03-14-07 @ 6:44 am EDT

Latest psychologist appointment. Not much to report here anyway.

I actually had an appointment with Psychiatrist a while back (the third, I think...?), but there wasn't much to report of that either, just a med review, the typical questions; she asked if I wanted to increase my dosage and I said no (in truth I want to just get off the things entirely, lot of good that they're doing). She just changed the two .5mg clonazepam a day to one 1mg a day, so had to cancel the old prescription and write a new one. Thing was, not only was I late in telling Ma to get it refilled (I'm bad at calculating when I'll run out of meds), but the pharmacy refused to refill it without calling Psychiatrist, because she'd written the wrong year (2006) on it, and this was on a weekend so I had to go without taking clonazepam for at least two or three days. Now, I've heard that it's REALLY BAD to go off clonazepam cold turkey, because it makes you even more anxious...but nothing happened. No change in mood, no increased anxiety, no decreased anxiety, nothing. Same as when I ran out of Lexapro a while back and had to go without for a few days. I'm willing to bet good money that if I quit both drugs cold turkey, right this minute, there would be no noticeable change in my mood or behavior. I'm NOT doing that, because they'll slap another label of "noncompliant" on me and claim I don't want to get better bla bla bla, but I'm fairly certain I'd win the bet. Neither drug is doing squat, so I don't see the point in taking them.

In fact I think my OCD symptoms have increased a little bit since starting all this, but maybe that's just me acting out or something. Winter does tend to make me more squeamish.

I mentioned, when Psychiatrist brought up eating, that I think I've gained weight (again -_- ), and she said that Lexapro can cause this (which I already know), but I think it's just my lousy eating habits at work. She mentioned exercise but there aren't any useful exercise routines I can ever stick to. If I don't see something working RIGHT NOW, I conclude that it's useless and stop doing it. Plus I never make time. And I'm too embarrassed to do most exercises anyway, even if I'm alone, like the walls have eyes. (Oh no, there's my schizotypal side again. Shut up.)

Anyway, back to the psychologist appointment. It wasn't much. I had to have Dad take time off early from work to drive me as Ma was stuck at work and the grandma of mine who can actually drive is out of state. (Sorry, Grandma H., but I think you gave me PTSD from that one car ride alone.) He joked the previous night that he would pull in at 1:30 and I would have to jump out of the door and into the vehicle without him even stopping, but when he showed up around 1:30 and I did exactly this he couldn't believe that I wanted to leave so "early." (!) So we had to quibble about that a bit. He waited in the vehicle when I went inside; I couldn't use the bathroom at first as there was a couple out there having a dispute or something and someone was already in there, so I went in and waited at the front desk forever because nobody was in the office to see to me. :/ There's a bell, but nobody likes it when you ring those things. Finally someone showed up and said they'd tell Psychologist I was there. THEN I left to go use the bathroom, and came back in to wait. Somebody was filling out intake papers (I assume) and she had this really LOUD breathing. I mean, not like she was rasping or wheezing or being perverted, she just breathed loudly, and gave a gusty sigh every so often. For some reason I found this highly annoying. She fidgeted a lot, too. I notice that when I'm anxious and in public, I don't tend to fidget, I just go really still and quiet. People must think I'm catatonic or something.

Psychologist was REALLY late in finally coming out to get me. Turns out that they had some patches installed on their computers, and now everything was chaos as people were losing things and finding things and misplacing things and whatnot. She asked if I had a really KICKING computer, because of all the art and photos and writing I post online?--and I laughed and said no, I still have a dialup connection, which shocked her. What do I do when I have to upload things, then, she asked?--to which I dryly replied, "Wait." Ha ha. It's true. That's also why I multitask; if I just sat here uploading things and doing nothing else I'd slowly go mad, because with dialup it's not like I could quickly go mad.

