Let's Talk About My Therapist

So many things! 

I went to bed thinking about my therapist, and I woke up thinking about my therapist. She has now become yet another thing I have to overcome. I blame myself. Engaging a therapist is a result of generic advice. It's my own fault for falling into that trap once again.

At my aunt's funeral, people suggested I seek grief counseling. Heaven forbid you should cry at a loved one's funeral. Heaven forbid you should be reminded that surrounded by a room full of people that are supposed to be your family and friends, you still feel alone. You know that no one in that room is going to put your needs first. No one in that room is going to prioritize you or your needs. 

But when you say that to a therapist, instead of compassion you get judgement. You can't use words like all or never because that's cognitive distortion. You can't be sad because that's depression. 

I mentioned the discrimination I felt during my year-long job search. And apparently that's distorted thinking as well. When I say all the people on the interview panel did not look like me and I attribute that as a contributing factor to why I wasn't hired - that's because I don't have control of my thoughts.  When I look at the people on LinkedIn who were likely hired or when I search that organization's department page and see who was hired doesn't look like me that seems like evidence to me. But apparently that's self-esteem issues and distorted thinking. Say what now? 

When I say all the women in my life either want to be a wife or a mother or are wives and mothers, that's distorted thinking. Albeit true, but somehow I'm the problem. Say what now? I need a better grasp on my thoughts? Or is it you, therapist, that needs a better grasp on reality. 

I just feel like anything I say is a trigger for a new diagnosis. If this is supposed to be a safe space, I don't feel safe. 

So far she has implied depression, low-self esteem, feelings of not being good enough, transference, identity issues. 

Where's the support? 

Oh the identity issues came from when I said I feel sad that I never got a chance to know my late aunt or late father as people, as individuals, as people other than my caretakers. I don't know what they were like as nine year olds or twenty year olds. I just never asked. I never asked them what I was like at those ages. To me I just see it as another loss, this scary thing that happens when people die- their story ends and I don't know how to keep it going because I don't know enough of it. 

When I step away, I think if I'm a therapist, it's easier to "solve" my patient's problems if I can fit them into one of my therapy "problems." Ok, great. 

So then I ask myself, what am I hoping to get out of this? 

I met my boss, we had an instant connection. I remembered what it was like to have a friend. And I wanted more of that. I can't have that because she's my boss and the professional relationship comes first. 

So instead of getting mad that my boss, you know, has to do work instead of spend time with me, I thought since everyone is telling me I need grief counseling, maybe I can use that as a place to air my grievances and connect with another human.  So essentially, I want to use these free EAP sessions as a 1-way friendship. I just need someone to talk to.

You, therapist, are telling me that people shouldn't be alone. Ok, so can you be my friend for my 10 free sessions so I can get through this season of my life, thanks. 

So to be honest, I'd tried to seek counseling before. I was feeling stuck at work about 3 years ago. I think it was about 2 years after I started at Call Center 1. Two years felt like I needed to make some moves in my career and adult life (i.e. buy a house). I didn't have any friends (see above - erryone married with kids) so I thought someone I could pay to listen to me was the next best option. 

I might have gone to 6 sessions. I think you got 10 or 12 with my insurance plan at the time before you got referred out. Those I had to pay a $40 co-pay and drive over an hour because it was part of my primary care doctor's medical center.  Anyway, after she cancelled three times and I again started to feel like everything I said was being used against me, I stopped going. I requested a copy of the session notes and learned I was considered depressed and suicidal and essentially to be on high alert.  Cuz that's what you want when you go to your doctor's office for a routine check-up. 

But now those feelings of being clinically diagnosed with every word you say are back. And if you disagree, then you feel you are being perceived as defensive. And now that it's happening a second time, I'm the problem, of course.  Ugh. 

All I'm asking the world for is a friend. Why is this so difficult. 

People get to treat you poorly and somehow it's your fault. 

So yeah that's what I've been up to. 

I'm going to have to figure out this grief thing on my own. I can't remember now if I get 10 or 12 free EAP sessions. I was going to see them all through because I mean - free.  But I'm rethinking my guard rails. I immediately think I want to go into the New Year as a new me without this therapy trauma. So I don't see myself continuing these session in 2021. 

