Sinus Infection

I’ve been dealing with a sinus infection for some time, so was not around blogs for several weeks or posting. I miss it a lot.

I was dizzy, nauseous, and unable to find my balance for some time, as well as many sinus symptoms. A dose of antibiotics and I am only somewhat better. But I can read more once again, and that is a great thing, which always makes me happy once my head hurts less.

What did I do when sickest, lay on my side and try not to move. At better moments I watched the news, tv shows, movies, and listened to books on mp3 from the library and podcasts. It is good to have days when I have my balance. Oh and looking forward to getting my vaccine shots. No appointment yet, but I think of it often.

Therapy During a Pandemic

Well, what I have gotten a lot of, up close, these past few months of therapy has not been great. Well, the therapy has been great, very very great. I kind of love my therapist, but the county clinic decided to cut the number of sessions allowed, yes during a pandemic. A few months ago they told all the therapists to only make appointments every other week.

So not happy about that and not happy about how that makes me feel; neglected, abandoned, and demeaned. Not by my therapist, just by the clinic. I have to admit that right there and then, during session, I was thinking long and hard about finding another therapist. But I can’t really afford to get a therapist outside the clinic who would want to charge me about $20 a session. The clinic, since it is a county run clinic, normally only wants to see clients every other week and declines the charge the co-pay. This is huge for me, because I could never afford to pay the co-pay every week, if I found a therapist. My current therapist says she would definitely help me find a new therapist. But she is the only therapist that I have felt this comfortable with due to her knowledge and skills as a therapist.

She was nice enough to listen to the reasons that I believed I should get three appointment times per month. Now that it is a new year I might still be able to get three appointments a month, so long as one gets cancelled. Since both her and I have had a huge number of cancellations due to health, family issues, and the pandemic.

We talk on the phone. I use my headphones. That seems to be working good for me. I was told about the possibility of a zoom like thing for my laptop, but I’m not comfortable with adding any new things to my life right now. I am still trying to get adjusted to my new laptop, which I only seem to have issues with.

I initially wanted to get a new therapist because the other one, from the same clinic was not allowing me to work on healing from mother-daughter sexual abuse. She was more comfortable with keeping me talking and dealing with all my personal everyday problems, no matter what I told her or what she agreed to. It was very frustrating. So finally I called her and said I need a new therapist and it has worked out well. I have been seeing her for over a year, but still not doing a lot of healing work on the topic of mother-daughter sexual abuse.

That last statement is both true and untrue. I have done huge amounts of healing work, in therapy and out, about my mother since starting with my new therapist. It’s just that a huge amount of the healing work that I have done are about the stigmatizing that she and all of my family members did to me, treating me as though I were and calling me crazy, the gaslighting, the living in a home of an alcoholic, the lack of food and deprivation my mother put me through, the neglect, her failed attempts to sex traffic me as a pre-schooler, the emotional abuse, the physical abuse, and how that all made me feel and think about myself, my family, others, and the world. So I’ve been doing a lot of work, work that I feel needs to be done first before I get to the topic of mother-daughter sexual abuse.

My Favorite Free Social Distancing Perk

There are some good free things out there on the internet since the start of social distancing. They are in no way compensation for living in a pandemic, one million citizens infected, or the loss of life.  A distraction. An entertainment. Yes. A joy even, sometimes.

There are some free show available on hbo. There is  free Battlestar Galactica episodes on Syfy with ads.

Best of all, for me, is free daily opera streams from the Metroplitan Opera. I’ve watched almost twenty operas! My favorite is  Parsifal. My least favorite is Eugene Onegin. I absolutely loved Wagner’s Ring series of four operas.  From everything that I have ever seen or heard about Wagner, I never would have thought I would love his work. Sometimes you just have to try something in order to find out.

Metroplitan Opera

New Therapist: 6 Months On

I still consider her my new therapist. I really like her as a therapist. She has better skills than any other therapist I have seen, which is incredible.

I’m really working hard in and out of the therapy hour. Some huge new revelations have happened recently.

I realized something last week that was huge, but here’s the thing, it was totally obvious, I had just never seen it before. It all started about a month ago from something my sister said. I’ll try to write about that soon.

This week marks the sixth week that I have been doing therapy by phone. That too is going good. I tend to talk almost all the way through the therapy hour, by design, but on the phone I am trying to pause more for comments than I previously would have gotten through her emotional energy, facial expression, and body language. The biggest thing about therapy is that the clinic decided to let the therapists make weekly appointments instead of only bi-weekly. It is much appreciated and much needed during this social distancing and pandemic time. I am frustrated, enraged, triggered, and saddened about all that is going on out there.

