I’ve seen more therapists than I have years that I’ve been alive. I started therapy when I was 14.

How am I? Oh well I’m emotionally dysregulated. How are you?

I’ve gone and fired therapist number 25 before I even had a chance to write an entry in here about the start of therapy with him. I met with him for 2 and 1/2 months or so.

Only a handful of sessions in I started to feel really attached to him. It terrified me, because that doesn’t usually happen and was and felt way out of proportion to how little he knew me.

That idealization was crushed shortly after. Because I felt over-attached, I rushed into some tough topics.

I think an important role of a therapist is to keep an eye on the patients level of affect and ensure that it is neither too low or too high. The optimal rage is different for everyone every day. Too low and the therapy is too superficial, but too high and it will be too overwhelming to be therapeutic. The optimal level varies based on how much time remains in the session. As the session nears its end the therapist needs to find the way to bring the affect to a level the patient can manage outside of the container of the therapeutic relationship.

I realize this can often be a difficult task, but he did about as poorly with this as possible. The session ended abruptly, leaving me in a vulnerable emotional state. This left me feeling wary about the therapy, realizing that he and I were very out of sync. I picture this session as a chart where x is time and y is affect. We both started at low affect and his line was straight across with no slope, while mine got higher and higher.

We did talk about this after, but I think he took the wrong message from it. I wanted him to be more aware of when things were escalating too far, while he took this to mean he shouldn’t press certain topics at all.

A couple of weeks ago I wasn’t feeling great. I won’t get into the reasons right now, because retrospectively I’m embarrassed about how trivial they were.
I cut in the bathroom of his building before my appointment. I felt extremely out of control. I bled through my pants leg. I spent the session with my purse held over the blood spot so he wouldn’t see.
Obviously he can’t read my mind (Although once a therapist accused me of wanting him to do that, probably with some justification) but I really resented him for not noticing something. I always keep my purse on the floor rather than holding it. Clearly I wasn’t meeting with Sherlock Holmes for therapy.
He was so focused on convincing me that I shouldn’t feel how I felt, that he didn’t get around to understanding how I felt.
He asked me if I was going to be okay over the weekend and I very unconvincingly said ‘Yes’. He didn’t question it.

That weekend I was not feeling well. I had some oxycodone left over from a medical problem I had over the summer (This is a topic for another post) I took that, some klonopin and some seroquel too.
Unfortunately I only slept for 13 hours as opposed to forever.

This is the first time I’ve ever misused prescription medications like this. I felt incredibly guilty about it. I’ve always only used over the counter medications for overdoses. I feel like doing this is betraying a level of trust between me and the perscribing doctor.

I rationalized this somewhat by not going over the daily limit for the klonopin, and only doing so with the oxycodone, because I care more about the trust between me and my psychiatrist than me and random doctor from the hospital who will never know about this.

With a lot of reluctance, I told therapist number 25 about this, but it took me two sessions to fully get out. At the time when I told him about this I wasn’t feeling suicidal any more. I came early though to that session to plan out my escape routes in case he tried to hospitalize me and I needed to bolt. I tossed a hat and sunglasses and change of clothing in my bag as well.

I brought up the idea during that session that my period may be relevant to some of my more serious mood problems. I’ve brought this up before with therapists. I never really can feel sure. Is it confirmation bias? I don’t have a good way to keep track of if my mood changes around my period. I don’t buy into those mood monthly calendars. All self report measures of mood are highly subjective and because I wouldn’t be blinded to when I have my period I question their validity.

I mentioned feeling conflicted about this due to my identity as a feminist. I don’t really have a fleshed out coherent argument about my feelings with this, just an uncomfortable feeling. Somehow I think that if I say the words feminism and menstruation enough my feelings will be clear to everyone.
The feelings have something to do with the society wanting to view women as overemotional on their periods, the medicalization of a normal process and the validity of PMDD as a diagnosis, but again I’m not good at expressing myself here. I can see both sides of an argument about PMDD.
He seemed confused about why feminism would be relevant to a discussion of PMDD. I can handle disagreement, especially since both sides of the argument are dueling it out in my brain. But I was shocked that he wouldn’t even be aware of the possible relevance of feminism to an issue involving menstruation. He seemed very perplexed and I was horrified.

