If You're Going Through Hell

[Margm]

I put on here how I feel.  Now I feel I need a therapist.  Why do I need a  therapist?  I tell you all everything.  Sorry, I do get carried away with my word salads at times.                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

[scba]

7 hours ago, Marg M said:

 when her husband died she got rid of all of her own clothes

I got rid of my old clothes but I couldn't find the will or the sense to buy (many) new ones. I go to stores and exit with frustration for not being able to pick up a white plain t-shirt

[Margm]

I ordered big pocket pants, Tee shirts, and long tee shirts for cold weather.  Not much money, everything covered, did not care how it looked.

[Gwenivere]

I'm confused, Marg.  You do or don't want to see a therapist?  

[Margm]

No, I don't want to go, but yes, I think I need to go.  

[Cookie]

12 hours ago, Marg M said:

No, I don't want to go, but yes, I think I need to go.  

Marg:  Here is an article I read that might help you....it does me..I see a therapist and he's really just a comforter where no one else can be and kind of like "air under my wings" kind of concept; it helps a little; I know, it's long....

 

if it isn’t to “cure” grief, what good is therapy?

I’m a therapist.

I’ve been a therapist for well over ten years, and was in related social and education services for the decade before that.

In my work as a clinician, I had to give people diagnoses. That is the way that therapists and other professionals get paid: we give a diagnosis that the insurance companies have decided they will reimburse for care.

Diagnosis does another thing, too, and this is how I explained it to clients: a diagnosis is simply short-hand. Choosing a diagnosis, at its root, is a checklist and a process of elimination or inclusion. If I give you a diagnosis, it tells any other people you might be working with that you share at least some of the same challenges that other people with the same diagnosis do.

At its best, a diagnosis gives your team relevant information without you having to go through the same questions over and over again.

“At its best,” however, is rarely how it’s used or seen. 

Even before I became widowed, I never was much for pathology: that medical-izing of normal human experience. I gave my clients the least stigmatizing diagnosis I could, while still accurately conveying their struggles. I couldn’t see someone as being deeply flawed just because they were in pain. I refused to treat anyone as though what they were feeling was inherently wrong.

After becoming widowed, I found myself way too many times on the receiving end of that medical view, being told that who I was, and how I was, was wrong. As though my intense, deep grief were pathological and corrupt: a sign of an unwell mind.

I didn’t just get it from the people around me — the friends, family members, and casual acquaintances. Some of the most corrective and judgmental people were other therapists. Some had even been my colleagues. One I had even looked to as a decent teacher in his field. The overwhelming response from both the pros and the casual observer was that since I was in pain, I was clearly doing it wrong. 

Seeing a therapist is tricky business — so many (even some good ones) subscribe to that over-arching belief that grief needs to be corrected somehow, that it needs to be pushed through.

If you’re on this grief path, no doubt you have heard a zillion and one suggestions about how you can do your grief better. You’ve been encouraged to get out of it fast, to go back to “normal” life. 

But there is a different way to approach grief.

Many, many years ago, in what seems like an entirely different life, I was studying herbal medicine. The subject for one class was herbs for immune disorders. What the instructor taught that day has stuck with me now for over twenty years. She said that many clinicians approach an immune disorder with herbs to stimulate and push the immune system, trying to get it to work harder and faster. That approach is misguided, she said. When you have a condition like this, your immune system is already working as hard as it possibly can. Trying to make it work harder is only going to fail.

The herbalist taught that what was needed in this situation were herbs to come in underneath the immune system, herbs to walk up beside it and support it. The most useful medicines are the ones that don’t push, but give the system roots. Nourish it. Help it continue to do what it is trying to do.

The system isn’t working wrong, it’s working as hard as it can.

Grief has your heart working as hard as it can. When you are in pain, you don’t need to be fixed. You don’t need to be labeled as broken, your feelings shoved into codified lists. You don’t need to be pushed to get better fast. What you need are those things — those people, those places, those words — that come up underneath you and give you roots. You need those things that nourish you, that help you do the work your heart already knows how to do. The work it is already doing.

