I have that feeling again. The one that says don’t walk in the door. Call and cancel. I think maybe I should call and cancel. I just can’t handle being around someone who can see right through me again. I feel so fragile. Maybe it’s my dads surgery coming up in 5 days. I don’t know what I’m stepping into with that one. Maybe it’s going off the medication. I felt fine until this week. Actually, I felt that high again on Monday. It felt soooo good. Now, I can’t stop crying and the fear of going in to see my therapist tomorrow is overwhelming me. I have to email him and tell him this! I wan’t to cancel so bad! I need to be talked down off the cliff again.

So it’s been one year. Last Friday I was back at my therapists on the exact day that I walked through “that door” a year ago. I told him this, we shared a toast over coffee, and spent the hour going over just what progress I’ve made over the past year. He said, “well look at the person who you were when we started vs the person you are today.” I told him I was too close to it. Had no perspective. So we talked. He stressed how “we” did things together, progressing as a team I suppose. He stressed that I had been through a lot this past year. He also told me that he thought working with me has made him feel like a better therapist. That was good to hear. Something like “I’m stronger that I realized.”

He brought up the fact that I stuck with it even though I was ready to walk out the door, literally, but I did stay, sat down and listened to him. I allowed him to calm me down. He alluded to the fact that he actually felt in over his head at that point and I realize now that his stressing Forrest View for me was in fact what he wanted me to do. Maybe he felt in over his head. He again pointed out that it was something high stress and somewhat touch and go that “we” got through together. Me not walking out the door and fleeing the scene and him not referring me out.

We didn’t get into the original 3 month healing process due to the rug being pulled out from under me. No need. We didn’t get into the medication or the doctor aspect of things. We mainly just reflected on the year. The Year in Review! I told him I didn’t want to stop coming, if anything I worry about him leaving, like moving which he sometimes mentions. I told him that almost all of my therapists (more like counselors)  have bailed on me. All of my psychiatrists have, and they’re the most important! What the hell! He mentioned a bit of abandonment issues I may have because of that and just assured me that he wasn’t going anywhere.

God I love that guy!  

It’s back to two weeks now, for me to go back to my therapist. Maybe that means what he says is true. That I’m doing better. I can’t see the forrest through the trees, that’s for sure. Anyway, this gives me time to get back out there by my own means and stop relying on him and our weekly Friday sessions for feedback and validation. I still wish I knew what he actually thought about me. He has all of this information. Private information about me.

I told him that I still feel really nervy every time I have to go in there. Oftentimes hoping I don’t see his car in the lot and I can get out of it. Yeah, right… Like that’s going to happen. The only way that can happen is if I choose to not walk in the door. I outright asked him last session what he thought I was so nervy about. He thought it was vulnerability. Damn it! I hate the thought of that. Probably because he’s right. He thinks it’s necessary to feel vulnerable for therapy to actually work. He also thought that me feeling vulnerable might be because I’m afraid that he will leave me, like move out West as he sometimes talks about. So I told him he made me nervous, and again took that as a compliment! Therapy is definitely weird. Either that or he is! I know I am. I mean, as much as I hate feeling nervy during the week, and more and more so leading up to crossing the threshold of his door, I’m already missing our time this week (and it’s only Monday). I wan’t him gone, but I don’t want him to leave! Maybe I should talk to someone else about this…?

I truly do not understand what this dichotomy is all about. Make no mistake, I feel just as strongly towards both, so it’s impossible for me to easily figure out. I want him GONE. Out of my life, wish I never met him gone. Angry, resentful and hate him type of gone. And that’s just plain awful of me! I clearly like him very much as a person. We have both said to one another at some point in time that we would be friends outside of therapy. How can I admit to hating him then? It must be the inner child petulantly rearing her little head in defiance. Yes… That’s it… That’s it, because she also fears abandonment. She fears the power he has over her. She hates being powerless herself… Now I’m getting somewhere. This makes sense to me… because the other side of this is the overwhelming reliance upon him. Dependent yes. Sometimes downright clingy.

Wow. He really is digging down deep. Only he isn’t digging, I’m just emptying everything out of my purse onto the table. I’m just letting loose all kinds of things I’d never talk to anyone about. I’ve told him this, so I do realize it. He keeps repeating to me that I do have a mood disorder. It’s not a big deal but I am moody, so he observes. God that’s never going to end! People!

Is it okay that he made me coffee? I came into the office on a Thursday, because I had to go to U of M on Friday which is our usual meeting day. He made an exception, came in first thing in the morning to the GH office, then drove to his office after for the rest of the work day. I found that very kind. I said I didn’t mind driving. He said, he didn’t mind being kind. But when I walked in, waiting in my car for the exact time like always, I found him sitting in his chair reading a magazine. No clipboard. No computer open. There was a fresh cup of coffee in the Keurig, so I joked “you made a cup of coffee for me? :)” Well, he actually did, his was already poured and sitting steaming next to his fashion (?) magazine he was reading. The “I wan’t to be more aware of my clients needs” or something along those lines was such a subtle untruth that I stifled the retort “I thought I was just special.”

And that’s just it… we really just did meet for coffee that morning. We talked, as friends do. No questions. No drama. No problems. Coffee. Of course, I did stay an extra half hour, as I now realize he regularly schedules around, because we do enjoy one another’s company, and I do think its a light meeting for him which gives him a break. However there were things I thought I picked up on. After all, I do know people and their behavior. There was mirroring, but that is a good thing, and most likely has been going on for a while, its rapport, which we talked about. There are now the expressions ‘we’ and ‘us’ used by him though. I caught him picking his nails, and even got a blush out of him at one point when I told him it was time for him to branch out on his own.

