After a week of feeling so chilled out and cruisy that I was starting to think these meds might have been the best decision I have ever made, today I am feeling fairly anxious again.
It isn’t particularly surprising as I am getting a big handover today, so I am nervous about that. Plus we have to go out for a ‘team lunch’ to celebrate the end of this big project. I do NOT like eating out with co-workers. I don’t like strange restaurants, and I am fussy about food which is hard when there are other people around etc. I don’t like eating in public in general (I’m fat, people are dicks).
I think that lunch is probably the biggest contributor to my anxiety today. Things that other people (people without a lived experience) just cannot ‘get’. Everyone is fine with being anxious about a flight, or a presentation, or a heavy workload…. But they get very blank when getting taken to a free lunch during work hours shuts you down….
I am also going out with my best friend tonight (the one I was supposed to see last week). And while this is always an enjoyable thing (we have a good routine that works well for me), it is still more ‘drain’ to be anticipated, and resources are set aside for that, and so are not available now.
HOWEVER, I will then be taking a solid week off work, and that is bliss beyond description. Very much looking forward to it.
I finally had my first psychologist appointment last night (well first one in three or so years). It was not great. I have belly button lint older than this chick.
Anyhow we did the whole history and current circumstances thing (yawn, this bit is like a broken record by this point in my life) and covered off that I know how anxiety works in the body and the brain and that I know all* about coping strategies and de-escalation and so on and so forth. It isn’t that I am expecting anything ‘new’…. I just don’t want to waste my precious session time on being presented with things that I have known about and used successfully for years, or rehashing anxiety 101.
We broached the ever frustrating subject of ‘self-care’ – which I still either do not get, or they do not get, or something. No one ever seems satisfied that for me getting HOME is what it is all about. Get home, stay home. THAT is self-care for me. I don’t need a bubble bath, and for that to even be an option I am already at home, so frankly I would rather not go to the effort as it adds nothing. I also like napping. Again this means I am at home already, AND it interferes with my night sleep so is not something I should indulge too much. Cuddling my critters? Means I am at home. Gardening? Means I am at home. Cooking? At home. The activity adds very little and the benefits would not pply if I were not at home.
I get pretty frustrated because the things that replenish me seem to be things that are either frowned upon, or are considered maladaptive or something – and then instead I am presented with countless options that do nothing for me, or which are actively draining but which tick the boxes on paper. Have a massage, take a bubble bath, listen to music....
She also kept asking what ‘energised’ me…. I don’t think anything ‘energises’ me (except being at home, preferably alone) unless I am already in a good place. When I am in a good place everything is fantastic, loads of stuff energises me… When I am in a bad place those same things are WAY too much pressure. I don’t understand why this is so hard for her to grasp.
We fundamentally disagreed on a couple of points, and I discovered that as irritating as I find reflective listening (it’s like talking to someone with echolalia) it is actually even MORE irritating when people reflect back incorrectly, or reinforce a point that is NOT the one you are making. (So that's a win for refelctive listening I guess).
I felt like a lot of the stuff she said was a pre-recorded spiel – and I know from my job that you do get the SAME topics come up and 95 percent of the time the spiel is the most efficient way to deliver the message, but still…in combination with the not quite getting what I was saying, and spieling a very familiar (and not quite appropriate) response … well I wasn’t impressed.
At one point she started a ‘spiel’ about how I was choosing to live in my comfort zone because of the anxiety and was choosing to self-limit and did I really want to live such a ‘small’ life? - so I had to disagree and point out that I live WELL outside of my comfort zone, right up to the edges of what I can handle without a meltdown, and whenever I get more resourceful I increase my boundaries still further. She immediately flip-flopped and the next thing out of her mouth was that, ‘Well working full time isn’t for everyone, maybe you should think about only working part time’. As if that hadn’t ever occurred to me or was a realistic option right now. FFS.
So yeah… not very taken with her.
The reception guy though is fantastic! I love when you meet people who are exceptional at their jobs, especially when their job is sort of mundane and they still stand out so much that they practically glow.
I have another appointment in 3 weeks. We’ll see how it goes.
