River: Reconsidering my therapy goals

[mdlbear]

Please excuse me -- this is going to be a bit round-about, although I do expect to get to a point eventually. Not necessarily the point.

There are two different things going on. The first is that I recently joined a site called 7cups.com, where one can connect via (text)chat with an actual therapist, for an entirely reasonable monthly fee. N. suggested it partly because there are no therapists on the island who take Medicare, but mostly because she knows that I communicate better in text than I do in speech. (I also forget stuff if I don't write it down.)

I'm just getting started with this, trying to work on my anxiety and chronic depression. So naturally I needed to start with something of an infodump.

The second thing is that I've been finding myself trying to give various health-care providers (and their minions; I'm not sure how much of a clinic's or hospital's staff "provider" covers) a "quick" overview of Colleen's recent medical history. That's an infodump in its own right, and I was having trouble remembering what happened when.

Being a tool-using bear, I figured that the simplest way to do it, or at least to make a first cut, was by combining a couple of tagging conventions that I was already starting to use in my yyyy/mm.done files. You'll notice that they already sort properly by date. The problem is that when you grep for, say, "hospital", you get line numbers instead of day numbers.

I had already started putting (mmdd) at the front of entries that I figured I was going to want to know dates for, like hospital admission and discharge dates. I had also started using a new flag character, '/', for events involving Colleen. (I've been using '%' for myself for a long time.)

Now, it was a simple matter to

    grep ' / (' */*.done | wc -l
    141

That number there is the line count. Right. Of course those aren't all hospital admissions and discharges, and the record goes back to 2008. But still, that includes at least ten hospital stays since we moved to Seattle. And it doesn't include moving four times, being laid off twice, my job burnout, totaling my car, and everything going on in the rest of family. So.

That led to the following infodump on 7c, as slightly paraphrased in this week's to.do file:

Not sure how much detail I need to go into about what's been going on in my life, but 2012 and 2015-2018 were particularly stressful. We moved four times between 2012 and now, and C was hospitalized at least 10 times. I changed jobs three times, and retired. My cat died in 2015.

And then I added:

Looking back objectively, I think I have to admit that I'm in surprisingly good shape, considering.

And

I guess that means that I have to change the question under discussion from "how can I reduce my depression and anxiety?" to "how can I cope with stress?" So... improving my coping skills and self-care skills. And reducing procrastination, which is not just a (broken) coping mechanism but also one of the few sources of stress that's actually under my control.

N's reaction when I told her this was "I thought you'd already done that." It turns out that depression and anxiety are perfectly normal and expected reactions to that level of stress. I may need to work on self-awareness, too.

Bears can be a little slow sometimes.

Comments

[alatefeline]

*hugs offered*

Yes, this is correct.

You are a very good bear.

[mdlbear]

Thank you! *hugs*

[we_are_spc]

So can phoenixes. :/

(Yes, I identify strongly with the bird. Fallon was more the Firebird (Two different creatures in our mind, even if in the same family.) ...

I am not doing to well at that, mainly because I equate nagging with the parents, and now anyone who does so is dubbed such-and I've yet to figure out how deprogram that particular trigger.

...

I've gotten better a bit at not procrastinating, but not by much.

I wish you luck, courageous bear.

-Trausio~

[mdlbear]

Thank you!

I hear you about nagging. In the past I've had better luck with accountability - posting some to.do items for the next day, along with the checked-off items from the day before. Problem is, once I start getting behind it gets discouraging.

[redsixwing]

That's a lot, even for the shoulders of a bear. *offers hugs*

Hooray for a good and useful tagging system.

[mdlbear]

*hugs* Thanks.

[mama_kestrel]

Some years ago, when my near brother was going through medical hell with his wife, someone opined that he was depressed. His response: "If I weren't depressed, I'd be crazy."

Yeah. That. If you weren't depressed, you'd be crazy.

Bear, you are doing amazingly well with all that's been thrown at you. Yes, a change in focus makes perfect sense.

And did I mention hugs? HUGS!

[mdlbear]

Thanks! *HUGS*

Of course, I could still be crazy...

[rainydaysandmondays]

How is your Colleen? Mine is well. :)

[mdlbear]

Mine is doing better -- getting stronger. Not well, or even out of danger, by any means. We'll take what we can get, day by day.

[rainydaysandmondays]

Yay!