I think about posting every day and think of all the blog friends I have come to know over eleven years of blogging. If you are gone, I still think of our connections and send you love and good and healing thoughts. If you are still blogging or a new blogger to me, stop in and I’d love to hear from you. Good and healing thoughts to you all.

New Therapist

I’ve got a new therapist and I really think she is competent to handle me, which is saying a lot. I have seen her three times already.  She has shown me that she is competent to handle me, capable, and willing. She is very good at being a witness to my healing therapy while being present, compassionate, and empathetic.  Those are all huge things.

I will say that I was at the point of being able to articulate in excruciating detail exactly what I did and did not want in a therapist and in therapy and in healing. I had a long talk with the person who was going to re-assign me to another therapist. So that has gone a long way in getting me assigned as her client. She is another therapist in the office where I was going.

I’m glad that I don’t have to go out on my own and try to find another therapist entirely on my own and especially glad that I don’t have that project looming in my life right now, even if it were only to find another therapist in the same clinic. I don’t have a lot of energy for projects right now.

I had some real issues with the other therapist, to the point of avoiding going to therapy for six months. I went in one more time, and seriously I was not capable of making it work, and really why should I have to be the one who had to try to make it work? I think the partnership proved to be a bad fit, untherapeutic. She was very good at helping clients manage the everyday manageability of their lives, but that was not my situation and I was clear about that constantly. She made it hard for me to work on my stated  and agreed upon therapy goals and needs of healing from childhood abuse, especially mother daughter sexual abuse.

The clinic will only allow me to get an appointment every other week, so that is very frustrating. It is a county mental health clinic, so it has a lot of clients and they decide those issues, even though I disagree on that.  But I suppose I would need some time to transition into doing therapy once a week.  The nicest part of that is that I don’t have to pay the co-pay, since the county declines to charge me, about $50 or more a month, so that makes it well worth my wanting to stay there, Also I have not found a better therapist on my own. She promised to help me find a weekly therapist, when and if I want to move on.

I have spent most of the sessions going over my family history and abuse history as background, but I am doing a lot of healing work through talking and feeling about all of that. It is very intense. And very healing. I am doing good work.

Good and healing thoughts to you all.

Healing Quotes 812

“Life is much more interesting when you make a bit of effort.”

~ Ai Weiwei, “Ai Weiwei: Never Forget.”

Healing Quotes 810

“When life gives you lemons; trade them for coffee.”

~ @coffeefolk, coffee folk

Healing Quotes 809

“No matter how dark the day, it always seems so much brighter when there’s a dog around.”

~ @MotherNatureNetwork

The Shadow of Mercury in Retrograde

So I figured out there is a fore-shadow for a few weeks before mercury goes into retrograde. Yeah lucky me. 🙂  I’m particularly, negatively sensitive to those times of the year when mercury is in retrograde. I learned of this when I decided to move out of state about ten years ago. To those of you who don’t believe planets’ movements around the solar system can negatively impact you, you are probably not susceptible to these negative influences, and congratulations to you.

I read recently that mercury is in retrograde 19% of the year, so yeah it is something you have to deal with and manage, if it effects\affects you. I learned that there is a shadow that can start a few weeks in advance and that it can fore-shadow the kind of impact of the coming retrograde.

So my refrigerator stopped working over the weekend. I was happy to get another used one on Monday from the apartment workers.

So I will try to be extra gentle with myself and take good care of myself. And I will try to delay making any major changes in my life during the retrogrades. I just don’t need to make that level of bad decisions anymore. Life is better when I can accept what my life is like without judging or doubting it all, in every area of my life.  🙂

Good and healing thoughts to you.

Happy New Year

Happy new year my dear blog readers.

I went to bed very early on new year’s eve and found myself awake and refreshed at midnight. So I guess the universe wanted me to be there and aware.

After a few hours I decided to grab a pizza and watched the movie Frozen. There are so many parts of the movie that remind me of my childhood; I teared up a few times. Still had a great time.

I was looking around online for the show The Alienist on tnn. Bizarrely I found it available, with commercials, on their app. I thought for sure I couldn’t find it without extra cost.

I loved the book so much when it first came out. I never met anyone else who had even read it. I was hoping the series would be as good. I didn’t think so. But the series did show a lot of evil; in the killer, the politicians, the dirty cops, the millionaire businessmen, the pimps, and every casual observer in the streets who see and do nothing.

Shockingly I still had great fun bingeing the show and alternated with watching the parts of the Rose Parade that I wanted to with the sound on. I hate parade commentary. I love bands and thought the bands were great.  🙂

I was falling asleep trying to finish the last episode. But did it. I was so tired out from the huge focused session and because I had been awake 14 hours. So I went to bed and sleeping time. All in all, a good day and a great start to a new year.

Good and healing thoughts to you all.