking about me because they are whispering or being secretive.

Obviously, the three of us need to work on retraining our brains to not let them run amuck with these thoughts.  Surely the three of us are not all going to end up fired over trivial things and unable to pay our bills and end up living with my parents in New Mexico — though maybe just in case, I should tell my parents to start working on building a commune on the back part of their property.

Anyway, I felt a kind of a connection and I kind of need that right now.  I need to know that I’m not a total freak.  I’m not unique.  I’m not alone.

So, this week, we’re supposed to be at least once a day, writing down at least one situation, our mood (plus rating it, which I still stuggle over as it’s subjective and there is no right or wrong answer), and then what our automatic thoughts are.  Automatic thoughts are those runnaway thoughts you have — most of the time you don’t even know you’re having them — when you panic.  Here’s a good example from my meeting last week when I had to talk to my boss about FW:

Situation: Had to meet with boss to discuss FW’s treatment of me

Moods:  Anxious (90%), Nervous (70%), Worry (70%), Angry(70%), Hurt(80%)

Automatic Thoughts:

• “What if I complain and he fires me?”
• “What if I lose my job and can’t pay my bills?”
• “My parents will think I’m a failure and they will be disappointed in me.”
• “Everyone will think I’m a failure.”
• “If I can’t pay my bills, I will get evicted and have to go live with my parents in New Mexico.”
• “There are no jobs for me in New Mexico and I will never find another job and I will be stuck living with my parents forever in New Mexico.”
• “What if what FW is right and I am incompetent?”
• “Then I have been wasting the last 10 years of my life.”
• “If he convinces everyone else that I am incompentent then I will get fired.”
• “If I lose my job, then I won’t be able to pay my bills.”
• “If I can’t do this kind of work, what would I do?”
• “My parents would be disappointed in me because I am a failure.”
• “If I can’t pay my bills, I will get evicted and have to go live with my parents in New Mexico where there are no jobs for me…”

For me, my parents thinking I am a failure and having to go live with them is “the end of the world.”  There is apparently nothing worse in my mind for me.  I think it’s my own personal hell.  I guess because I’ve already had to do it once.  After college, when I didn’t get a job and I had to leave everything behind and move home and live with my parents and my mother who nagged and controlled and ran my life and my father who controlled and fathered and nickeled and dimed me when I had no money and it was miserable.

And they’re approval is so important to me and I’m not sure why it’s everything.  I spent an hour of therapy on that yesterday and I still don’t understand why.  I’ve got to mull it over for a while.

In the meantime, I’ll just work on recognizing my automatic thoughts.  I think the next chapter we might actually start doing something about those automatic thoughts.  Whoo-hoo!.

Tags: therapy

A Conversation With My Mother

I’ve actually been meaning to write about this for several days but at first I was too frazzled about getting lost for over an hour and then I was distracted by other things. Life happens that way.

I have a fairly good relationship with my mother now that we’ve got a country between us. What I mean is that when we lived in the same city, we hardly ever spoke or saw each other, I guess because it was always there that we could do so anytime we wanted so we put it off. When they moved to New Mexico, that kind of changed. we got in the habit of talking far more often on the telephone. Now that I’m in Maine, hardly a week goes by without a phone call or two. The time difference is a little troublesome, but somehow she still manages to find a way to call early enough to wake me up on a Saturday on occassion.

However, this Saturday, I thought I’d surprise her and call her at 8am my time. Hah! They were barely out of bed! Kind of odd for them as they’re early risers. By 5am their time, they’re usually up and have the coffee going and are anxiously awaiting the newspaper while catching CNN’s headlines. My father was raised on a farm and my mother was an army brat — they never outgrew that early morning schedule for some bizarre reason, though I tried to break them of it for 18 years or so.

Anyway, Saturday, I called my mom bright and early from the comfort of my bed, beneath my covers piled high with kitties. I wanted to talk to her about the incident on the bus.

