Maladapative Modern Medical Matchups

Another therapy session today, and not a good one. I tried to share about how I had done something I felt like was progress for me – about how, after feeling like I wasn’t getting what I wanted out of The Screed in terms of social engagement, I had decided to express my expectations and my motivations for them and ask for help rather than just doubling down on my lone typer routine. About how I had felt slightly shaken to see how little of me or how little of our relationships people see in the sharing I do here, but how I used that to assess my methods instead of invalidating my efforts.

But we didn’t talk about that. Instead I spent the whole hour being misunderstood about the nature of The Screed. Some misunderstanding is unavoidable because this person doesn’t know me yet and doesn’t have all the necessary context. But I don’t think I should have to try so hard to correct that situation, at least not when I know what I mean and feel able to communicate it.

I felt like I had to defend a thing I consider to be one of the better parts of my life – this sharing to my friends – against a whole series of somewhat unkind assumptions that the therapist was unwilling or unable to move away from. They clearly thought things like: I was being obsessive, I was failing to set boundaries, we didn’t have relationships outside this document, we weren’t actually friends, I was harassing people, I wasn’t really sharing, etc. At the time I felt misunderstood but tried to just keep going until it worked. After the fact I feel even worse about it when I analyze the way they must have been imagining me to have the interaction we did.

So week 3 was worse than week 2. Worse than week 1. Even the followup suggestions for next week still misunderstand what I am doing and how I think it’s going. So next week I guess we’ll talk about how I feel both misunderstood and hurt, and we’ll see if there’s anything useful that comes of that. I was never very convinced this therapist could help and I’m not more convinced now. I know I can fire them and I intend to next week of it doesn’t go a lot better, or doesn’t address the problems this week.

Of course then I’ll be back to not having a therapist and feeling like I can’t be understood by any – that I will never get very good help (or even reliably protect myself from bad help). But that is presumably better than continuing to pay for and deal with something I don’t think will work, or doing something that repeats the same broken pattern I’ve had before in therapy.

Talked to M about medication to go with therapy. I have no compunction about using drugs to alter my brain chemistry, nor any worry that I wouldn’t be me. But I also have no perspective on how it might help (nor does there appear to be great research about it with respect to PTSD), or how to compare the desired and undesired impacts. And I’m still pretty weak on being able to use a physician to help me with that (nor do I trust that they’d provide me with sufficiently good regulation absent my own informed monitoring). So it’s probably like step 7 when I’m still at step “find a therapist who can help”.

Other things happened but they can wait for the next episode. Tonight I’m trying to get soemthing like enough sleep and ranting about therapy is the bit I wanted to do to make sleep eaiser.

ZiB

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Sent from a phone.