high school algebra foils me again!

Little did I know, but… Y=mx+b matters.

I need to be able to do this for work, and I can’t remember how… my only help is a big blue book written for statisticians, and to understand chapter 7 (starts at page 261), I have read chapters 1-6, just to get the gist of the book’s shorthand.

(Why didn’t I really learn this in high school?)

weekly update

Argh. I’d spent a half hour writing a post and the server timed out. Annoying, as the post and the half hour are completely lost. This post will consequently be much shorter than the original!

In what is hopefully the final installment of the AWOL psychiatrist… there was resolution on this issue on Thursday and Friday last week. I spoke to the psychiatrist with whom I do CBT (cognitive-behavioral therapy), and she interceded with her supervisor on my behalf. He contacted my med-managing shrink, who called me that night and said it was okay if I wanted my CBT-shrink to manage my meds until the time she returns to town (I already knew why she was gone — her mom has cancer and they don’t know how much time she has left). So that’s what’s happened. My dosage was increased on Friday, and thank goodness I can already see a little difference. Working yesterday was way easier than last week, and I’m not feeling my usual monthly downturn in mood thus far, with one small exception.

The exception is in relation to the wedding. Even though we’ve sent out the invitations to the religious ceremony, there’s still a big part of me that just doesn’t want to bother with all this any more. My heart just isn’t in it, no matter how hard I try to get back into it. Now it just feels like something very expensive that we need to endure (something like surgery?). I know that I’ll go through with it for hubby and our families, mostly because this ball’s already rolling down the hill and it’s too late to stop it. But I don’t really feel like doing much if any of it. I’m not looking forward to my shower, and I’m dreading having to put up with all the awkward parental interactions at the ceremony and reception. Part of me feels like I always knew this was going to be a problem and that it was stupid to even try to have a wedding (just knowing that there’s been so much conflict about it just makes the whole event still feel poisoned). It’s not that I’m trying to be a stick in the mud, a martyr, or a spoilsport. It’s just been a bad situation and extra stress that I haven’t needed, and I just still feel bad about it. True to CBT form, I keep trying to examine my automatic thoughts about it and keep trying to reframe them, but they seem like very small weapons against such crushing feelings.

Back to work for me… until later!

AWOL psychiatrist

Today I hauled myself out of bed 20 minutes early because I knew I had a 9:00 appointment with the shrink who manages my meds. I have adult ADD and take strattera for it. No biggie, except that lately my dosage hasn’t been helping, and I haven’t been able to concentrate well enough to get through my work without getting extremely frustrated. I’d actually tried calling this doc about this issue two weeks ago. She didn’t return my call, but I figured that was because I’d mentioned that it wasn’t an emergency.

I have these appointments at a large, assembly-line style outpatient clinic. I register and pay for the appointment in one office on the ground floor, then go up to the fourth floor to check in for the appointment, then go up to the 5th floor to wait for my doctor. On my way up to the 4th floor, I bumped into one of my colleagues in the elevator (always uncomfortable, given that we’re psychologists). When I finally made it to the 5th floor waiting room, an angry-looking guy was hanging out there. After a couple of minutes, he asked me “Are you here to see Dr. so-and-so?” Turns out, he was her 8:30 appointment, the doc hadn’t shown up yet (it was already 9), and she’d missed their appointment the week before, too. Five minutes later, he stormed out of the waiting area, presumably to go downstairs to the check-in desk to complain.

About 15 minutes later, the secretary from the check-in desk came upstairs to find me. The doc had left town the week before because her mom was ill (which I’d known), and hadn’t returned or checked in with her supervisor yet. The secretary promised that she’d try to get me into somebody else’s schedule right away if I could wait. I went downstairs with her to wait in the 4th floor reception area. 20 minutes and a December issue of Time later, she came back and told me that nobody could see me today, and that the scheduler would set up another appointment for me with my regular doc or with another. That was definitely wishful thinking on the secretary’s part, because the scheduler couldn’t get me in with ANYBODY until March 14.

