Posted by fallsfall on February 13, 2004, at 7:41:54
Too many things going on. I just want to rant a little, OK, a lot.
Therapy is finally taking a breather. It has been so intense - I have needed his approval, but he wants me to approve myself so he withholds. This is a good direction, but he went too far and I was falling apart. Monday I was able to convince him that he had to give me some approval or I wasn't going to make it - and he did. And I felt better - like I could start functioning again. Thursday was better. I asked what I needed to do to make sure I don't end up there again. He said that the two of us had to work on that. I can tell when it is feeling too much, so I'll be more explicit the next time - and I'm hoping that he'll listen to me and let up. I know that we will have to go through this needing but not getting cycle many, many times but eventually I'll get better at approving of myself and I won't need him to do it so much. So we talked about my rebellions (dropping out of college and marrying a man "beneath me" as far as my family was concerned). It was interesting because he sees a very dependent person who made some radical rebellious moves in her early 20s. He doesn't know that I wasn't dependent then. I was so strong - omnipotent - then. How could I be so strong then and so dependent now. An interesting discussion.
My daughter was home after school, but went to her dad's to eat dinner. On Wednesday she whined and complained that she felt awful and couldn't go to school. I could see no evidence of a virus or other sickness. But I know that her sleep schedule and eating schedule has been awful. She has said recently that she is only 15 - that she will do all the right things when she is older - so she is regressing a little (which is OK when you are 15). I pointed out that if she wanted me to take care of her that it would include limiting the amount of activity that she was doing as well as making sure she was eating and sleeping. That it sort of came as a package. I could tell that she really didn't feel good - so we made a deal. She would focus on eating - promising to eat at least one good meal a day, and preferably two(this usually means taking a lunch to school, and actually eating what a parent provides for dinner, and I promised that I would always have "real" food for her to eat). This will be good for me, too - I should focus more on eating well. Thursday she wakes up with very bad cramps - I give her Aleve, and finally get her moving into school at 11:30. Last night I had to leave the house at 9 to help a friend, and she promised me that it was no problem that she would get herself into bed - that I didn't have to worry about her (bedtime is 10). When I got home at 11:30 she was up. She had been doing laundry and chatting on the computer and she wanted me to help her fill out her W-4 form for work at 11:30PM. I told her to go to bed and we could look at it in the morning - she would just have to get right out of bed. She was livid that I wouldn't look at it at 11:30 PM when she had promised to go to bed at 10 and had missed 1 1/2 days of school already this week. Then she was tired this morning and was 15 minutes late for school - blaming it on me because I wouldn't discuss the W-4 at 11:30.
My friend was having a rough night and needed me to come remove a dangerous object from her house. I was annoyed because she had been told to get rid of it on Tuesday, and I was at her house on Tuesday and she should have given it to me then. But I love this friend dearly and I want so badly for her to find peace in her life. I really didn't mind going to see her and making sure that she was safe. We decided not to go to the hospital, and she took her evening meds so I knew that she would be sleeping soon. And we put her meds in the little boxes so it would be easier for her to know if she had taken them. And I loved her and told her a bedtime story to take away all the harmful thoughts. She called her therapist so she'll talk to her therapist in the morning, and this morning she'll call me when she gets up, too. I wish I could give her peace - but all I have is love and determination. So I give her those.
And earlier in the evening my sister called. She was recently diagnosed BiPolar instead of Depressed. As she started telling me about what she was working on in therapy I was amazed because the underlying family-while-we-were-growing-up issues that she was talking about were EXACTLY the same issues that I've been talking about THIS week. We could see that though we exhibit the symptoms differently, that the underlying issues are really the same (fear of doing the wrong thing and losing the parent's approval). It was a powerful discussion and let me know more clearly that some of these issues really were caused by real things that our parents did or didn't do. I guess that my sister and I hadn't realized how similar the underlying psychopathology was. So this caused some deep thinking.
I need to go to the grocery store so I will have food for my daughter to eat. I only slept for 5 1/2 hours and I'd really rather go back to bed. I feel like I'm just barely holding on, and I hope that today can be peaceful.
Thanks for listening to my rant. It helps to get it all out in bits and bytes. And it helps me when other people read what I write - just so I'm not alone with it. You don't need to help, or give advice (though I would be happy to get either) - I just need some containment - some holding - so that I can stay cohesive. Just knowing that someone else knows what is going on helps with that containment and keeps me together.
poster:fallsfall
thread:312740
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20040209/msgs/312740.html