Anyway, all that we had time to do anyway was an annual review, which consisted of her sitting at the computer typing at light speed (and for abnormally long periods) while asking me various questions--what jobs do your parents have, do you practice a religion, any homicidal thoughts, stuff like that. She asked me once, as if out of curiosity, if I'd ever had my IQ tested and I had to admit that I didn't THINK so (though don't those tests we have to take before getting into college, the SATs and whatever equivalent there is, count sort of as IQ tests...?). This question puzzled me and she said, "It's because you just kind of strike me as being brighter than most people we usually get in here--you seem more like a thinking, introspective type." (Introspective, yes, thinking, HA!!--I'm a feeling type, not a thinking type, just look at all my rants.) That was kind of nice to hear, but no, I've never been IQ tested that I recall, never had any need of it. :/ Besides, I'm betting my IQ is just slightly above average--like most regular people, big deal--and I've heard that those tests are terribly subjective and misleading. I don't know how they run an IQ test but if it's similar to exams then firstly, I'd totally suck at the math segment, and at anything having to do with spatial relations, like "What would this shape form if folded up into a 3-D shape, and which side would the dot be on?"--whatever they call that, I suck at it. Those were always my weakest points on such tests. And even with language skills, what I know is more intuitive than anything. Sure, I learned the rules at one point, but along the way I forgot the rules and just remembered how they WORK. I'm like a musician who can't write music; it just comes to me. I can read any piece of writing and point out almost everything that's grammatically wrong with it, but as for telling you WHY these things are wrong, I'm stumped, I just "know." And I can't remember the names of various verb forms and how to diagram sentences and junk like that, all I know how to do is string them together. So even on the language-based part of a test, I might not necessarily do too well. I've heard lots of times of people flunking out on IQ tests but proving themselves to be geniuses in one way or another. Even an illiterate imbecile can paint a gorgeous picture if he has that particular skill.

This is something I'm kind of learning regarding drawing. Drawing is SO HARD for me, and I often half-joke that writing hundreds of thousands of words is way easier. Just like writing a novella or a serial is much easier to me than writing a drabble or a short story (I've never written a drabble, never will, impossible for me). There just seem to be particular areas some people are so good in, and some that they suck at. I personally regard my writing as good, but my drawing, although good for ME, is blah compared to lots of stuff on DeviantArt, for example. Yet when I look at these gorgeous works of art by these talented people, I often notice that their writing/language skills are eh at best and crap at worst. It seems like most of the people who are great artists aren't that good at writing, and most of the people who are great writers aren't that good at art. Once in a while you'll find somebody who's good at both, but not that often. We just seem to have our particular areas of talent. I don't know, maybe art and language come from different parts of the brain. I'm a highly visual person (mention a weird scenario and I can usually picture it in my head crystal clear, like last night when I supposed that my hamster must be a vampire and the teeny thing creeps out of his cage at night to feed off the cat's blood), but when it comes to actually translating what I see in my head into art or words, I find words much easier than art. (I'm pretty sure my attempt at drawing said vampiric hamster would be pretty lame.)

So...that was my rant on IQ tests, I guess. o_o Back to the appointment. I already said that basically she asked a bunch of questions and did a lot of typing. She asked if I wanted a copy of what she'd typed and I said yes. She showed it to me and explained all the different segments--she included individual and/or family therapy, to cover Ma in case I should want her to come in sometime, though it wasn't required. She'd also scheduled us tentatively for another year, and had taken down the various types of goals that I listed when she asked, for example, helping out the family financially, maybe making a few friends online, increasing my self-confidence, etc. I could see her once a month or once every two weeks, she left that up to me. I could also fill out the "consumer satisfaction" area of the printout but I'm still mulling this whole situation over so I asked if I could leave it blank and she said sure--"Some people just have a LOT to say--'Your waiting room is ugly, etc. etc....'" (I always try to sit in the same spot in the waiting room as there's an invisible dragon in the carpeting and I like to look at it, it's like something that's always the same, though once in a while I can't find it and that makes me sad. -_- It took me a while to find it today because the chair had been slightly moved.) So basically she explained all this, I signed it, and went out to make another appointment at the front desk on my own. I hated asking to meet again in two weeks as opposed to a month since I feel like that's too needy, especially when they're so busy there. -_- I hate having to make such decisions on my own.

Oh, I recall that when we came to the "Communication goals" part of the form we both fell silent and she gave me an odd look and I must have had an odd look too, and I said, "I don't know..." to which she agreed, she didn't really get it either, because as she put it, I'm so fantastic at communication, what goal would I possibly have? I was ready to counter that with my tendency of misunderstanding people's motives, and my apparent inability to communicate certain feelings and such to certain people (e. g. my parents--when I couldn't make eye contact with a relative a week or so ago Ma called me IGNORANT!--she said it's "ignorant" for me to "choose" to not make eye contact with people!--I'm in THERAPY because of this and she STILL thinks I just do this to be annoying?? :( --no amount of my attempts to explain my own side to her helped any...). A better example, I recently got a sarcastic review of Manitou Island at FP and when I THOUGHT I replied to it in a levelheaded way, simply advising the commenter that sarcasm doesn't tend to work very well on me, I seemed to offend or upset them and they sent a rather scathing reply. I again "slept on it" and replied as courteously as I could, and I guess that smoothed things over, but still, despite my skills with the English language, I really can't seem to convey emotions well or judge others' reactions well. (I got a cheery response from the person in question, and they say they aren't being sarcastic, but there's always a part of me that says people are always being sarcastic with me!--I've just had so many bad experiences of taking people at their word and then being shown up as a gullible idiot. Perhaps that's why I'm so bad with compliments, I always figure they aren't sincere.) So I really do have some difficulties with communication. Perhaps I should have simply said, "Learn to reply to people without chickening out all the time," I need work with that, definitely.