A good therapist is a wonderful thing: they know that there is nothing about you that’s wrong. They know their role is to listen and validate, to come up alongside you and provide support. They bolster your roots; they lend you stability.

Good therapy isn’t a cure for what’s wrong. And that makes all the difference in the world.

 

Edited September 26, 2016 by MartyT
Link inserted ♥

[KATPILOT]

Says it all in a nutshell.

I see a medium every once in a while but sometimes Kathy just isn't there. It doesn't disappoint me. What does happen is I get support from someone who understands what I'm going through and since she would never offer a fix to my grief, what she does offer is a friendly ear with some insight. She has seen so many grieving souls that she feels and understands what anguish means and that puts her in a unique position. 

What we get out of counseling is a little about what we put into it. There are no fixes. There is only growth. We grow in our journey with knowledge, experience, and a friendly ear. What I find that is helpful is when my actual grief counselor helps me see a path I couldn't see on my own but I still have to take it. I have been working on healing for almost six years now and although I am better, I'm sure not done growing. I agree that good therapy isn't a cure for what's wrong but as we become the new person we are, insight is everything.

This may not make sense to many of you especially if you are new to this journey but this weekend when I had a very sad moment in my house (and yes they still happen) I came out of the sorrow with a smile in my heart because even though it hurts like hell, I think about why it hurts. It's because I still love her so much and Kathy knows it. Sad as that may be, it's happy as well.

[Margm]

3 hours ago, Cookie said:

Seeing a therapist is tricky business — so many (even some good ones) subscribe to that over-arching belief that grief needs to be corrected somehow, that it needs to be pushed through.

Thank you Cookie and Steve.  Cookie, I think this is a very good therapist.  Again, he has been through the fire.  My sister has had many classes in psychology and was a child protection worker for over 20 years.  She gives me little quotes on how I am supposed to feel often.  In one ear and out the other.  Books cannot do anything but teach how to, they cannot "do."  

I really don't like to open myself up like this.  I will leave this on for awhile.  You can see why I need a therapist, and it is not just grief.  I need Billy very much right now.  I hope he is listening.  Sometimes I think I cannot handle things.  Then I remember, I do  not just live for myself.

I'm sorry, I took most of this down.  I left it up for awhile.  Some things just need to be discussed with a therapist, and it will be.  Some things I need to keep quiet about except if I find the right therapist.  It is not just me that needs help, but I need direction. 

[MartyT]

Marg, my dear, it seems to me that, if you are willing and able to do so, it may help for you to do some reading that would offer more effective ways to "be there" for your family members, but in ways that are neither manipulating you nor enabling them. See, for example,

When Helping Hurts: A Lesson on Enabling

When Helping Hurts: Are You An Enabling Parent?

Setting Boundaries: Helpful Resources (Free)

Setting Boundaries with Your Adult Children ~ via YouTube:

 

 

[kayc]

3 hours ago, KATPILOT said:

What we get out of counseling is a little about what we put into it. There are no fixes. There is only growth.

That speaks it plain!

[Margm]

I will sit down and listen and read.  I sometimes wonder if it is too late for me to do anything since Billy and I both were enablers.  That is one reason sometimes it almost seems easier to disappear.  But,  I cannot do that either, except like Billy did.  Then, like he told me once, "all your worries will be over with and they will be put on someone else."  I have one who understands, another that, well, is mental.  

16 minutes ago, kayc said:

That speaks it plain!

No offence to anyone, but don't you think that after 15 years of psychotherapy I don't understand what goes on?  This was not a touch and go deal, it was a solid weekly and then monthly 15 years.  I spent some hospital time also.  

I also realize, there are no magic potions, that what I put into it is what I will take out of it.  I also know how it works.  I also know you have got to accept help, but when one of mine is hurting, if I can help, even a shrink cannot make me quit helping..  Like I say, I know I will get out of it what I put in and accept.  

