Therapist #30869054

Well, I did make it to see the new therapist today. It's so frustrating seeing someone at the school counselling center, though... I can't develop any sort of rapport before they move on to a new internship! I'll only be seeing this one for four weeks, when the semester ends and she goes off to somewhere.

Actually, I'm rather peeved with them in the first place... The head of the counselling center told me that I'd be seeing a practicing clinician, not an intern, since I really need more intensive help than a grad could offer me. That and I have a tendency to intimidate interns. I mean, think about it: I've probably been in therapy far longer than they've been studying it! And of course there's also the little factor that I'm quite a bit crazier than the finals stress, break-up grief, homesickness, that most of the students at the school come in for.

The biggest problem I have with new therapists is called ACTIVE LISTENING. It's the therapy practice in vogue (I thought Jung started it but Crystal tells me it's way more recent) and it's a load of crap. No other way to put it. Basically, active listening looks something like this:

Me: Basically, I'm just having a really hard time adjusting back to real life. I feel guilty when I eat because I feel like I'm betraying an old friend but I feel guilty if I don't eat because then I'm betraying myself and everyone who's been supporting me.
Carol (therapist): I'm hearing that you're dealing with a lot of conflicting thoughts... That must be a very stressful thing for you.
Me: Yeah... It's like either way I can't win. It's so much easier to fall back on ED patterns because they're so familiar and simpler. I don't have to think about it to act on my anorexia but it takes constant effort to pursue health.
Carol: It sounds like you're pretty discouraged. I can see how it would be tempting to revert to the old, familiar habits.
Me: ....Yeah.

Me: Blah blah blah, something about the work I've already done in therapy.
Carol: I just wanted to say how very impressed I am by the amount of work you've done... You have so much insight into your thought processes and struggles! It seems like you have been working really hard to be serious about recovery.
Me: OH MY GOD WHAT I'VE ALREADY DONE IS NOT THE POINT. IF IT WAS, I WOULDN'T BE HERE BECAUSE I'D BE HANDLING LIFE ADEQUATELY BY NOW.

Sigh. Active listening just pisses me right the hell off. If that was what I was needing from a therapist, I could just go talk to one of the empathetic robots that AI scientists are working on now... Active listening is easy enough that ROBOTS CAN AND DO PRACTICE IT.

If I'm paying a therapist to help me, I'd like a little more participation than an echo plzkthx.

That said, tune in next time for a discussion of my latest trip to the sex store and why I feel American society is hypocritical, prudish, and operating on out-moded Puritanical ideals! (Because I'm never on a high horse or anything.)

Mo Co Fo Sho

In this blog, I have made it a policy not to discuss my views on homosexuality, gay rights, queer theory, etc... I don't exactly hide the fact that I am a lesbian (if you've ever met me in person you'll know that I'm actually exceedingly open about the fact), but I do know that it's an extremely touchy subject for some people.

Especially considering many girls with eating disorders come from hyper-christian or otherwise strongly fundamentalist homes, I've chosen not to broadcast my gayness in this blog for their and their families' sake. Sadly, I have no doubt that if I were to discuss these subjects with prevalence, many readers would be completely turned off to everything I have to say - even though I truly believe I have some important, helpful things to say about eating disorders and recovery therefrom.

Today, however, I'm going to break with tradition.

If you're strongly homophobic, get hives and nausea from the sight of a gay person, notice your eyes start to bleed around us, etc, you may want to stop reading now.

...Well, I was going to start this with a rousing speech about how today is the Transgender Day of Remembrance, but just found out it's actually next Tuesday. Nevertheless, this is transgender awareness week, so it still applies. Sorta.

If gay men and women suffer an abnormally high rate of murder and hate crimes, transgendered individuals have to face so much more. I simply cannot fathom the amount of hatred and fear these people have to deal with on just walking out their doors each morning. It is both disgusting and heartbreaking to witness suffering on such an extreme level for such a petty reason.

Hate groups like Focus on the Family's Love Won Out or PFOX (a response group to the better known PFLAG), when addressing the issue of transgenderism, love to cite the American Psychiatric Association which still classifies something called Gender Identity Disorder. According to these groups, it is evidence that even the psychiatric community agrees that transgenderism is a disorder.