As for my relationship with my boss... I think what's hard is if this were a real friend who I really liked but felt the feelings weren't reciprocated, historically I'd just stop trying to make the effort and naturally the friendship would fizzle out. But I have to interact with this woman regularly, so I think that will continue to be difficult to manage. Plus, my bonus and performance review I believe depends heavily on having a close positive relationship with her. This is not in my head, therapist, I've seen the way people she doesn't care for get treated. She has told me stories of people that didn't care for her treating her a certain way. So this is fact, not feelings, thank you.  

So my approach is still to be upbeat and positive around her (not the cold shoulder I would give a distant friend) and to focus on being reactive not proactive in my interactions with her.  Sad, ugh. 

That's going to have to be my solve because I don't think this therapy thing is going to help me get there. 

Oh the therapist thinks I should be a writer and pursue writing. I told her I already tried that. Again generic advice. 12 year old gets published in a school paper = she should be a writer.  (Note: that didn't actually happen but just an example of the generic insincere advice I would expect as a child, not as an adult from a therapist.) Ugh, no, that's not reality. She asked why I would apply for 120+ jobs but "give up" on writing. I think when you need a job, you keep applying until you get one. No? 

I'm just so confused that some of my actions seem pretty rational to me and to be told I'm having irrational thoughts is pretty darn frustrating. 

Wait, maybe she's transferring or projecting her aspirations onto me. She mentioned she's writing her second book but her first book isn't published. She also shares a lot about her personal life. Should I know her son is in law school in South Dakota or that her dad was killed by the police or that she struggles with her relationship with her mom? 

I digress...where was I? 

I think haven't had one bad therapy experience in the past makes me less tolerant.  

Now that I' thinking about it... maybe we'll try to get 3 more in  to make a nice round 5 sessions.  That's a fair shake, I'd say. 

How can you, therapist, tell me I don't feel good enough because I ended friendships because people didn't have time for me. To me I was #worththetime. And if you, friend, in your actions are telling me I'm not #worththetime, then that's not a friend I want. Am I not allowed to have standards, therapist? Am I supposed to settle for 30 minutes every 3 to 4 months as a friend. I guess I am a depressed, low self-esteem, identity-crisis riddled individual. But I'm going to have to be okay with it.

I think the thing both my therapists have said is essentially by you going to therapy that means you're not happy. But I'm asking you for your help and you're throwing it back in my face? That doesn't seem right. 1st therapist- I needed help figuring out what to do with my life, in particular career and housing. These are things people with friends can usually navigate, but I didn't have anyone that could help me discern. My family's go-to is pray about it. My old friends were on the whole do whatever makes you happy. Both terrible actionable advice. Apparently I was wrong for seeking professional help. 

Now, 2nd therapist - I feel alone and need a friend. Can you sub in until I find one, thanks. Again, wrong. 

So what is therapy for? Because I'm missing the point. 

I chose not to qualify any of my statements in this post. This is how regular people communicate. I'm not trying to reach some higher order of being. I want a simple existence. Oh I forgot bi-polar! That was another one that came up. 

I mentioned being emotionally labile. I just meant I let my feelings make my decisions and I stopped trying to fight it. To me that just means instead of making the financially responsible decision of going to Walmart for my groceries, I willingly go to Food Lion because I don't feel like going to Walmart. So instead of taking the time to change my feelings, I just go to Food Lion. At Food Lion, I will ALWAYS pay more, but I can usually find a spot 3 or 4 spaces from the door; it's not this huge warehouse that I have to pick through; and by the sheer fact of it being a smaller outlet, there's less people. Um we are in a pandemic.  So yes, yesterday I went to pick up 4 things at Food Lion and it cost me $33. At Wal-Mart, I'm pretty sure it would have been closer to $27 or less. 

I don't feel like going downstairs to cook and clean up the mess after cooking, so I'm going to eat popcorn in my bed and watch TV. 

And I just know she's judging my hair because I haven't done it in like 2 months. It looks crazy. To me, I'm not trying to spends 100s of dollar to get my hair done to sit in the house. And it's always a process. The blowout place ALWAYS burns me and I can't be bothered to find another place. When I get my hair braided, it ALWAYS hurts for a week or two. I don't feel like being in pain so a lady on the internet doesn't think I'm depressed. 

So yeah, I let my feelings rule over me because I no longer have the energy to fight them. 

So that's my therapy rant.

