Medication
jwd50 asked over on the Ask AG page why I had never spoken about medications. And I realized its mainly because I have been stable on my medication for a long time such that I don’t really give it a lot of thought. But I know it can be an issue that a lot of people struggle with, so I thought I would share my experiences.
DISCLAIMER: I want to be very clear here that I am neither a professional therapist nor am I a medical doctor. What I am writing is based on my own experiences and reading, is anecdotal in nature and should not be taken as medical advice. Medications, their benefits and risks, should be discussed with a medical professional. People can also have widely varying reactions to this class of drugs, so I will not be mentioning the name of either medication I have used. Continue Reading
Finally Back
Greetings gentle readers,
That hiatus was a twee bit longer than I anticipated. The end of the release kept stretching out without the hours getting any better (the upside is I earned a ton of comp time, for once I’ll have as many vacation days as my husband. 
) and no sooner was I done, then my husband went into a refuel outage. As in, I finished up on Friday and he started overtime on Monday. So I took over all household duties from him and he took over 12 hour days/six days a week from me. I do not think either of us was thrilled about the trade. 
We’re having trouble remembering what “normal” looks like.
It’s not really about my mom
Don’t want to leave everyone in suspense but between my schedule and the fact that I am in the midst of trying to understand what is going on inside of me, this will be brief (ok, admittedly, brief is a relative concept with me ). While BN recognized that, of course, it hurt that my mother ignored my birthday, I was incredibly clear about the situation and completely understood what was going on. He pretty much nodded and uh-huhed his way through the beginning of the session. He told me later that he had not said a thing or offered any insight because I didn’t need any. That I was handling the hurt from my mom better now than in the past and that it would get better in the future. That maybe I was struggling to find compassion for her and maybe that would come easier in the future, maybe it wouldn’t but it was ok either way. Continue Reading
How do you protect yourself from the hurt?
***UPDATE AT END OF POST
Greetings all, sorry I know I have been completely absent as of late. I am still working 10-12 hours a day, six days a week. Should be done in about two weeks which will be nice as I am missing having a life. But I am also very much struggling with being hurt and thought writing might help, so I am going to sneak in a post despite my schedule.
MIA for a bit
Just wanted to let everyone know that I may be a bit scarce around the blogosphere for a bit. We are coming up on a full release and since I’m the last guy in the pipeline, I tend to get very busy around now. I’m working 11-12 hour days, six days a week right now which means I’m devoting my down time to eating, sleeping, bathing and occasionally saying hello to my husband.
So I will post and comment as I have the energy for it, but wanted everyone to know that responses to comments and emails will be taking a longer time than usual. So if you write and nothing happens, please don’t think its anything you did, just a temporary lack of resources on my part. The release is scheduled for the end of March, so I should return to being a fully functional death star then. Thanks!
Handling the Erotic Transference: Male Patient, Female Therapist
Seem to be getting lots of queries about erotic transference, otherwise known as falling for your shrink. Since I specialize in treating men, thought I'd take a crack at the subject from the particular angle of male patient/female therapist.
Male patients - all patients - bring to therapy the gender role expectations, attitudes and behaviors they experience in their other male-female relationships.
Why keep going back?
***Trigger warning: Religious content, I talk about my Christian faith in pretty specific terms late in the post.
A reader emailed to ask me a question whose answer I thought would make a good topic for a post. So with their kind permission, the question is below, followed by my answer.
I would like to ask how you got through it. I mean when the feelings became so intense with your therapist, how were you able to keep going back? What stopped you leaving?
This is a really good question. There were so many times I threatened to quit, or told BN I wanted to quit. I lost track of how many times I said (often out loud) “I cannot do this anymore, I can’t take it.” Sometimes on the way to therapy. I wish there were a simple answer to this question, but it was, as usual, a complex interplay of a number of factors. Experience, fear, attraction, desire, longing, faith, hope, determination and belief. One at a time, all at once, or some subset were what kept me going. Continue Reading
Silence
I’m doing a shift on the crisis line tonight and someone put up a wonderful quote from Rachel Naomi Remen on the wall. It’s about the power of silence and it’s so good (and true) that I wanted to pass it on. If you have never read anything by Rachel Naomi Remen, may I recommend that you stop whatever you’re doing and buy one of her books? I read her book Kitchen Table Wisdom a few years back and it was incredibly powerful and moving and led to one major breakthrough (I was a business card that wanted to be a marshmallow. See, now you have to read the book to figure out what in the world I’m talking about. 
). I read it on BN’s recommendation and then brought it to session with 15 different yellow stickies in it. She understands the power of human stories, but the even more powerful effect of having ours heard and understood. Continue Reading
(Highly overdue) Blog of the Year 2012 Award
The very lovely Chatte Nocturne from Not All About Cats nominated me for a Blog of the Year award back in early December and I am finally getting around to acknowledging it. So first, thank you so much Chatte, I was very touched by you nominating my blog and very sorry it has taken me so long to get around to writing about it. 
Continue Reading
Recent Comments