GID is a disorder. However, it isn't aptly named. The poor choice of wording leads ignorant, badly informed people to believe that GID refers to transgender. In my opinion, just as Multiple Personality Disorder was renamed Dissociative Identity Disorder to stifle the prevailing confusion of DID with schizophrenia and BiPolar disorder, GID needs a new name. My personal suggestion would be Gender Confusion Disorder. Particularly after having lived in Washington, DC, worked in restaurants (which for some reason get a really high rate of gay employees), and having attended one of the most gay-friendly universities in the country, I've known a lot of gay and transgendered individuals. To say that gender identity is never disordered would be just as stupid as saying it's a disorder to begin with.

Let's start by defining some terms. Sexuality, sexual orientation, and gender identity come to mind as good places to begin. Scientifically speaking, your sexuality is the sex you are based on genital identification. Typically, this is a simple one. Unfortunately, it isn't always... Many people are born intersexed, meaning they have either ambiguous genitals or, in rare cases, both sets. Someone who is intersexed is not transsexual. A lot of parents will arbitrarily choose a sex for children born this way hoping it will simplify things later in life. Your sexual orientation refers to the gender to which you are predominantly attracted (i.e. homosexual, heterosexual, bisexual, asexual).

Gender identity refers to the gender with which you most strongly identify. Someone who is sexually female may identify as male but not choose to actually undergo a gender transition. Same applies to male-to-female individuals. Some scholars have suggested that St Joan of Arc falls into the former category, and there are examples of Egyptian Pharaoh who were sexually female but adopted male attire and behaviors to fill their roles. Other people, like myself, prefer to label themselves as androgynes or gender queers. Basically, that means that we don't identify with one sex or the other and instead feel somewhere in between the two cultural standards of gender polarity.

For whatever reason, males who identify as female receive by far the majority of persecution for their gender identity in religious, political, and cultural settings.

Increasingly, many states are taking action to enact laws which will specifically protect transgendered individuals' rights to safety and normal life. One really touchy subject would be restrooms and public showers: should a trans female be allowed to use the womens' facilities even if she is still genitally male?

In Montgomery County, Maryland, where I grew up, a law was proposed and voted on Tuesday to allow transgendered individuals to use the facilities appropriate to their gender identity. Given that Montgomery County also houses several of the largest, most strictly fundamentalist churches in the state, this caused a HUGE stir.

National groups (like PFOX - Parents and Friends Of eX-gays) spread the word trying to get as many people as possible to protest this measure. They argue that it is a bill to allow men into women's restrooms, thereby opening the gates for a flood of pedophilia and crime.

What protesters to do not seem either to realize or just accept is that this measure is not to allow men into women's restrooms. The point of this bill is to stop forcing women to use the men's room.

A crossdresser is not necessarily someone who is gender identified with the other sex. A crossdresser may refer to a transexual, or it may just as easily refer to a heterosexual man who sometimes wears women's clothing for sexual gratification. This is not the same thing as identifying as female. A transgender female, possibly aside from her genital sexuality, is female. If someone identifies as female in the way this bill is aiming to protect, it does not mean they are pretending to be a woman to gain a better vantage point for preying on other women. They're dressing and behaving in a feminine way because they feel that they are female.

Connecting back to my earlier mention of Gender Identity Disorder, I want to explain why I feel that there is often a disordered connection when referencing questions of gender identity. The term most commonly used now is gender dysphoria. Dysphoria basically means distress, or a mental disconnect between what one wants and what is, or what one wants and one believes to be right/true/etc. Why I'm having a hard time explaining this today is beyond me, considering I'm dysphoric about other issues nine times out of ten... Dysphoria is an inner conflict which causes mental and emotional distress, is I guess the best way I can think to succinctly word it.

Gender dysphoria is listed as the main sign/symptom for GID. Basically, this means that to be classified as having GID you have to show significant distress and discomfort over your sexuality vs what you feel to be your appropriate gender. This part is often undoubtedly disordered. I've had the privilege of being good friends with several transsexuals over the last few years, and the most heartbreaking thing has been watching as they struggle with feeling like freaks and mistakes, or that they're stuck in an incorrectly sexed body, that there is no hope or remedy, that life will forever be marked by painful, awkward feelings of somehow being made wrong. This is gender dysphoria.

