Tag: kirkwallhellmouth does mental health

Guinness’ 200th Anniversary Export Stout is very, very nice.

Unfortunately my brain had to go and be an asshole and distract me from my lovely beer with all sorts of Decidedly Not Lovely Things. Which I won’t talk about right now, but i will talk about something else.

My psychologist understandably wants me to find things I enjoy that involve getting me out of the house and interacting with bearable numbers of peoples. Unfortunately, there’s not a lot to do when you’re over 30 in a college town and have no income. Not a lot of the stuff that would be cool to do that is available to me is free, and even if my parents would probably be happy to give me some money for a thing or two, I don’t want to make myself feel like more of a mooch than I already do.

But there are so many free things our public library has for 11 to 17 year olds now that I wish they’d had when I was that age! Movie nights, game nights, discussions of books/comics versus film versions–all sorts of nerdy wonderful stuff. And it kind of makes being 32 feel really…sucktastic.

Info getting session with therapist went nicely. She had a much warmer and compassionate vibe than the therapist who did my intake interview at the other place I briefly saw a psychiatrist. That first woman was cold and kinda mean, or at least too blunt. I explained how I thought processed about my anxiety and she said, very dismissively, “You’re intellectualising.” I didn’t exactly know what that was at the time, but my brain went “Well what the fuck am I supposed to do?” Ugh.

But yeah. This was much better. And they didn’t make me pee in a cup.

Thoughts:

If you grew up hearing (well-meaning) things like “you can do anything you put your mind to”/”follow your dreams”/”follow your bliss”/”find a job you love and it won’t ever feel like work”–those things are a lot like The American Dream ™. For some people, that works out. But for various reasons, it doesn’t work for others.

Sometimes you figure out that the career you spent years thinking you wanted has some stuff you can’t deal with. Sometimes you find out a job you thought you could be happy in turns into your mental health’s worst nightmare. And sometimes a job you think you can stick with because it has good insurance super changes things up on you and your mental health runs screaming out of the building.

If manage a dream job that works for you that you love and supports your needs, awesome. If that doesn’t work for you, find something that–even if you can’t love it–at least doesn’t make you want to be dead and also hopefully is enough to support your needs (fuck the US economy, health care system, and capitalism, tho, seriously). And that hopefully leaves you with some time to do things you do love, things that make you happy.

Good session with psychologist today. Managed to discuss pretty much all I wanted to make sure I did, and I feel quite a bit more at peace.

Up coming good thing: Local Ren Faire.

Up coming Something thing: Talking to local community college about what my process would be to enroll in a career tech program given that I…kind of have three degrees already.

So it is now 11:20am.

Apparently my psychologist’s office called at 8 something am (while I was apparently *deeply* asleep) to say they had TAKEN ME OFF of my appointment today, but wanted to double check if I still wanted it first. WTF. I had asked for this SPECIFICALLY because I DIDN’T want to wait till Halloween to see her again.

Called back to confirm and got answering service message so I pushed the number for assistance and got told the office was probably getting ready for lunch and to try back at 1pm.

I wanted to throw my phone across the room.

I know someone got confused somewhere, but I’d have been gutted to show up and find out I’d been canceled.

Made notes on my phone of things I want to bring up next time I see psychologist.

Also gonna admit that I was That Kid who was precocious and )1 listened to Dracula book-on-tape in 2nd grade and made herself afraid of the dark and 2) snuck true crime shows on Sunday afternoons when parents took a nap and this was definitely not helpful in the way I felt about becoming “visibly female” when I started getting boobs.

I’m in a “songs sung blue”/sad mood.

This music night brought to you by my complicated with gender and my body and my anxiety on how my psychologist is taking what because Conversation Interuptus happened today and i don’t see her again till Halloween 😐

It sucks when you’re really getting into some of the meatier part of something, and then it turns out your session time is up, because unlikeyou your psychologist has a better tuned concept of time.

And so then you’re stuck hoping you remember all the things you wanted to continue with when you have the next session, but until then you sit on your anxiety’s desire to Hulk Smash and try to convince it to calm down.

Q’s that will be answered differently than the first time whenever I manage to see a mental health professional:

Have you ever experienced thoughts of suicide?

Have you ever experienced thoughts of self harm?

Have you ever experienced any sort of dysphoria?