O.K. That’s not true. I don’t really care about the incident on the bus. I know there’s some women’s rights women who might be angry or horrified by the thought that I don’t really care about the fact that I was victimized by two little boys on a bus fifteen years ago. By all means, include me as a statistic somewhere, but the truth is that I don’t actually feel anything toward those two boys who probably don’t even remember the incident, the bus, or me. They probably didn’t even remember it the next month, which is probably where the true crime is. Probably they never really knew what they did wrong.

What I am upset about is how I became a victim after the bus. How I did everything I was supposed to to. I told a grownup, my parent. I told an authority figure, my principal. My life was the life that changed. I lived in fear though not the shame that many victims reportedly fall into. I lived in a kind of punishment as my priviliges were the ones that were stripped and my movements were the ones restricted.

I discussed this all with my mother. She doesn’t really recall a lot of these changes though she does recall the incident. She did admit that these sorts of things do happen to victims of sexual assult and rape afterwards as a result and it’s a shame.

So then I wanted to know if she recalls if I started to withdraw more after this event. Did she notice a significant change? Really this is what the phone call was about for me. I really want to know what happened to me in my childhood. When did things go wrong? Maybe if I can figure out the when, I can figure out the why and maybe then I can start working on fixing it. I don’t know.

Well, she didn’t think that I did withdraw after the bus incident and for some reason, this lead me to comment that I thought that I had been fine until we moved to New Orleans. Suddenly, she said, “Yeah!” This lead her to tell me that when we lived in Florida before I was seven, I was a bright and sunny kid, completely different and I thought everyone loved me and I would walk up to complete strangers and talk to them. Once I scared her because I walked up to a complete stranger in a grocery parking lot and started talking to him and when she tried to tell me that it wasn’t a good thing to do, I wanted to know why and she told me that not everyone would love me; apparently I refused to accept this as fact.

Something changed between Florida and New Orleans. Where that bright and sunny kid went, I don’t know.

However, she pointed out that the other really big personality shift she noticed in me was when I came home from college. She said a friend of a high school friend of mine had called to ask me out or ask me to do something and I had said no and when asked why not, I told her that I didn’t know where he’d “been” or what he’d been doing the last three years. Now, I don’t exactly remember this incident, but it has the sting of truth to it. It kind of sounds like how paranoid I felt about people when I first got back to New Orleans, how I sometimes still am.

So, having had plenty of time to mull this over, particularly while I was lost on the backroads of Maine, I got to thinking about the really “hard times” in my life, the times when I think I was having life crises or depressive episodes or I maybe was going through some sort of personality shift as my mom described it.

• There was the move to New Orleans when I was Six/Seven. We moved away from everything I knew where everyone loved me into a neighborhood where no one else lived and the great unknown where I started a fundie private Christian school.
• Started a new private school (leaving new friends twice) after not adjusting to public school after nearly getting expelled from fundie private Christian school — mom agrees I shouldn’t have been suspended in the first place — plus I was held back a grade to catch up with my age group.
• Went away to college (once again leaving everyone behind) which was not the grand adventure I thought it was going to be.
• Returned to New Orleans (leaving friends behind) without a real job to live at home with parents and work at video store.
• Parents move 2 states away.
• Six years of abusive job stress to be fired and leave work friends.
• Move 1700 miles and leave behind all friends and everything I’ve ever known.

So it’s kind of possible that this is the pattern. I’m not saying it is. I’m saying it’s possible. Maybe each school change and move was just reliving the move from where I was loved by all into exile subconsciously. It’s something worth exploring, I guess.

I haven’t discussed the moving theory with my mother, I kind of developed it after I talked with her.

I do want to say that I think she’s been much more supportive this last year and a half of therapy than she was when I started therapy ten years ago. She’s been willing to help me analyze and review and explore and that’s been very helpful to me this time around. Though I wish she’d stop pointing out that I have a lot of quirks just like my bipolar grandmother. That’s just too helpful. She’s also been telling me a lot how much she loves me and how proud she is of me and trying to be supportive of my ideas rather than critical and I appreciate that too. Then again, maybe my negative hearing is dimming a little too. Either way, this is much easier knowing she’s with me.

Though I still don’t have the courage to bring up the subject that maybe there’s some mental illness on her side of the family too.