The reason I argue Gender Identity Disorder is the wrong term is because once the person has figured out how to fix the question of gender (be it sexual reassignment surgery, transvestism, acceptance), the dysphoria greatly diminishes. It's a matter of recognizing and accepting one's gender identity - the identity itself isn't the problem.

Here I'm going to shout out to K.T., Brandon, Rae, Ben, Jeremy, Melissa, Tammi, and all the other wonderful, awesome, ridiculously brave queer and trans people I've had the chance to know. I don't think any of them read this... But if they do, they need to know how awesome they are.

This week, I am incredibly proud to say I come from Montgomery County. When they bill was put to the vote Tuesday, it passed unanimously. Maryland may still have a long way to go when it comes to recognizing equal rights for gay, lesbian, and transexual individuals, but this bill passing is a huge step. I'm still not proud to be an American, because this country is waaay behind on so many issues, but at least I'm proud to come from Mo Co.

Is this really what passes for a blog these days?

So basically, the more I think about it, the more convinced I am to move to Canada once Crystal graduates. More on that later, I guess...

It's been incredibly difficult to think what to write. Despite having days off and an overactive mind, I can't seem to focus any of these thought trains into a chiseled sort of entry or, for that matter, any form of writing longer than a disjointed paragraph. Additionally, as I've tried to consider topics worth discussion, I've been painfully aware that most of what's on my mind is depression-related and depression at my level is excruciatingly boring. Friends often challenge me to write a book and I can't seem to convince them how any book I could poop out now would be little better than Dr Zhivago right now. The depressive's mind, by nature, ruminates on topics like a cow that ate a bag of mulch and gravel. Endlessly. And often with indigestion. Depression is an endlessly churning sack of monochromatic muck.

Even exciting events can be turned dull when viewed through the depressive lens. I could tell you about the hail we received or Amber's graduation last night or how we almost got killed after a booksigning in Denver a few days ago. All these things, in the appropriately caffeinated fingers of a witty person, could be turned into side-splitting or riveting anecdotes. At the moment I'm more likely to say, "Yeah, we went to see Barbarah Kingsolver talk a couple nights ago and there was this big thunderstorm and then we walked home in the pouring rain and got chased by a raving drunk who was packing heat." (Granted, that one may be kinda interesting REGARDLESS of the bare bones explanation.)

Side note about the experience in Denver: I am about fifty times more frightened of downtown Denver than I EVER was of Washington, DC. I was less afraid walking home alone in DC than I was walking three blocks to a LightRail station with Crystal and Jody the other night. Because damn. People can officially give up on trying to convince me to look for an apartment downtown.

I ought to write about how pants that should be too small are baggy, about how depression kills my appetite kills my motivation kills my giving-a-shit. I should write about how my new therapist broke up with me after two sessions and I'm back looking for a new one again. I should write about the fact that I'm working six of seven days this week.

Sooo many topics to cover! So many books to write and bills to pay and t'shirts to make/send and apartments to look at and the rest and the rest!

Instead, I watch Michael Moore films while crocheting doilies and getting ready to leave for work, and when I DO finally get myself to open ze laptop and attempt ze entry, it looks like THIS.

Mental illness is ridiculously frustrating.

No. No, it really makes no sense. Don't try to understand.

Oh sigh. I've had two full days completley at my disposal, no requirements, all the time in the world to update, and I've had absolutely no energy or mental willpower. Hell, I haven't even done much cleaning to speak of, and that's normally my first objective for every free day on the schedule. I don't know what's to fault for this lethargy and, unfortunately, attempts to force myself out of it have thus far failed.

I wanted to put a clip from last night's South Park in here but unfortunately the Internet Police have really cracked down on pirated copyright material, quite significantly spoiling all my fun. For the run down, last night Cartman was his usual little bastardly self and through a complicated run of events got Butters' parents convinced he was gay. And he got sent to de-gayification camp. And it was awesome. Tag line for the camp? 'You can pray the gay away!'

Every couple minutes at gay camp you'd hear a gunshot as another camper killed himself.

I love it when South Park gets bitchy and preachy.

...I've been a real snark today, I'm sorry. I don't know what it is or where it's come from anymore than I can put a tag on this laziness. Probably the two are related as whenever I feel unproductive it leads to feelings of worthlessness which in turn make me rude and cat scratchy toward all near me.

There are many things happening around the homestead which are relevant toward my blog theme and which I'd like to discuss but wouldn't be fair to the members of the household to do so. The old personal space line must be respected inasmuch as I'd go apeshit for someone to write such things about me.