Sometimes I think my only help is prayer, and that is also something I have to accept.  I realize the person here that is being stubborn is me.  I have lost faith in a lot of things, and medical science is one of them.  I realize it is all up to me. I think I remember some apostle in the Bible doing battle with himself.

Not that I could compare myself to an apostle, but they were human too.  I will just shut up about it until I can figure out where to go, what to do, and when to do it.  Then it might take more than one visit to different doctors.  I am definitely a doubting Thomas. 

[KATPILOT]

[kayc]

Marg, I was not posting to you but was rather letting Steven know that I agreed with the words he wrote.  In no way have I implied or thought that you don't know what you're doing.  I might handle things differently than you but then I've never been through some of the situations you have and my kids are not like yours is, so my experience doesn't count for hooey where your situation is concerned.

[Margm]

Kaye, sorry if it looked like I took offence..  I only go back and read my posts if I want to remove something.  Sometimes when I post, I feel totally naked, and that is not a pretty sight.  I think my sister might have meant that I lack humility not because I do not think of others, but that I live inside myself too much.  But, she has had so much psychology courses that she thinks possibly she can diagnose.  Myself, I feel like a huge bug that has just hit the windshield.  Sometimes I think of my head as that of Medusa with snakes sticking out everywhere.  Poor analogy.  Did you ever look at the word analogy  Anal is the first four letters.  I never noticed that till now.  Another word salad.  

[Margm]

7 hours ago, kayc said:

 In no way have I implied or thought that you don't know what you're doing.

Oh Kaye, you know I love the dickens out of you.  As far as knowing what I am doing.  I never have any idea what I am doing.  And, I am sure that 99.9% of the people on here know I have no idea what I am doing..  Sometimes I just don't take directions well.  Sometimes I am just stubborn.  I'm sorry.

[kayc]

You have no reason to be sorry, you just be who you are.

[Margm]

Okay, I gutted up.  I researched the many physicians in the "big city" and found a geriatric psychiatrist.  I recognized the name, his dad had trained at our hospital in orthopedics.  I called.  They were accepting no new patients.  Guess there are a bunch of us old crazies around.  I was sort of relieved.  I don't know why, but around 10:00 to noon, that is when I have my worse anxiety. Maybe that was because that was the times I would be taking Billy his coffee after he had read till 2:00 a.m.  He and my neighbor widow's husband did not like to get up early.  

I will keep looking.  I don't like October.  It brings ill winds.

[MartyT]

Marg, I admire your determination. I'm sorry the geriatric psychiatrist isn't accepting any new patients, but you might ask if he knows of a colleague whom he would recommend for you. These docs usually associate with others in their own specialties, and he may know of someone he could refer you to. Just a thought . . .

[Margm]

Did not think about that.  I think the relief that he was not going to be the one covered up logical thinking.  I am really having a hard time with trust.  I want to argue, even politics.  I won't argue religion, that is a no-no subject to argue.  But I hate politics and I'm arguing ferociously with people.  I totally hate politics, but am becoming an ornery person. 

[MartyT]

Marg, I don't think you're becoming an ornery person. I do think that you have many reasons to be feeling ornery (politics included). But how you are feeling at any given moment does not define who you are as a person. One thing we do not allow on this site is for our members to put anyone down ~ and that includes putting down oneself.

I know you're having a hard time with finding a therapist you can trust ~ but always remember that you are free to try out whomever you decide to work with, and I think you'll know pretty quickly, once you meet face-to-face with someone, whether you feel safe enough to trust that therapist.

[Margm]

I had a man picked out, but maybe him not taking any new patients was a good thing.  I picked out a female and we will see how that goes.  You don't just pick up your phone and make an appointment, guess you have to be interviewed, but in that case, I will get to interview the doctor also.  We will see how that goes.  I have seen my daughter on Medicare and Medicaid have better luck finding physicians than I do with Blue Cross and Medicare.  I am still not trusting of anyone but the doctor that retired, but maybe I will like this woman.  If not, I don't have to go but once.