Tags: dysfunctional family, depression, rape, Women's Rights, therapy, wellness, Me

Nature Vs. Nurture

Be sure that she knows that it’s not our fault you’re like this.”
– Mom Mallory instructing me upon hearing I was voluntarily entering therapy 10+ years ago

I’m kind of on a roll here with this therapy stuff. It’s kind of like I opened a door and I don’t want to shut it again. There’s all kinds of thoughts and memories about my childhood that are kind of floating in and out. There’s nothing that’s really “ah-ha!” or defining about any of it, but then there wouldn’t be a singular moment that sent me plummeting over into this ball of paranoia, would there. It’ll be a thousand tiny pushes and pin-pricks.

This week in the reading materials and therapy group/class we talked about the nature vs. nurture theories around depression and anxiety.

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Tags: therapy

I Lost Something On That Bus

I’m having the strangest morning. Somewhere in the back corner in the shadows of my mind dwells a memory from my childhood that I ignore. Every now and then it peeps it’s head out as if to ask me to reconsider examining it but I never do because I’ve long dismissed it as much ado about nothing, just too much attention over too little, just a lot of embarrassment for a sixth grader.

For some reason, this morning in traffic, I couldn’t ignore it. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s the therapy. I’ve been questioning and exploring my childhood quite a bit the last few days, trying to revisit the events that might have pushed me over the edge into this ball of anxiety and paranoia I am today.

And there it was.

I was nine years old and in the sixth grade. I’d started a year early. I’d also done a pretty good job of nearly getting expelled from an expensive private fundie Christian school so I was attending a public elementary school while my parents looked for another non-Catholic private school in New Orleans that would have me. The teachers either loved me or hated me and whereas one would ask me to keep an eye on her 2nd grade class, another would keep me from taking the tests for the gifted classes “just because” — and don’t give me that crap about how teachers aren’t like that, my mother discovered later that I was always right about my teachers ‘tudes.

Anyway back to the memory, I had become a crossing guard or bus monitor or somesuch. Whatever it was, I got to leave class early in the afternoon and wear a nifty orange vest and make people walk not run in straight lines to their buses. It was important work and it was a great honor and I took it quite seriously and I was proud of the honor. I wore that vest like a badge of courage and privilige. I was special, and since I wasn’t exactly the prettiest or the smartest or an athlete and since I was younger than everyone and didn’t live in the same neighborhood, I kind of needed that feeling of special beyond being the absolute smallest.

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Tags: rape, Women's Rights, therapy, wellness, Me

Depressive Caregivers

On further reflection of what I want for my birthday, which is still kind of a clean house by the way, what I really want is someone to help me get a grip with this depression and in effect nudge me in my life.  I know I should be able to do this on my own and I’m realizing now that despite they dysfunction of my family and friends, there was a dependence somehow to get through the daily or weekly stuff.  It’s becoming a little more evident two years away from them all.

Anyway, so what I was thinking is that there needs to be some sort of caregiver for depressives like me who maybe comes by a couple times a week and checks in, maybe helps with (but doesn’t do) chores and helps the depressive get organized, make plans, make to-do lists, set goals, be accountable, etc.  I guess that’s kind of like a personal trainer/assistant or something.  I’d like one who maybe comes by a few hours on Saturday and helps me get the weekend chores and errands going and maybe checks in on Wednesday to make sure I’m getting things actually done and not just sitting in my chair staring at the t.v. or reading the net or laying in bed.

I mean, I don’t want someone to make my decisions for me or actually do the work for me, just to nudge me and nag me.   But I don’t want it to be my real mother.

I wonder if they already exist and I haven’t heard of them.  I’m not going to see my shrink for a personal session until April but I start that new cognitive therapy group Monday with her.  I wonder if it would be inappropriate to ask her about it aferward.

Or does that all sound to Co-dependent?

Tags: depression, wellness, co-dependent, therapy

Medically Me

So, I think the topomax is actually working. I’m on my second week and I’ve only had one migraine and that was actually due to two days of bad sleep due to no ambien due to ran out. Though, admittedly, I had initial success with topomax when they tried me on it years ago. Let’s just hope the botox/topomax combo is the magic combo.