Oh and at work, I think my relationship with my boss has shifted a bit. Remember the first week at New Job, Boss mentioned she enjoys developing people and she'd be okay if I found another position in the company after six months. As part of a professional development conversation, she gave me contacts for people in Medical Information (MI) and Promotional Review (PRA). I reached out to both. I'm not that interested in MI because it's tedious and boring and I don't enjoy doing lit searches. So I met twice with the lady in PRA, she too thought there would be more opportunities in MI. So she set up an introduction with another contact in MI. That lady asked me what my timeline was and I said if there were an opening, I would be open to it. I don't know if that's exactly what I meant.  But within a couple hours, she let me know there was an opening in MI.

Yikes! I forwarded the email to my boss because EVERYONE knows each other in our side of the business and I didn't want her finding out about it from someone else. Her response was less than stellar. So I didn't love that. 

Oh, in the sweep of the therapist, boss drama, I think I'm going to re-establish guard rails with my co-worker/former room-mate/ex-friend/ former classmate. The older her kid gets, the less focused her attention and then of course there's her mom that calls her 83 times a day. The only time we've had a conversation without her mom calling is when her mom was mad at her for like 3 days. 

Anyway, either I need to set the timer for 15 or 30 minutes or not call at all. Because the interruptions, the pedanticness, the show-and-tell, correcting me, challenging me, feeling of one upness, I don't love it. I'm annoyed enough of the time during and after the conversation that the benefit doesn't outweigh the risk enough. 

Is it so disordered to want people in your life to make you feel good ALL the time. Then, I'm disordered. 

Oh and I think my cousin was supposed to call me last night. She didn't. Since I've already decided I don't like her or co-worker from above that much, I couldn't be bothered to reach out. I've initiated the call in the past and she ALWAYS has something going on, so I'm having to wait for the return call or be reminded that I have NOTHING going on in my life and I'm at the mercy of others for their time and attention. 

I guess I'm disordered because I don't want any part of that. So I came, I saw, and I did not conquer. 

To 2021, it's going to be an interesting year. I'm right where I was in 2015 when I decided to traverse the world alone. This time I know it's the best decision where before it was just conjecture. This time I know no one is coming to save me. This is the way it has to be.  I am 100% alone. That felt good!

Here's the thing about death

 Today was my aunt's birthday. You know, the one that died. Yesterday was my father's funeral. Using someone else's FB account, I stumbled upon my parents' wedding photo. 

I'd never seen it before. Can you imagine?

There's a deeper sadness in this grief that I haven't been able to articulate. 

Here's the thing - when my people die they take their story with them, but they take my story as well. I don't know anything about my father. I didn't grow up with him. What was I like as a child? What was it like to know me? What was it like to love me? How did I make him feel? 

And what about him. What was he like as a child? What was his favorite Christmas present? What did he dream of? What was he like when he was my age? 

From a girl who never felt her feelings, all I do is feel things now. I feel so much loss. More than I ever knew a person could feel.

I never got to know my people as people. They were for the most part my caretakers. What were they like as children? What was I like? What was it like to parent me? 

When they died they took their story with them, and they took part of mine. 

When the next generation takes our place, will the world ever know we existed? 

When Death Itself is not a Worthwhile End

 

So my sole sense of comfort through hard times has been (not God) but knowing if it ever got too much, I literally didn't have to take it anymore. (If you've ever seen After Life on Netflix, you get it.)

In this moment, I feel that wouldn't even bring me any sense of comfort. I want to feel better not dead.  I want the world and the life I imagined. I want things to not be hard. I want to make significant, sustainable, positive, ongoing contributions to the world, starting with my job and I guess the humans.  I want the fact that I lived to have mattered - to more than one person.

I think what's been hard about grief each time someone close to me has died is how quickly they appear to be forgotten.  Whether that person lived 20 years or 70 years. After the first few weeks, after the funeral, after the gatherings, no one speaks of them. I would have wanted to be remembered forever and spoken of daily. 

So my beloved aunt passed away in January. She raised me (and a few others) on her own for the last 30 years. I failed to realize while she was alive how fortunate and blessed I was to have such a solid foundation. 

The other part of my story is I have two functioning natural parents. If my aunt is 100% of my parents. As a couple, they are more like 50% of a parent. So together I had 150% of parental units.  My aunt passed away in January. And last Saturday, I found out my father passed away as well. Now, I'm left with 25% of parental units, if that. 

And since this is a money blog, I ended up contributing $5k for funeral expenses. This morning I wasn't sure if that was too much.  That's what happens when you have too much cash floating in your accounts. Thanks, Corona. 