[Gin]

Marg,

I know October is a bad month for both of us.  The one year anniversary is next Tuesday for me.  Hope you find the right counsellor.  

Gin

[MartyT]

5 minutes ago, Marg M said:

guess you have to be interviewed, but in that case, I will get to interview the doctor also.  We will see how that goes . . . maybe I will like this woman.  If not, I don't have to go but once.

Exactly! You are a consumer of health care, Marg, and you've every right to feel good about the therapist you are hiring. Feel free to let her know exactly what you are looking for in therapy, and go ahead and ask if she is qualified to offer grief support (that is, whether she has experience, training and certification in grief counseling). In the words of AfterTalk's Larry Lynn, "See it as a job interview with you as the employer. Ask the doctor how much work she or he has done with bereavement and loss. Get a sense of them as a person. Don’t expect them to open up about their own experiences with death; their training tells them not to share personal details with patients." 

See also,

Seeing a Specialist in Grief Counseling: Does It Matter?

Caveat emptor: Beware False Prophets and Distractions

Key Questions to Ask When Choosing a Therapist

[Margm]

After 15 years it was just odd to call my Dr. by the doctor name as I knew her at the hospital also.  So, we were on first name basis.  Now the one that was in training, he had a lot to learn and I had to get away from him fast.  As it was, she was training him also, so what I told her about his tactics, how inappropriate they were for me at that time, he finally went to work at a state hospital and honestly, I would have opened him up his own room and locked it at night.  I have typed so many different ones also, so many different hospitals, I know what to watch out for.  But, that thread "Vulnerable" puts us all in a different predicament than just depressed.  I understand, but I have also got to get them to understand I cannot take their antidepressants.  My insides are ticking time bombs and they will just have to understand.  I think I can get my point across.  I don't expect them to alleviate the depression of grief, I think that is something we live with, good days, bad days, but I do have other issues too.  Don't we all?  I am not sure I would like to be my doctor.  

My daughter once told one of her psychiatrists something I had said.  I was correct.  She called me Dr. Mims.  He was not familiar with me, of course.  She was being sarcastic. Then she told him sometimes I thought I knew as much as the doctor after taking their transcription for over 40 years.  He told her that I probably was as smart.  Of course I know only words on paper, but I hope I am not too vulnerable that I forget what I want to say and get afraid.  

I will print out that from above.

[Cookie]

On ‎09‎/‎26‎/‎2016 at 2:38 PM, Marg M said:

Thank you Cookie and Steve.  Cookie, I think this is a very good therapist.  Again, he has been through the fire.  My sister has had many classes in psychology and was a child protection worker for over 20 years.  She gives me little quotes on how I am supposed to feel often.  In one ear and out the other.  Books cannot do anything but teach how to, they cannot "do."  

I really don't like to open myself up like this.  I will leave this on for awhile.  You can see why I need a therapist, and it is not just grief.  I need Billy very much right now.  I hope he is listening.  Sometimes I think I cannot handle things.  Then I remember, I do  not just live for myself.

I'm sorry, I took most of this down.  I left it up for awhile.  Some things just need to be discussed with a therapist, and it will be.  Some things I need to keep quiet about except if I find the right therapist.  It is not just me that needs help, but I need direction. 

Marg:  I understand so well when you say you need Billy so much.  I feel exactly the same way.  I write every morning and tell him I need him, knowing I'm writing to myself but hope against hope that he hears me.  Sometimes when I talk to my therapist, I feel so much worse afterwards which makes me realize I do a pretty good job of sucking it all up a lot of the time.  I have an old dog, 12 1/2, who is failing and it is taking me back to last year when my husband died.  Same feelings.  I also wonder if I can handle this second loss of a beloved being.  Anyway, take care...we all have so much in common really in this horrible state of being and that is somewhat comforting to know you're not alone and not the only one who has felt these things.  Hugs to you....Cookie