The only problem with the topomax is the random numbness it causes in my face, fingers, hands and feet. It’s not really a problem so much as a weirdness. It’s a little distracting and there’s no rhyme or reason to it. It’s kind of like that weird tingling just right before some part of you completely “wakes up” from being numb after laying on it wrong. I suppose this is better than brain-melting-wanna-die-pain so I’ll take it.

I’m also less depressed than last week which is a good thing. Had my session with my shrink last night. She wants me to do another 10 week therapy group; this one on cognative thought therapy. I’ve been interested in this kind of therapy for a bit so I’m a bit excited about it. I think it’ll be helpful so I’m going to do it.

We talked a little bit about just how depressed I was last week. Her concern of course is always whether or not I’m depressed enough to hurt myself. I confessed to her that my mother is always worried about that too and sometimes she tells me that in words and she did this past weekend, but the truth is that I have a very vivid memory of after my cousin killed himself, my mother begged me to promise her never to let it get that bad and never to kill myself like that. I guess I just couldn’t put my mother through that. Which I guess is ironic since my family has such strong pro-assisted suicide views. Huh.

Anyway, I am better this week. I’ve got a new cause — I’m going to be organizing fundraisers for the New Orleans Public Library here in Maine though I’m not quite sure how to go about it yet. I’ve got a new movie buddy. I’ve got a new therapy group. I think I might look into getting a military pen pal (and, yes, keep politics out of it).

So, making plans. Sounds kind of optimistic.

Tags: topomax, wellness, migraine, depression, suicide, therapy, botox

Meltdowns

I had a good session with my shrink last night. This past week I have been more depressed than usual; obviously, my grandmother’s memorial service and the whole travelling fiasco have something to do with that. However, a lot of my problem is perceived self-image and an extreme unhappiness for how I look and feel due to my weight issues.

I’ve written about how I’m suffering from some form of ugly duckling syndrome or some such. I currently feel miserable all of the time. I am constantly aware of how terrible I look and how uncomfortable I feel. I am frustrated at not being able to find decent-fitting clothes. And I feel disappointed and angry with myself for gaining the weight in the first place.

Needless to say, all of this has weighed heavily on my mind and my need for approval and validation from my parents also came into play. When I lost all of that weight back in 2002, my parents didn’t see me for about a year. There was about a 40-45 lbs difference and my father said how proud he was of me and bragged to his friends. I guess I know that they are proud of me in other ways but I feel like I let them down somehow by gaining the weight back plus some. So, with only about 5 weeks between when I saw them this time, I guess I felt like the loss of 8 lbs should have been more visible. I felt like every bite I took was being watched and judged while I was there since they know I’m back on program and I was keenly aware of how dumpy I looked in the clothes I chose to wear over the weekend.

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Tags: depression, dysfunctional family, therapy

Thank You

It’s been pointed out to me by the folks in my group therapy that I’m not very good at taking compliments.

This is true. I’m never quite sure what to say. On one hand, I’m proudish and happy to be acknowledged, but on the other, it feels a little conceited. Plus, there are just some things I don’t believe when people tell me.

For example, I never can quite believe someone when they tell me I’m pretty or I look nice. Honestly, I’m not fishing for more compliments when I wave it off and blush and say “This old thing?”

I never am sure if people are sincere when they say they like my writing, my art, or my cross-stitch. Though, I do seem to be quite proud of my cooking and baking skills — and yet, I sometimes wonder if that’s not unjustified inflated ego.

I have a real problem accepting a compliment in the work environment. I’m always suspicious of the person’s agenda. This I’m sure goes back at least as far as that awful insane job I had, but I sometimes think I was like that even back when I was a cashier for Winn Dixie.

So, one of the things I’m supposed to work on over the next few weeks is when someone pays me a compliment, I’m supposed to just say “Thank you” and that’s it. I won’t try to explain or defend or question. Then later after the moment has past, I can think about it if I still want to, but the immediate need is to validate that the person paid me a compliment.