Well...I think I've gone on long enough. Before I left Psychologist said that we got that out of the way, and next time we could do what we're REALLY supposed to do in therapy. So I still don't know exactly what she plans to do. You know, I've been mulling over what I think could be helpful to me in regaining some of my lost self-confidence, but I'm not sure if she would agree (she might see it as just whining), or if it WOULD actually help me. I'd like to simply sit and talk with her and describe the various crappy situations I've been through in my attempts to make friends, and where they went wrong, and how that made me feel, and all the thoughts I've gone over trying to determine how I must have messed up, because as the logical part of my brain says, there's no WAY I could run into so many jerks by chance, I MUST be messing this up myself. But another logical part of my brain asks, how could I POSSIBLY keep messing this up when I've tried every method I know how to keep friends, surely I've just tried befriending the wrong people? So you see how it goes. I thought maybe if I explained these situations with her, she might provide an unbiased voice in suggesting to me what might have REALLY gone wrong all these times, if it was my fault or not, what I could have done differently, and, if I did everything right, maybe eventually I would come to learn that it's just been bad luck/bad selection on my part and not me being somehow intrinsically bad as a person. And maybe I would gain back a bit of self-confidence. But I don't know, maybe she'd see this as just whining.

It'd also be nice to just have someone to talk with about the things that matter to me, not that I feel comfortable doing that with a therapist since her time is so limited she couldn't even read one chapter of my story. Something I meant to include in my last therapy entry but forgot--I think therapy can actually be more detrimental to a lot of people than helpful, and here's why. You go into therapy and the therapists asks you to list all the bad things that happen, and you spend the session going over bad things. Then at the end of the session, the therapist tells you to go home and think about GOOD things and NOT think about all the bad things, in order to get better. Meanwhile in the session you never really talk about the good things because that's not the goal of therapy in the first place. So you're conditioned to just go and talk about bad stuff, dwell on it, and you never get to talk about the good things that happen without feeling like you're wasting time. Granted, some therapists are different, but that's the gist I get of it. See how counterproductive this can be? I think therapy would be a lot more useful if, instead of going in and talking about all the bad stuff you've been through, you were encouraged to talk about that, AND about the good stuff, and all the in-between stuff, and about things that matter to you, whether they're related to getting better or not, without the therapist acting bored or pressed for time. We patients are told to take an active interest in our own therapy--therapists should have to do this too, and not just by listening to us, but by being INTERESTED in us as patients and as regular people. A therapist I could rant to about what latest thing has gone wrong and she could provide a counterview, who would encourage me when I talk about positive things, who would even show more than a passing interest (like my last psychologist) in my projects that mean a lot to me--THAT would be a way-useful therapist.

Face it. Some people just want someone they can TALK to, about the good and the bad, without boring somebody else off or getting a bland "Mm-hm" or "That's nice" in response. I can try talking to my parents if that's the kind of response I want...

Come to think of it, those are the exact same qualities I'd like in a real friend, except magnified, of course.

So, I guess we meet again near the end of March if the appointment isn't kicked back again like it was this time, and then I find out exactly what she plans to do or plans to have me do. *sigh*

In personal news, I'm over a quarter of the way done with the 100 Picture Challenge! :D http://tehuti.deviantart.com/journal/11112522/

We've now been getting at least one or two big fat fox squirrels eating at the bird feeder on the porch, in addition to the numerous red squirrels, and now the chipmunks, who've finally awakened. I've taken to calling the foxes "Mr. Fatsy" and the reds "Little Joe," so for example if I look out on the porch and see the fox and a red sitting out there eating, I'll say, "Oh, it's Mr. Fatsy and Little Joe." Don't ask me where these names came from, they just popped into my head one day when I looked outside and said just that. Then if another red comes along I'll say, "Oh, another Little Joe...SQUIRREL FIGHT!!" When there was heavier snow in the yard the reds would tunnel under it and pop out every so often like little Vietcong or something. Mr. Fatsy just tends to sit and watch the reds like they're morons interrupting his meal. And now there are the chipmunks again to contend with, as well as the poor chickadees who I put the food out there for in the first place...urgh.