Yup, that’s correct… 3 weeks, when I’ve been trying to get in touch with my regular doc for 2 weeks and know that I need a dosage change. 3 weeks, when I can hardly think straight long enough to read a full paragraph in one article from the pile of articles I need to digest to write my current paper. Yes, the current paper I will be presenting in front of who knows how many people at a conference at the end of March. Maybe I should also say at this time that it can take two weeks for Strattera to “kick in” (if it does at all), meaning that it’s possible I’ll be this scattered up until the day I have to give the paper. This means it’s quite possible I *won’t* be able to write it until then, or perhaps not even after.

The scheduler recommended that I call my doc again to see if she’ll call in an increased dose over the phone, but I don’t know how effective this will be given that she still hasn’t returned my call from two weeks ago. I have left her a voice mail message already. I’m glad that I see my talking-shrink tomorrow, because she might have a better idea of what to do (unfortunately, the talking shrink can’t prescribe me meds because she does CBT with me… I don’t quite get the conflict but wish that there were a way around it). I can also try to call my PCP (primary care physician) but I’m not optomistic about her being so helpful.

Of course, I was outside of the building, across the street, and halfway down the next block by the time I remembered that I had to return to registration on the 1st floor in order to ensure that my insurance wasn’t charged for this visit, and to get my $20 copay refunded to me. It was well after 10:00 before I made it in to my office, which is just a few blocks down the street.

I’m entirely disgusted with my local health care system and am pretty mad about the way they treat people in it. This is ridiculous…

wedding conflict part 2

Thanks, Melissa, Ben, Dan and Derek for your posts/phone calls of support… I really appreciate it, and feel very lucky to have good friends/family…

(BTW, Dan, I’m not mad at mom… I’m just sad that this even has to be called a situation…)

So the drama just continues…So on Wednesday I spent 90 minutes writing a 4 paragraph email to my mom, telling her that she needed to get some help, because her issues with my dad are messing with the rest of us. Granted, this was written in a rather convoluted Kristin-like style, so it was probably not the best sample of my written prose…

For years, I’ve been asking and telling her not to put me in the middle between my dad and her. What I mean by asking and telling is everything between polite requests and screaming at the top of my lungs. We’ve probably fought more about this than anything else, and I still get stuck in the middle.  I get stuck in the middle often for various reasons, ranging from spiteful remarks behind his back to her friends to permitting her requests on the kids’ behalf, as requests on her own behalf will fall on deaf ears. Regardless of the motive of the action, these acts are hurtful, sort of like little shishkebab skewers to the heart.  Whenever we go rounds about this issue, she agrees to stop doing it, does better for a little while, slips up, then blames the slip-up on external factors. Repeat from beginning, over and over again.

I know that this cycle is because she’s not over it. But going through this cycle DOESN’T make any of it any better. Bitching to us about our dad just makes us kids feel bad. Bitching to her friends embarasses her friends and us. End result is the same… nobody ever feels good after these conversations, and no growth occurs as a result. This doesn’t surprise me, because I know even as a non-counseling psychologist, that contemporary psychotherapy tends to spend very little time focused on what the client/patient perceives to be the cause of the problem. Focusing the cause often doesn’t do anybody any good — it doesn’t give the client/patient any insight, and often just makes them feel worse. Anybody who sees a therapist in this day and age probably partakes in what’s called CBT, or Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. The gist of this is to help clients uncover and change their automatic thoughts, through changes in purposeful thinking and through their behavior. It sounds simple, but it works… change the way you think and the way you act, and your brain changes, too (I admit to being a nerd… I think this is REALLY cool). Don’t change your thoughts or your behavior… and you get whatever you’ve been getting, and perhaps it even gets worse.