And while I’m thanking folks — Thank you for stopping by and making me feel like I’m not just chattering to myself out here in cyberspace.

Tags: therapy

Theraputic Breakthrough & NaNo

Well, I had a little breakthrough in group therapy tonight. I talked about how concerned I was about admitting my own personal mistakes that led to my firing and how I worried about disappointing my parents, particularly my mother. I admitted outloud what it was that I felt I had done that contributed to my firing. Mind you, none of those people are my parents, but just admitting it officially outloud was a relief.

One of the group leaders asked me how it felt to take ownership of my part in the events. While I’ve always said I wasn’t guilt-free, I’ve never accepted that my own personal actions helped lead to my own downfall. It’s a relief to admit this finally, to accept my responsibility in the direction of my life.

Of course, it still remains if I’m going to share my story with my parents and let them discover I wasn’t faultless. I guess since they always took the other person’s side in every disagreement growing up, I had expected them to do the same when I got fired, but they didn’t and I don’t want to lose that. For once, they were completely sympathetic and supportive if a bit pushy.

However, I’ve decided to write the story as I remember it without a purely innocent main character. After all, those things shaped my life and I want to believe I’ve learned my lessons from my experiences.

Tags: NaNoWriMo, therapy, writing

How Naked The NaNo Truth?

I’ve often joked about how I was a Computer Diva toward the end of my last job. Heck, I’d accepted that maybe my head was a little big there but I also felt I was somewhat justified.

Reading back through my old journal in those months prior to my “involuntary termination”, I have come to the conclusion that the condition was far worse than I imagined. It’s hard to see ourselves when we’re living in the middle of the bruhaha. Sometimes it’s hard to see ourselves clearly even looking back with 20/20 vision. Some of us never see ourselves the way others do or could.

I’ve come to the conclusion that I was a serious bitch, not just a diva or a prima donna. I suspect that I had coming some sort of fall. Someone needed to knock me down a few pegs or ten. I really did believe with all of my heart that I was better than everyone there in that office and by better I mean more talented, more logical, more intelligent, more sane. I really had my own brand of self-righteousness and snobbiness.

Why didn’t someone tell me I was being a bitch? Why didn’t any of my friends notice? I really wish one of them had smacked me good just once and made me see the light.

I hope and pray I’m not that person today. I don’t think I am, but I’m ashamed of the things I thought and wrote and said about my coworkers. Clearly, I needed a large helping of humble pie.

Ultimately, I can really only blame myself for who I became but I do wonder if becoming that person was a survival technique in that workplace. I mean, just because I recognize the flaws in myself at that time doesn’t mean I’ve abandoned my beliefs that “The Minion Supervisor” was plotting to get me out of there or that The Queen was any less a control freak who operated in a logic all of her own or that most of the Interface team was lazy.

You know the saying that just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you? Well, just because you’re a bitch doesn’t mean they aren’t bitches too.

Anyway, as part of this personal intraspection into my life before Maine in writing a semi-autobiographical NaNo, I’m faced with a quandry of sorts. How truthful am I going to be?

I have always maintained that I always tell the truth in my journals, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t left out personal bits and pieces that I didn’t want to share or was afraid to share. There is an element of the events that led to my “involuntary termination” that I don’t think I ever shared with my parents. It lends itself to making me look rather bad. I’ve kept it close and when I think about it, my chest hurts.

My mother is planning on reading my NaNo and to be honest I’m a little wary of sharing with her this one tidbit. While it’s not the reason I was “involuntarily terminated” itself, it was used against me. I was guilty as charged on this one account, though by the time of my “involuntary termination”, it was something they couldn’t accuse me of as far as being a current deal. I’m not sure I’m making myself clear…

Let’s just say that I did something that wasn’t professional and I was told to stop doing it, but I was told that I could do so during my lunch hour. Then they wrote me up for doing this thing on my lunch hour, so I stopped doing it at work all together…when they fired me, they couldn’t bring it up because I’d already been disciplined and had stopped the action. However, in the fight to keep me from getting unemployment benefits, they threatened to bring that up in court if I sued. I did get unemployment benefits and there was no court fun, but trust me, it scared the shit out of me. I just didn’t want my parents to know and be disappointed in me.

