Well I’m on my 3rd therapist in 5 months. The first one I had I liked but he had a heart attack and had to medically retire. The second one I had talked about herself too much and clearly wanted me to find god. I’m hoping the third one will be just right, like in the story of the Three Bears.
I’ve seen her twice and my husband has accompanied me, which is my preference because I feel he keeps me honest to some degree. I have a tendency to build a fantasy world in therapy to please the therapist. I want them to be encouraged that they are helping me so I make it seem that I am doing better then I actually am and pretty soon I’m representing myself wholly dishonestly and not on purpose either. With my husband there I am more tethered to real reality and also he helps me remember symptoms, sleep schedule, whether or not I’m eating, if I’m being social, etc. Both times I saw her I left feeling better than I went in, and had hope. So it’s promising.
Yesterday when I saw her I brought up the fact that I have a list of things I want to work on to better myself but I’ve not been able to accomplish anything. She showed me how having that list was contributing to my feelings of being overwhelmed and we knocked that list down to the single most important thing to work on, losing weight, and further broke that down into an easy way to approach it, smaller portions. I saw how she took this brain full of clutter and turned it into a focused machine that I was actually able to apply to my very next meal. All I had to do was not overeat. I did good. She helped me. I can’t wait to do this with her again with more problems and get good at doing it. It’s really simple but effective. Anyway I’m sure she has more tricks up her sleeve and I’m excited to see them.
It’s so hard to find a therapist who fills the needs that we have at any given point in our journey. Sometimes we have to go at it alone. But there are times when we are just ready for change and another person helps to facilitate that and if we can find them and are opened to it, we can grow. All I know is things aren’t good in my head right now and all the meds changes in the world aren’t gonna change that. So maybe three is my lucky number, or maybe there has to be a fourth. We’ll see.
