Extremely Bad Day

 Depression has completely overtaken me. I heard back from the teledoc app and found out why the therapist I saw Tuesday “requested cancellation” and thought I was a bad fit. In the beginning of the session she asked me if I’d been to a psychiatrist or therapist before and what my diagnosis was. I answered honestly. I suffered panic attacks for 10 years, and saw some 8-10 mental health professionals during that decade. They mostly diagnosed me with different things, but the most consistent diagnosis was anxiety or panic attacks. She then asked why I was diagnosed with many different things. I simple said, because this isn’t an empirical science. There is no blood test or imaging that can give a definitive diagnosis. All there is is the provider’s interpretation of what I’m telling them. 

Teledoc got back to me to let me know that she said I made an inappropriate comment that psychiatry wasn’t a “real” science. And I am 100% sure I didn’t say “real.”  I said “empirical.”  What really burns me is the fact that she didn’t even stop me when I said it to sort of explain the DSM or anything. (The DSM is still not the same as a blood test or imaging), but she could have back tracked and sought further explanation. Instead she chose to give me a dirty look through the entire session. She allowed me to open up about regretting my college degree and actually argued with me about it. She allowed me to say I’d just gotten married to someone I met at work, which women like herself generally believe is unacceptable. 

I feel extremely defeated and can not even function today. I forgot why I even sought out therapy. I don’t even want to get out of my bed. My cat is out of retirement from his therapy cat days and laying on my head. (He’s not an official therapy cat, I just call him that.). 

The only positive thing is that my daughter had her prom. Here are some pictures. I’m glad she can’t see me like this. 

At the end of the day, what I said was true. There are no physical tests to test for psychiatric conditions, and that’s a fact whether it offends someone or not. If they feel that strongly about it, they can get to work developing a physical test. I remember getting extra credit in college for participating in psychological studies where all I had to do was answer questions. No one could control what I or anyone else answered. It’s the truth whether anyone likes it or not or not. 

Therapy Update

 I was willing to give the therapist with the judge mental eyebrows one more shot. You know what it was more of a dirty look. Not only that but she was arguing with me the whole time. When I told her that my panic attacks started when I graduated college, she argued with me that getting a degree was “always worth it.”  I simply responded, “Not for me.”  When I said that people in my family had a problem with me getting married and only wanted me to have a career, she pushed back and said, “But it’s your choice.”  And when she found out that Kevin and I met at work and that he’s 12 years older than me, the look on her face showed an insane amount of disapproval, but I think she could tell that I wasn’t back ing down from my “choice”. 

Well two nights ago, I got a message on the teledoc app saying that she was requesting cancellation and didn’t even give me a reason why. I was flabbergasted. It was obvious that my suspicions were correct and she just had a problem with me as a person. It explains the evil eye she gave me the whole entire time. Forget addressing my health anxiety anymore. I spent all yesterday just a crying mess. We live in a society where everyone worships therapy. It’s the only solution to anything. I was completely nonfunctional yesterday and yes I did call the main number asking why this happened. What was her reason for doing this to me. It’s absolutely pointless though. I don’t know how I’m going to function this upcoming week. It’s been extremely hard and I do not even know if I want to know why she had such a low opinion of me. Maybe she’s against my age gap relationship and the fact that we met at work, maybe she’s against the fact that I regret my college degree. I don’t know I just know that things were mostly fine and now they’re not fine at all and I’m not fine in the slightest 

Helpfulness of Therapy

 I’m seeing that therapist for the second time on Tuesday evening. I know it was my choice to go, but now I seem to be dreading it. I just don’t find it helpful after all. At the end of the session, she tried to teach me box breathing. I know all about breathing techniques, and in fact, there are several things you can do in the moment for panic attacks that are well known. A long time ago, I found an article 13 Things to do for a Panic Attack. 

In fact, if you google that, several more articles come up regurgitating the same tips and adding a couple additional tips here and there. When it comes to panic attacks, I feel like any therapist I see is just going to paraphrase those articles, give me the same tips, and nothing else. 

Also, I was not able to do my routine blood work yesterday because the order from teledoc still has my old last name on it. I changed my name at the dmv Monday. So I spent yesterday correcting that hassle. Now I have to go back to fedex office and print the order again. 