For some reason, the approval of my parents is extremely important to me even now at 34 years old. I know I’ve disappointed them in the past and I hate that. It really nags at me. None of my generation of Mallories have managed to not be big disappointments in some way or another. Admittedly, right now I have the status of the “good cousin” as I’m less messed up than the others for the moment.

So, how truthful should I be? I know the truth personally. I accept that it is one of the things that led to my downfall. It pains me that it happened. I want to use this NaNo story as a cathartic release of the negativity surrounding the whole experience, but I also don’t want to cause more negativity with my parents. I’m just not sure of the right thing to do here.

Tags: NaNoWriMo, writing, therapy

My Funny Face

I was told in Group on Monday night that I seem a lot less angry than I did that first week. In fact, I was told that I was bright and funny.

I personally like to think I’m funny. I mean, I was a stand-up comic for a bit — obviously not very successful at it as I was never in any big clubs or on Leno or Letterman, but funny enough. The irony (or is the proper word, coincidence) is that it’s all an act; at least I think it is.

You see one of the things we talked about this week in Group is about the many faces people have. For example, my mother has a business face that got her to be VP of a home health company in a culture that didn’t think nurses should be in administration, but she also has this June-Cleaver-50’s-Face which she puts on when she changes out of her business clothes; that’s the face she wears for my very 50’s-minded-separation-of-women’s-work-from-men’s-work-dinner-on-the-table-at-6′O’Clock-sharp father. Many people have one face for their family and one for their work and one for their friends.

So, I’ve been thinking about my faces. In a way, I’m like my mother with that independent face for work (though obviously I struggled with that after losing my job) and another face for home. Since those are mostly the places I’m at these days, I really haven’t had much time to explore my other faces, but I have them.

I really think, my real face is more like Darlene on Roseanne, all dressed in black and sarcastic somewhere on the edge of life just observing, and this funny face is something I’ve developed to entertain the troops. I remember coming home sometimes after hanging out with the old gang down South and I would feel mentally exhausted from having to entertain. In fact, I feel like a lot of what I did when I was living with PW was entertain — when we weren’t fighting that is, and even then, that was just another form of entertainment for the living drama vortex.

But admittedly, I also kind of like the attention being funny brings me most of the time. It certainly feels better than being left in the corner to sulk and moan and observe. It’s also easier to be funny than to be real though I’m not really sure what my real face is. My mother used to tell me that if I acted all depressed all the time then I wouldn’t have friends because no one likes a sourpuss. I guess that stuck with me.

And, yet, last week, my funny face got me in trouble. I’d made some smart ass remarks, mostly self-depreciating and I ended up having to have one of those “we need to talk” talks that are all about what’s wrong with me. The irony of course is that I was using the humor to try to mask the “real” me who really does have some of those flaws. It’s better that I make fun of them than have someone else point them out in all seriousness.

I kind of would like to find my real face. I’m not sure I can spend the time looking for it while I’m trying to discard the angry face, I also have — though admittedly, I do feel better about the whole situation now that I’ve accepted that it’s silly to be angry about losing a job I hated and that my friends have all been dispersed by Hurricane Katrina, so the separation anxiety face would have had to come sooner or later.

I guess I’ll just have to keep mulling it all over.

Tags: depression, anxiety, therapy

The Blind Leading The Blind Maybe

There’s a woman in my therapy group that’s going through what I went through almost two years ago. The work situation is somewhat similar, particularly the way “they” went about firing her — gave her a raise, let her go on vacation and then told her that her position was being eliminated. She has a family and therefore isn’t going through the complete feelings of loneliness and abandonment that I went through every day not having anywhere to go or anyone to see most days. She has a husband and kids, but that kind of comes with it’s own problems.

I just felt such a connection to her because everything she said, I understood, and for once I felt not quite as alone.