Have I mentioned lately that I can't maintain a train of thought long enough to finish a sentence today...

GOD.

This is the best I can squeeze out. My brain hurts. I need to make dinner because I'm losing weight again even though I don't mean to. But perhaps I do on some level. That's the gnarly thing about recovery; I feel ugly and skinny but ugly and fat at the same time. I'm hungry and food porn a lot these days but the thought of eating makes me nauseous. I'm indecisive about any and all food-related decisions. Food, food, food, godamn food.

I'm constantly stressing about cars, medication, psychiatric treatment, taxes, cars, finances, cars, food, work, writing, everything. Maybe the external lethargy is a Girl, Interrupted type example of velocity vs. viscosity... I need to be back on the mood stabilizers I hate so much and can't afford, anyway. Maybe I need to try a different prescription.

MANIA CAN ANYONE SAY MANIC EPISODE I'M LOSING IIITTTTT.

In other news, Siri! I got your package and I loved it. Listened to the CD first thing and it was awesome. I'll make you a mix and write you a letter the moment my thoughts can slow to match the speed of my handwriting.

On Suicides and Faking It

Although this has been several days in the brewing it’s hard to determine how to begin an entry with this particular subject… The reason it’s been so on my mind is that, aside from the fact that depression makes you think of it, one of the girls whose blogs I follow seems to be preparing her own internet death.

I know that to accuse someone of getting ready to fake their death is an enormous, outrageous, melodramatically serious thing. However, I do know what I’m talking about: I’ve dealt with it multiple times in the past. I’ve thought that I’d lost close friends four times in the past only to find out later that they faked it. I don’t have a clue how many other cases I’ve heard of in which the heartbreaking loss of someone loved and admired turned out only days later to have been completely fabricated.

A suicide attempt is not something to shrug off lightly as a grab for attention. In fact, that misconception is among the top three falsely held beliefs about mental illness that drive me absolutely batshit, right up there with eating disorders are vanity and depression is ungratefulness, etc. Similarly, I think that to say faking one’s suicide is purely for attention is also a grave misstatement. At the same time, though, in all the cases I’ve observed I do feel that attention is a large part of it.

Even for suicide attempts the attention thing usually has at least some role, although I don’t feel it’s in the intentional, manipulative way people typically believe. Any attempt, serious or not, is desperation to get relief and find some sort of comfort. In many cases the comfort sought may well be the element one gets when hospitalized – being completely taken care of, getting a break from school and bills and all the crap contributing most heavily to the depression that led to it in the first place.

For many people caught in a suicidal depression the thought of committing oneself is a lot scarier than the idea of dying. As such, if a mild attempt can serve the same purpose without the humiliation of checking into a mental ward, it seems quite a bit more desirable. Additionally, it lends a twisted feeling of legitimacy since you have concrete evidence proving the depression and need for care.

…This is unlikely to make any sense to anyone who hasn’t felt what I’m trying to explain. That’s the totally sucky thing about mental illness: it isn’t logical and it’s impossible to explain logically to someone who isn’t already crazy.

In any case, what I’m trying to explain is that depression makes you feel completely horrible, hopeless, and helpless. If it hasn’t quite gotten to the point that one seriously, one-hundred-percent, for sure wants to die, a half-hearted attempt shows the world how bad it really is inside and hands over that helplessness to someone else to deal with so that you can have a few minutes to breathe and heal. That, in my opinion, is the attention-grabbing aspect of suicide attempts. It seems selfish to all looking on from the outside but to the depressive it’s the only last-ditch effort that makes any sense. Again, don’t forget that depression is anything but logical.

Returning to the concept of faked deaths.

This… I don’t fully understand. I have theories but I’ve never faked my own suicide, only gone with the real attempts... (Which is more f-ed up? God knows.) In all the years I’ve spent online making friends, having feuds, falling in love, suffering explosive fights, I’ve known dozens of people and grown close to many of them. Because most of the circles I’ve frequented in the past have been eating disorder and mental illness related, close friends have gone in and out of hospitals, inpatient facilities, outpatient treatment centers, disappeared without warning, called me on the phone, sent letters, etc, etc.