Some guy who cut his wife into pieces was apprehended just a county over from us, the county where I was born. O_o Freaky. I'm annoyed that Yahoo! said in the news article that his truck had been found "near the bridge connecting Michigan's Upper and Lower Peninsula." Um, the bridge has a NAME. Morons.

I also offered tobacco for the first time yesterday. *cringe* See, I finally managed to explain to Ma that I wanted to purchase some loose tobacco to make offerings with, and she thought that was strange, but at least there was no argument. I've been trying to find out HOW one makes offerings as I have no real clue--I know it varies but I didn't want to be disrespectful. I asked on an American Indian message board at Beliefnet and was told that yes, rituals vary, but as long as I did it with a sincere heart it should count. I did find one interesting thing about tobacco being placed at the east side of a tree when one has a pressing question they want addressed, which I found surprising because that was exactly where I planned to leave some tobacco, at the east side of a tree (!). I don't want to use it for selfish purposes, though. So I bought this big bag of tobacco ("Vanilla Cavendish"...it was either that or Cherry or Whiskey something, and whiskey tobacco just seems kind of...defeating the purpose o_o ) and then put it in my room and had no clue what to do, I felt so stupid. Stupid White Girl offering tobacco to spirits that might not even exist. Ugh. Yesterday was very nice and balmy out, so I finally went out and meekly tossed a few sprinkles around the tree and stump in question, first asking Kabebonikka (North Wind/Wintermaker) to go away peacefully and let there be a good spring, then asking Zeegwun (Spring) to come and bring a good season, then asking the rain spirits to bring lots of rain so the trees can bud properly and bring a good summer. I tossed little bits of tobacco so the wind carried them a bit rather than bury them, as I read on one site, as it's supposed to be the smell that the spirits like, and seeing as I was offering it to the North Wind and Spring and the rain spirits, I figured that the tobacco being aboveground made more sense. Well, I hope it helps, I want the trees to be nice and lush this year. Maybe I'll try again on the equinox or something.

I felt really stupid contemplating this, but I found a quote recently from author Louise Erdrich, who often writes about the Ojibwa, which helped strengthen my resolve a bit:

In preparing for her trip Louise purchases a large amount of loose tobacco, which among the Ojibwe, as she tells us, "begins every noteworthy enterprise and is given as a thank you note at the end of every significant event." Sometimes people smoke it, more often they cast it into the wind or bury it at the base of a tree as an offering to the spirits. (Louise's favorite is a pipe tobacco with the brand name "Nokomis.") Just when we're about to accuse her of "playing Indian," she asks herself the question we would ask if we had the chance. Doe [sic] she believe all of this?

"After a while such questions stopped mattering. Believing or not believing, it was all the same. I found myself compelled to behave toward the world as if it contained sentient spiritual beings. The question of whether or not they actually existed became irrelevant. After I'd stopped thinking about it for a while, the ritual of offering tobacco became comforting and then necessary. Whenever I offered tobacco I was for that moment fully there, fully thinking, willing to address the mystery." http://www.nodinpress.com/macaroni/spring06_books.htm

I still hate buying and handling tobacco, though. Blech.

Oh. ONE more thing. Seeing as I didn't reply individually to the notes I got on my last entry (AGAIN...another non-habit I have to break), I wanted to say thank you here to the people who replied after reading that. I appreciate the replies especially because this was the very same novel I posted online at Open Diary back in 2000 or so, and it was ROYALLY FLAMED by somebody from the old Four Board (that's in old old entries for anyone who's wondering), who then turned to harassing me under various aliases when I tried blocking them and asked them to please stop. As a result, I've had almost zero confidence in that story and that series for a VERY long time. The troll DID teach me a lesson in a roundabout way, though; the stories really ARE poorly written. But that's only because I wrote them over a decade ago. So on the one hand this asinine person did me a favor, but they did it in completely the wrong way, and for years destroyed my belief in that series. I haven't been writing for quite a while but felt like redoing that chapter just to see what would happen and if it would actually improve any. I hope I can improve the rest of it so it's not so embarrassing to have posted online. I love that series, but the writing itself...ugh. Horrible.

So to receive encouraging comments on that really helped. You should see the ORIGINAL first chapter...I think it's posted at my Papyri journal...OMG AWFULNESS.

Well, I'm running late, and have to post this. Not checked for typos. *sigh*