Oh, I know I’ve talked to my mother about the time she was fired and her feelings regarding it, but you know, she’s my mother and she’s supposed to sympathize with me — though that really isn’t always the case. And, yes, many of my virtual friends here have talked to me about their experiences and while that is somewhat comforting, there’s just something different about having met someone in the flesh and shared that experience and understood what she’s going through.

Plus, I somehow feel like I can help her. It was strange watching her and listening to her about the powerlessness she feels, the helplessness, the anger and the depression. I know exactly how she feels and I remember now very clearly how I felt every day during those first three months — the dragging myself out of bed, the feeling like a failure, the feeling that nothing was going to ever get better, that I was on the road to doom. I wondered then if I should even stay in computers, if I was ever a good employee.

The lesson I’ve learned is that slowly, most of that passes. I told her that it was a struggle for me even after I started working again. I told her the truth that finding a new job doesn’t fix everything. I explained that there is a grieving period, but that somehow everyone I knew had come out of this kind of experience better off. Maybe she won’t see it for a long time, but it’s true.

Of course, she knows I’m still working through my anger but I told her that it took me a long time to not have an anxiety attack every time my new boss talked to me and that the one lesson I really learned from the last job is to not get caught up in the office drama (or politics). You know, I used to carry all of that home with me at the last job. I used to really think that the old supervisor was at home late at night devising ways to make my life miserable. Now, unless I’m on call, I try not to think about work when I walk out the door. Work is just where I go 5 days a week.

Anyway, I know I’m not “cured”. She knows it. But I think knowing I survived it and having me tell her that she will survive it made her feel a little better. I know that realizing I had survived it made me feel better. I’m just a little sorry that it took hearing her story to make me realize it.

Tags: therapy, depression

So I’m Angry…

Last night I went to my first group therapy session. I was told by one of the other ladies that I appear to be harboring quite a bit of anger on quite a lot of subjects. Most notibly, I’m angry that I lost my job and “had” to move to Maine.

Now I realize that I’ve been harboring some bitterness about how it all happened, but I guess I never realized that I am really angry about having been fired, about the struggle to find a new job, about having “had” to move to Maine.

bitterness

Difficult or distasteful to accept, admit, or bear.

anger

A strong feeling of displeasure or hostility.

One of the other women told me about how she’d had this job she absolutlely loved. She said that she thought she’d never leave and after she’d lost that job, it had taken her two years to get over being angry about it, but she did.

That’s when I realized the futility of being angry.

I hated that job. I hated my boss. I disliked most of my co-workers. I hated the insanity of the politics of the job. There were days that I would sit on the stairs in my apartment and cry because I had to go to work. The job was so stressful and miserable that it was making me ill.

Why should I harbor any anger or bitterness at all about having been freed from that horrible experience?

My mother thinks that the anger stems from my feelings of “how dare they?!” I think this in part is true. I had become quite the diva by that point. I honestly believed that I was irreplaceable, that they would never get rid of me because I could do the impossible when asked. I believed that as long as the slackers were employed there, that I was untouchable. O.K. I believed that I could walk on virtual water. In a sense, that was what kept me going, kept me getting up every day.

And as horrible and miserable the job was, it was routine. I knew it. There was no real unknown as far as I was concerned. So, I half-way looked for something else but never really pushed myself to find something better.

So, how dare they?

Then there’s the element of humiliation. I was led to security while the evil bastard ex-supervisor went through my desk, my belongings, and packed them up. I was held there as people came and went, staring.

Not to mention that it was the 12th of December and the day of the Christmas party and I’d put money in for both the evil bastard supervisor’s gift and the director’s gift.

I hadn’t even gotten the chance to finish my coffee or my morning muffin.

And I’m angry because of the excuses they used to “involuntarily terminate” me and I’m angry because somehow they were involved in having a job offer rescinded after I’d made plans to move to Alabama.

And I’m angry that my comfortable world was shattered. I was forced to leave my friends and everything I was comfortable with, my routine, my life, and go to Maine where I didn’t even have an apartment, where I stressed out living in hotels, not knowing what was going to happen next, which is something I truly hate.

I’m angry that I’ve never really recovered emotionaly and socially. I haven’t found friends like I had back home, people to just hang out with, people to go to movies and dinner and plays with. I can’t seem to stop eating and have gained 60 lbs.

