Monthly Archives: March 2012

On Starting Therapy

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I met with a new therapist today, and I was only halfway through my first sentence when my voice cracked for the first time.

I felt I had to pause what I’d been saying, (which was undoubtedly something incredibly emotional and revealing, such as “I have been depressed for a while now,”) and explain what was going on, as if I was the first person who has ever cried during therapy. “I’m a crier,” I said, “You should know that about me. I’m going to cry the whole time I talk to you, and that’s just how it’s going to be.” She laughed and said that was fine, of course, and she would grab me all the tissues I could possibly need. “Oh, it’s alright,” I explained, as I reached around to my back pocket to grab the handkerchief I’d knowingly brought along with me. I told her, “I came prepared.”

I’m not sure why I even thought it would be possible, but I had convinced myself that I was going to be able to discuss my life with this therapist without snotting all over her couch and crying the whole time. I was so, so wrong. Before we even started talking about me, I knew I was wrong. I was sitting on the couch listening to her explain the legal forms that I’d signed–disclosure statements, right to privacy explanations, etc.– when I started to feel the inside of my sinus cavities start to tingle as if I’d just snorted a giant pile of crushed lifesaver Wint-O-Greens. I’m sure a lot of people cry during therapy, but I’m willing to bet that not everyone gets choked up while their therapist is running through her personal education background. But I do. Ooooh, I certainly do.

Before I picked up where I left off, I told her that I’d basically just shown her everything she’d need to know about me. I know that I’ve got a lot of stuff going on in my life, I know that I have problems. And even though I haven’t figured out how to fix them yet, I have learned to compensate fairly well. I understand my particular collection of -isms, and I prepare accordingly.

Then I blew my nose into the handkerchief that I’d brought, and we dove right in.

A Catch-Up Post

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A fun way to break in the brand new oven at your brand new house is by using an over-sized dish towel to pull your steak fries out of the oven, and then, in the process, setting that dish towel on fire. Don’t worry, though. Because my brand new faucet for my brand new kitchen sink has a pretty impressive spray range. I took care of it*.
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Zack heard Scout growling the other day and thought that someone was trying to break into the house. She barks at people when they come over, and she barks at squirrels and stuff in the backyard, but she never growls. She growled for so long that Zack was able to shoot a little video of it to show me.

So, there’s a pond in our new neighborhood, and that pond has ducks. Scout was growling at one of the ducks, who was across the street, in one of the neighbor’s yards. You could see it on one part of the video; it was scarcely bigger than a period at the end of a sentence. But Scout could see it, and boy, was she ever pissed.
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Zack and I decided to sign up for a run/race at the end of April to motivate me (us?) to get back into the swing of exercising on a regular basis. We’re going to go for the gusto and register for the 10K. Wish me luck, but don’t wish me good sense, otherwise I would surely back out while I still have the chance.
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I’ve slowly started to make the medication adjustments that the doctor suggested that I make. I don’t feel a whole lot happier but I do feel more stable. I explained that concept to Zack earlier by saying, “You know how sometimes we’d go to dinner and have the best time, and then on the way home I would start crying, and then I would go straight to bed? I don’t feel like that anymore.” So that’s good news(?). It’s hard to think about things in terms of emotional stability as opposed to just happy vs. unhappy. I don’t feel better because I don’t feel happier, but stable is better than unstable, so I’ll count that as a win. So far, the biggest side-effects that I have from detoxing off of Medication #1 are jacked-up sense of spacial awareness (running into walls, trying to set things down on the counter but totally missing and dropping them on the floor, etc.) and feeling like everything is happening in slow motion. Neither of these are surprising to me; I expected them both. The side-effects just leave me wishing that psych meds weren’t so miserable to adjust.
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Pictures of the house forthcoming. Zack and I have been enjoying settling into the new house. It’s perhaps a little bit obvious or redundant to say this, but we have such a sense of ownership about this place — like we’ve never had before with any of the places that we’ve rented. It’s been fun to celebrate being in this house that we’ve dreamed of for so many years while we do normally-mundane things like decide where to store the dish towels.
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*Just kidding. I mean, I really did catch the rag on fire, but I was able to put it out with a couple of frantic waves and “OH SHIT”s. Problem solved.