So, anyway, the gist of this email was telling her that what she’s doing now isn’t working… she hasn’t moved on, and at least some of this strife could have been minimized if she were further along in the grieving process. Some CBT-like skills training could also help her deal with some of this stuff (hopefully with the net result being that she’ll feel better and the kids will get fewer heart-shishkabobs).  This email was sent entirely out of concern for her wellbeing… because reacting this way to something that’s actually quite small isn’t a sign of psychological health.

The email I received back in turn was another overreaction, with additional oversharing on her behalf… details that don’t need to replicated here.

When I replied to the effect that I sent that prior message out of concern, not anger or frustration (although by now I am pretty frustrated), she replied that a friend had given her the name and number of a therapist (hooray!) and that she was overwhelmed and had to think. I haven’t heard anything since.  This is okay with me, because I don’t think I could do a phone call right now.

Friday morning, I received an email from my dad with an attachment… turns out my mom sent her letter after all on Tuesday. I’d requested to be left out of it, but that definitely did not happen in the letter. It’s all my mom’s interpretation of our Sunday conversation and the emails from earlier in the week… which contradicts what I actually feel/believe. It’s her feelings, disguised as my opinion. In a nutshell, it’s all my dad’s fault.

About 20 minutes later, I finally went into my therapy appointment with Dr. Susan and talked through the whole thing (yes, I have a therapist, and don’t think I could have gotten through the on-again/off-again depression I’ve had for the last couple of months without her help. I tried taking an antidepressant but it made me really grumpy and sick to my stomach. Plus, I already take Strattera, which seems to have an unfortunate side effect during the PMS-ey time of the month. I can focus okay during this time but primarily on how crappy I feel. Not so good!).  In a nutshell, Dr. Susan agreed with my assessment that this is not a sign of optimal health, and supported my urging my mom for help. She could also see that I’m at the end of my rope with being put in the middle. She even had a name for it, one that I knew but never would have applied to my own situation. She said that this is called “parentification” — it’s any situation in which there’s a role-reversal between kids and parents. I’d only heard it applied to situations in which parents rely on kids to do instrumental-type tasks (e.g., asking the eldest kid to babysit the youngest, clean the house, prep dinner, etc.).  This is not a good thing in the long run. She told me not to be too hard on myself — it started back when I was 11 or 12, and kids can’t be expected to set up boundaries with their parents when they are that age, and yes, kids in this situation have increased odds of depression later in life. But, they also tend to have better conflict-negotiation skills and overly-developed empathy.

It will be an uphill battle to change this behavior, but it has to be done because I know I can’t take many more shishkebabs. They just hurt too much, and make me feel like I’m making backward progress when dealing with my own stuff. This is so hard for me because it’s pretty normal for the parentified-kid to feel at least partially responsible for this situation. If  I’d just set boundaries sooner, maybe she’s have sought help sooner. Although I’m trying really hard not to, I just feel like a horrible person because I had to be the one to tell my mom that she needs help. I hate hurting peoples’ feelings, especially the feelings of people I care about. I keep trying to focus on the goal, that a little bit of hurt is worth it if she gets where she needs to go, but it still doesn’t feel good to make somebody else hurt.

I talked to my dad on Friday, and he’s worried about my mom’s mental health, too. My dad plans to try to meet my mom for coffee this weekend to talk with her independently. I’m glad he’s taking a part, because I don’t know how much more Danny or I could take independently.

Dr. Susan is strongly urging me to delay making a decision about the wedding, so we’re delaying on this… the invites are in a box on our dining room table for the time being. Jan (a.k.a. the sweetest hubby in the world) knows how to break things down into steps for me so I don’t get so overwhelmed.  Today he suggested sorting them into piles so we’d be ready when I feel like mailing them. I’d already done that, so now he wants to go buy the postage. We can stick the stamps on the envelopes, and then just drop them in the mailbox when the time is right.  I’m still not ready… but maybe in another week or two. Maybe by then everything won’t feel like it’s been poisoned by all this conflict.