In other news, I skeptically attended a 401k presentation yesterday and it turned out to be full of little nuggets. 

Nugget 1: My company has separate bonus checks -which I didn't realize- and they match 6% of each payCHECK. My contribution for bonus checks was on 0% because I wanted to make even contributions to my 401k based on my standard paychecks to make sure I got the full match. I would have missed out on the bonus match come bonus time (God-willing, of course). 

Nugget 2: My company offers post-tax contributions to the 401k. This is different than a Roth 401k. I'd signed up just to try it out and remember it existed. I'd also signed up at 2% each pay period because I wasn't going to be able contribute exactly the max to my 401k pre-tax because I switched jobs halfway through the year and the percentages wouldn't match up to get me right at 19.5k. 

The game changing tip is - he was like if you sign up for post-tax match, you want to call us to do a Rollover to a Roth 401k so that your earnings can grow tax free! I just didn't even think about, or I guess really know that was an option. I'd never really heard of post-tax contributions. 

So essentially, I can contribute the annual max of $19,500 to my 401k, and in my case I'm doing it pre-tax. BUT, I can also do spillover elections up to the IRS max of of like $57k through these after-tax contributions! 

Since I'm already funneling post-tax money into taxable investment vehicles outside of my employer, to me it makes sense just to repurpose that money to the after-tax contributions and do the rollover so that the earnings grow tax free. 

My initial concern was being able to take the money out before retirement. I can do that freely with a personal investment account. With the post-tax contributions to the 401k which are subsequently rolled over into a Roth 401k, I would only be able to take out the contributions freely. Earnings would be subject to a 10% early withdrawal penalty.  But to me it's worth the risk because 10% is the lowest tax bracket anyway, and historically I haven't had too many ways to lower my tax rate.

So there you have it, the perfect distraction for grief - complicated financial matters. 

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Thai Place

 

I have so much to say and no one to say it to! What to do.

Ugh, work!

I just wish I knew what the future holds.

I wish I knew how to really hit one out of the park.

Things that stuck out to me with feelings I can't quite articulate:

- The meeting about customer response questions - things I said were said by someone else; I'm not sure how my comments landed; did I provide the right information? Did I say it the right way? I felt like more was expected of me? My decision not to rock the boat but a white man was welcomed with open arms left me a bit unsettled. 

- The meeting where I was asked about exiting a patient off the program. Was my response the right response? 

- Then I was asked about enrolling caregivers - but the program manager answered for me. Is this the right thing? If I think we're all one team, then it's okay. But if I'm supposed to be the answerer, then it's a problem. 

Then I had a meeting with my manager. When she asks for insight based on my past experience, I wish I had more reliable contacts at Call Center #1. They would be most helpful.  Did I say the wrong thing? Am I doing work that is meaningful to the overall group goal? 

I don't know why I need to be constantly reassured, but somehow I do. 

I'm in quite a cantankerous mood

 I broke some of my rules today.

I had relegated myself to checking my email on certain days of the week.

Handling personal business emails - Tuesday.

Responding to social emails - Wednesday.

Today I was feeling like a contrarian and wanted to take it out on some people. Somewhere along the way I learned not to be disagreeable. So for whatever reason, it feels like a violation of a social contract when other people disagree with me. 

More and more lately it bugs me when people disagree with or correct me. If they don't have to play by the rules, why should I?

I'm always in a tangle with the person I want to be out-loud vs the person I have to keep hidden. 

This particular weekend I came to terms with the fact that the bottom of the barrel friends I was scraping up just aren't doing it for me. I don't know a simpler way to say it. I was right in my initial assessment to leave them in the past. I don't feel the way I want to feel. No one really cares that much about anything, including maintaining inconvenient friendships. I need these people to be available to me. The whole appeal of reaching out to old friends was not having to re-establish that history. But too much time has passed. 

I'm really alone. I'm recommitting to another year of solitude. 

The only little ray of hope was my manager. The fact that I could connect with her so easily (at least until the tarnish wore off) makes me feel like I'm not asking for too much. But the fact that it took  9 years to meet her is a little daunting. 

So this morning I sent some disagreeable emails. Someone said something that I disagreed with, and I pointed it out.  Of course on reflection, I realize what an undesirable character trait that is. It feels pedantic, when all I wanted was to feel heard. 

Poptarts, bed, and a rude show on Netflix. Off I go.