Yes, I guess I’m angry. I’m angry it happened and I’m angry for the things that happened as a result.

And it’s really futile and it’s really unnecessary. After all, I have a better job that I love. Less stress, way more money. I admit that emotionally and socially I haven’t recovered and perhaps that’s why I keep dwelling on the past and keep stirring up the anger. It’s hard to let go of the anger when all I see in my future is loneliness. It’s hard to let go because it’s the only thing I really feel anymore it seems. It reminds me that I can feel. There are many days when I feel like there’s nothing to get excited about, that I’m always going to be alone, that all I have to look forward to are endless dinners in restaurants alone and being the strange lady who goes to see movies alone.

But I don’t want to be angry anymore. I really don’t see the need for it. I don’t want it to consume me.

My mother thinks that by just realizing I’m still angry and there’s no point to it, that I’ll now just let it go. I hope so. I don’t know how to let go, but I want to. I don’t know if that’s enough. I guess we’ll see.

Tags: therapy

So The Shrink Says…

Well, I went to see the shrink about my Katrina issues. Even with the ambien, my dreams are full of attempting to either get out of New Orleans or get back in.

She told me that I need to cut back on my intake of Katrina news. She thinks that with all the intake and no way to really direct the emotions it’s building, I’m just hurting myself. It’s such a close issue to me and it’s left me with survivor’s guilt — wondering what if I’d been there, feeling like I should have been there, feeling like I should be there now.

I’ve already been trying to cut back. Finding writers for the Hurricane Katrina Portal would help because it would ease my feeling that I need to look at all the news every day for new things to report.

She also suggested that I use this as an opportunity to do what my mom has been urging for years — volunteer for the local Red Cross. I’ve said I want to be my mom when I grow up, but I’m not a nurse, and right now I can’t do something like just volunteer for a month elsewhere and pay my bills — though thinkng back, my mom used to do just that. Anyway, I need to take this as a wake up call and go ahead and join and find a way I can help. Plus, the shrink thinks it’ll make me feel like I’m helping “back home” while tying me more to here and making this more like home.

She’s also suggested a new support group that’s starting up for people like me who suffer from anxiety and depression. It’s supposed to be a 10-week session and it’s free-ish (they might ask for donations to pay for the room). Basically it would be a way for me to interact with people like myself and maybe we can learn from each other on ways to cope by telling each other how we overcome things on a day to day basis. Plus, she thinks it’ll help me form more ties in the community. (See a pattern? )

Anyway, I’m putting together care packages for El and PW of just little things. My friend KH who’s house burned down and understands the agony of the loss of everything went shopping with me fore some things. I don’t know what more I can do really other than what I’m doing and volunteering for the Red Cross.

Tags: Hurricane Katrina, depression, therapy, Red Cross

No PT For Me

Well, I went and met with the Physical Therapist and had a chat. He went on and on about how he could work with me on some theraputic stuff but in the end, it won’t help cure anything faster — it’ll just help ease the pain temporarily. Thinking back to the year I spent going to the chiropractor for 3 times a week to help my migraines (which it didn’t), I asked him if this is like if you get a cold and take cold medicine, the cold will go away in 14 days but if you don’t take the cold medicine, it’ll go away in 2 weeks.

At least he laughed.

But he did say that, yes, that was the case here.

So, even though the woman who hit me would be paying for it, it would be a big pain in the ass to go 3x a week for possible temporary relief. I’ve decided not to go. He said I could change my mind later if I wanted.

He did tell me to keep doing the exercises the other doctor suggested and do 2 Tylenol plu 2 Advil 4 times a day and he recommended those Thermacure patch things.

So we’ll see how it goes. I was a little down-hearted that he said it could be months until the pain goes away rather than that 6 - 8 week thing I’d been told earlier. He also indicated that some people have long-lasting phantom pains that never go away but that he didn’t think that would be the case with me. *sigh*

I’m ready to get back to worrying about the world and the terrorists and the US government…

Tags: physical therapy, wellness, car accident