Regarding the 13 things to do for panic attacks- it’s not exactly that some of them “work” and some “don’t work”. It’s that they all work and don’t work at different times, depending on a million different things. I remember writing down for one therapist what “percentage of the time” each one worked, but the percentages fluctuate. That therapist just sat there and argued with me that they should work all the time, because “they are backed by science.”  I didn’t have the confidence at the time to tell her that in those scientific studies, at least some of the participants did state that it didn’t work. The findings are an overall thing. I shouldn’t have had to argue that to someone with a master’s degree. 

We’re having heavy storms today with flash flooding, so I can’t go to fedex until later today or tomorrow. Then hopefully I can do my fasting blood Monday and THEN I also have to go report my name change to the social security office. 

Everything seems like such a pain in the ass all of a sudden. 

Seed ball Garden Update 🪴 🌿

My seed ball mixtures of 3 kinds of squash, spinach, cilantro and catnip now look like this. 

My father in law fell about a month ago and since then hasn’t been himself. Because of this, we didn’t want to ask him if we could plant them in the ground. We live on his property in the guest house. So we bought this planter. I’m not sure how it will work but at least now we have it. It’s reusable. 

 

Quilt Rows

I went through two drawers full of blue and gray denim quilt blocks and pieced them together in rows of 7 blocks. I thought I could make a denim chenille quilt for my Etsy shop that consisted of 7 rows of 7 blocks (all of the previous ones were 6 rows of 6 blocks). I put the rows together, and I realized that I had two different shades of gray. The inconsistency gave me a bad case of the irritation. Here’s the before:

So I took some of them apart and took some of my remaining blocks apart just enough to fix it so it’s all the dark shade of gray. The end result is now only 6 rows of 7 blocks, but still a good size and the colors look more uniform. 

I thought back to my real estate class. It taught that if all houses in a sub division look the same, then the value increases. You may support someone’s right to choose to paint their own house purple, but the reality is that it will bring the value of the whole block or sub division down. That’s why those pesky HOA’s exist. I guess they’re a necessary evil, even though I really wish people could do as they wished with their own houses. Same went with this quilt. I have a better chance of selling it if the rows looked better. 

 

Therapy 👿😾👺

 This evening I had a therapy session. I would like to work through my fear of routine medical tests and the fear that something extremely catastrophic will happen just because I’m happy and in a good place now. I briefly described how I feel, what my goals are for therapy, and how I had extremely debilitating panic attacks for approximately ten years. The therapist had judgmental eyebrows. I don’t know how to describe it. She was knotting her eyebrows the whole time, and maybe she was concentrating. Otherwise, therapy was ok. She convinced me to go for my bloodwork. I’m off Friday and Monday, so I can go then- I just need to find out where to go. So I sent a general message on teledoc saying I looked on my order and can’t find where to go. They will answer in the morning. At least I hope. She gave me a breathing exercise. To me, breathing exercises don’t work well. I didn’t tell her that. I just let her think she was helping, because I feel like I’m going to need her at bay until I’m done getting all these tests. I need bloodwork, a Pap smear, a mammogram, and a colonoscopy. And even those aren’t going to ease my fears because what if I have a brain tumor?  They don’t screen yearly for that. 

I told her that I lost three cousins three years in a row in car accidents. Then two years after the last one, a friend of my mom died of pancreatic cancer and a year after that, the husband of another of her friends died of the same thing. Both of these people were health nuts!  The man ran marathons, and the woman was a yoga teacher. Anything can happen to anyone.  But this therapist said, that’s not a pattern. That was helpful. Catastrophic events do not happen in any kind of pattern, even if they seem to. 

Work is going ok. It’s slow, but still mildly steady. At the end of April we have a big ass busy spurt with a lot of overtime so I’m bracing myself. I found this picture online, and it reminds me of myself in my severe panic attack days  the woman in this painting also sort of looks like me when I was in my 30’s  

Quilts are fuzzy!

Today I went to Brenham, Texas to do some side jobs and wash my finished denim chenille quilts at a laundromat that I know has great washers and dryers. I think the quilts look so cute!  I put the rainbow one on my side of the bed and the other two I bagged up and put away, because they’ll be for sale. 

I also picked a bluebonnet.  

I was tempted to visit the Blue Bell ice cream factory. They are right down the street from this truck stop, and have $1 per scoop ice cream. But I resisted. I’ve been doing great with eating healthy. I’ve lost 25 pounds in the last 15 months. I want to lose about 40 more.