Two of those friends killed themselves. One died when she was fourteen and I was sixteen. She just disappeared from the internet and I didn’t even know for sure that she had died until recently, when her mom e-mailed me after reading the article about my t’shirt project and asked if I’d ever known her daughter Jade. The other was not a close friend, but a close friend of a close friend… Her parents found her in her car in a coma a few days after she’d gone missing to us in the online world. She died later of liver failure.

::sighs:: I’m sorry for all the cheer here.

The reason I’m bringing those memories up is that in order to talk about faked suicide with the gravity it warrants, you’ve got to understand the reason it causes so much terror and pain. Because it isn’t always fake. It tears us apart because maybe we’ve lost people in the past and maybe we’re afraid of losing you, too.

The thing that angers me so much about faked suicide is that, while I’m almost sure it isn’t malicious and I am sure there’s just as much hurt going on as in a real attempt, the very nature of it is such that the faker gets to sit back and watch everything going on while they’re supposedly in the ICU, judging all of our reactions, trying to see who’s going to miss them most and who “really cares”. It’s just completely… I don’t even know what word I’m trying to find. Low. Dirty. Under-handed. To lead all your closest friends on, convince them you’re dying or dead, just because you want to see who your ‘true’ friends are…? It seems totally sickening to me.

The hardest part about it is that when you’re in the position of watching the drama unfold it’s almost impossible to call the person out. You’re emotionally shredded, scared half to death yourself, and the thought of falsely accusing your friend of doing this to you is beyond reason.

Right now, the blogger I initially mentioned has supposedly just come out of a coma, her kidneys failing from years of anorexia, now in an intensive inpatient unit. Her neighbor is supposedly the one updating her journal to keep all her friends informed of the situation is her neighbor who, without explanation or apparent reason, suddenly has the keys to her house and all her credit cards and everything. The whole situation is completely impossible to make sense of…

I don’t want to go into all the details there. If she really is as sick and close to death as the writer claims, I don’t want to talk badly of my friend. If she isn’t, it’d be almost as bad to write a vitriolic expose and thereby risk pushing all the buttons needed to make the theoretical situation a real one.

That’s why fake suicide sucks so horribly. There’s no easy way to handle it one way or the other. It’s a full and complete double bind, catch 22, rock-and-a-hard-place suckfest.

Melissa, I hope you’re okay.

ED Awareness Week!

(Thank you to Laurie for reminding me. I guess I've been distracted, or just lame and forgetful...)

...Heh. Given the times, I feel like I should wear my t'shirt a lot to make a sort of positive statement. It's strange though. I can be one of the most vocal people ever, speak in front of crowds, publish the nitty gritty ugly details of my life and depression on the internet... But I'm still nervous about 'coming out' to anyone who might actually know and see me on a regular basis. None of my coworkers know about my disorder - not even Daniel, even though we spend so much time together outside work as well as at it. I'm terrified to let them find anything out about who I am outside the workplace.

I preach regularly against stigma and tell others to not be afraid to acknowledge their disorder but when it's my life and reputation on the line it's a totally different story. Don't get me wrong, I'm not confessing to being a total hypocrite. The thing is, for me to admit to anything the person pretty much has to back me into a corner and pose a true/false, yes/no question before I'll confess.

It's embarrassing. After ten years of depression, eating issues, self-injury, even more years of panic attacks and anxiety struggles, it's still utterly shameful to have someone call me out about any of them.

I don't know how to reclaim our disorders. That sounds totally horrible and not as simple and elegant as I want it to be, but the point I'm trying to make is that most, if not all, psychological disorders are an all-time favorite joke subject in this culture.

...God, this is de-railing. I've lost my direction and am rewriting each sentence like five times before getting so fed up I just leave it as is. Ugh. I think I'll cut it short.

Basically, the reason is that I'm really upset (yes, overreacting probably) about my book... I mentioned last week that my favorite book was stolen/accidentally-taken-and-not-returned by someone at work and I've not been able to get it back. As such, I'm currently trying to buy a new copy.

Problem is, a paperback edition just came out (which comparatively SUCKS) and new copies of the hardback edition are virtually gone. This book is too special and means too much to me to buy a beat up used copy and on average the book, new, sells for twenty-five to thirty bucks. Or if I purchase it via Amazon it's 16.79 but won't be shipped out until April. The special edition, which is what I had, starts at $70.

::headdesk, cries:: I want my book baaaaaack!