He did apologize the following session without prompting, but still it was unsettling.

Then to make things even more exciting and wonderful (note the sarcasm) The therapist who kicked me out of school (I need a shorter way to refer to him) was on a major news network promoting his book.
Every bit of publicity feels like he is taunting me.

I sent him 3 angry tweets from my twitter account. This twitter account is public and associated with my real identity (not my real name, but the username I mostly use an also people I know in real like follow me there). Probably not my most brilliant idea ever, but I’m leaving them up. If any person searches for his @replies they will know that at least one person out there is very unhappy with him. They’re vague enough that if a person didn’t know the background they would know I was angry with him, but the reasons would be unclear.
This means he now has access to most of my social networking pages. That’s fine though as I put my best foot forward on those, unlike in this blog.

When I went to therapy to talk about this I was very let down. Awhile ago I made a comment about how klonopin makes me stupid, which it does. The stupidity occurs in varying degrees, but to have any relief from anxiety thoughts rushing around, some of the good smart thoughts are slowed down as well. Sometimes thoughts can even be of both types.
I commented on how I had to stop what I’d been working on (Probably for the better as is it was slightly destructive) when the klonopin kicked in, because I wasn’t able to think well enough. He decided to take this time to argue with me about wither I am on the correct dosage. I have had the dosage fiddled with to the point of adjusting it by increments of 1/4 of the smallest pill size. This is the right dose. I’ve been taking it at this dose for a couple of years. I’m not messing with it. He was convinced that there is some ideal dose where I won’t be anxious or stupid. I don’t believe this is possible, because the two are so intertwined and the impact of the same klonopin dose varies depending on the day.
The comments felt accusatory too. Like he thought I was abusing it, although I have never ever gone over my prescribed limit. In the context of previously telling him about my oxycodone and klonopin adventures I was very sensitive to this sort of comment, because I feel so guilty about it.

He was taking a super ego guilt inducing role. My super ego is super at making me feel guilty already thankyouverymuch.

I told him about something I had thought of doing, but did not do and he took his guilt induction much too far. I can’t write about the details here, but basically he took a thought of mine and turned it into a worst case scenario. I tried to protest, but he kept making it worse and worse. The things he was saying were already fears in my head. I didn’t need him to give them credibility.
I have far worse thoughts in my head that I haven’t told anyone. If he reacts with such a judgmental extreme to something less horrible then there’s no way he can handle the worst of me.

I felt like he was treating me like he thought I was a sociopath. He was playing this role of a conscious for me as if I had none.
If he had even a basic personality conceptualization of me he was working from to base his comments he’d have realized that I am already very skilled at guilt.

I stopped talking. I stared out the window for a bit.
Then, I pulled out my Nintendo DS and resumed the game I’d been playing in the waiting room. Really juvenile, but I don’t care.
My brother called while I was ignoring the therapist. I refused the call, but then he called again and I took it, upping my rudeness level by +10. He just had a quick answer to a question I’d had about the game I was playing.

After about 20 minutes of ignoring the therapist although with the occasional yes or no answer to a question I said “I think I should just leave”. And I did. He asked if I wanted to make another appointment and I said “No”.
There wasn’t anything he could say at the point that could have made me comfortable continuing therapy with him.
I hate myself already, I don’t need a therapist thinking I am awful as well.

I rushed out of the building, worried that I was going to be followed or stopped by security. Psychiatry departments are never placed near an easy exit and I think we all know this is not an accident.

I arrived home and decided to take some ibuprofen. I think the reason I am still alive after all these years is that I am awful at swallowing pills. If I were better at I’d have succeed years ago. I had liquid gel filled capsule type ibuprofen. I decided that if I dumped the liquid out and drank it that might work.
Turns out this is the worst idea ever. I tried opening one up, but it didn’t work well, so I decided to just put it in my mouth and bite it. It was extremely acidic. I ran to the sink to rinse my mouth out to stop the pain. My mouth and throat felt sore after, like I’d been vomiting.
With that method ruined, I gave up to the time being.

It’s a few days later and I’m okayish now. I’m not being very productive with school work. I’ve mostly been sleeping and eating ice cream. I don’t know what I’m going to do about the lack of a therapist situation. I hate starting over again and again.