Disconcertingly, I did at one point feel the tether though. Just for a brief moment. Strong and forceful as always. I hope in being a little older and wiser I can discount the tether as being a two-way street. I need to. I don’t want to lose him as a therapist. I feel very dependent upon him now. Maybe that’s the next discussion we need to have. Is healthy dependency in therapy something that will eventually go away? Do I need to be concerned about this developing into something that will have to terminate our relationship? I guess that’s up to me. Stop thinking of him as anything but a clinical psychologist. Period!

There was a beginning prior to my manic episode, call it a breakdown, but I had the same overwhelming feeling to flee like I did in Montana with the keyed car incident. So, I told him about it, my therapist. I’ve never told anyone the truth about that, well except for here, but this is just writing.

I was so sick of Overwatch (the fucking game from hell bane of every mothers existence willing to beat your own child over smash the computer and killing the people who invented it type game) that I started smashing things and throwing boxes around downstairs to make my point for him to come down and help me unpack. I yelled, “Can you hear me now!!! Can you here me now?!!” Nope. The sound-canceling headset that I bought him was working freakin fantastic! What a birthday gift I bought. So I ran upstairs, threw a box across the room at the window (always making sure not to actually break a window… funny how I still think about these things) picked up the box again and threw it again the other way… I had his attention now. I didn’t like it, even at the moment, that I had him scared shitless, but honestly if he was not in the direct path of me and that computer… well, it would have been thrown out the window.

He got his ass downstairs and I continued to maniacally tear through boxes and throw things and demand him to trash it all. Meaning, the actual trash. I threw away everything from old print work that I had done to iPads and laptops. I just wanted it gone. What this really meant though, is that I wanted to be gone. I had the old feeling of leaving everything behind and just getting in my truck and driving away. I wanted to tell him to call his grampa. He would come and get him. I didn’t even want to take him there. Eventually, when I did calm down, I said to my son, “You have no idea how close I was to throwing your computer out the window! Hell I wanted to throw you out the window! You pull that shit again and I’m putting you up in a motel room and you can figure out how to live your life on your own.”

Cool. Really cool, mom. I did tell my therapist all of this though. I guess that is what started the serious conversation. He asked me if I was still taking my medication. I told him yes. I am not a walking cliché of the bipolar person who “feels okay so stops taking there meds.” Then he asked me when I had last seen a psychiatrist and I was honest with him that I didn’t have a psychiatrist in town. “Well how long has it been since you’ve had your medication checked out?” “About five years” “So, who’s filling your prescriptions?” “My PCP.” Long pause… obviously not okay with that. So I told him I lied to her, my PCP, so that I could just keep getting the medication. After all, it had been working for this long. His logical response was that I most likely have built up a tolerance to it. Yes, I get that, “but I’ve been feeling fine!” “Well now, isn’t that just the cliché of what a person with bipolar would say” he said.
Touché

I made it to the Tuesday appointment. Again, did not want to walk through that door. Did not want to get out of the car, but I had a book to give him. Simple enough to get me to walk through the door.

The last time he saw me, he saw a side of me that people don’t get to see. Unfortunately my son has seen it, but no one else. Not a stranger. It’s hard for me to really see my therapist as a stranger anymore though. We’ve been talking for nine months now. That’s a long time for the major crazy to just show up in full force out of the blue like that. I told him for all the years I’ve been going to therapists, this was the first time I felt like I was “in therapy.”  He took it as a compliment. I didn’t intend it to be. I actually hated the feeling, however, it probably is true that if after all of this time I can finally show my true freak show self to another human being, then he is really good at his job.

I had requested a release of my medical records from the St. Pat’s Psychiatric Unit and asked him if I could have them faxed to his office. Yes. And there they were…. He wanted to discuss them. He read them! Oh Shit! What the hell did I do?! What do I do now? I handed him the book. His face lit up for a second when he realized I was giving it to him as a gift. (“Don’t let the Pigeon Drive the Bus”, it’s a perfect reference book, besides I kept ranting that the pigeon was driving last time we spoke so… yeah.) He hands me a clipboard in return. I’m like, “what’s this?” “Oh just a release form so that I can disclose your treatment to a psychiatrist once you get an appointment.” Nice. I give him a gift and he gives me a release form. Perfect.

He did find me a doctor who only took cash. Weird as it sounds I got in the next day and am now put on a second medication. It’s what I didn’t want. The cocktail. The antipsychotic. Just the word scares the hell out of me. And that’s how I generally feel about all of this. Scared! My therapist keeps telling me how very brave I am to keep on walking through that door. He tells me that every time I see him now. That’s because I’m also brave enough to tell him I’m scared.

Here’s where it gets interesting. Childhood might have been about always finding a means of escape, which I was keenly adept at, but the teenage years took a dark turn. I no longer wanted to escape. I wanted someone to rescue me. I needed someone to recognize that my mind had taken control of my sanity and I desperately needed help.

I never looked into those thoughts until two weeks ago when I had an extreme manic episode and actually was rescued. Finally! 25 years later and I never even realized that’s what I still had to have, but finally, the right person was there at the right time. Really the right person. I’m not sure it could have been anyone else… No, not anyone else would have handled it as good as he did, my therapist. Not any other therapist, doctor, organization, professional of any kind. Of course, no friend or family member would have known what to do and this is exactly the type of thing that they need to Not Witness.

I was pacing. I was a pacing freak and I did not want to go in there! I saw that his car was gone and thought, whew, I’m off the hook, when I recognized the plates on a new car. Shit. I had to walk through the door now. Damn it! I knew I wouldn’t be able to sit down. I was going to panic and keep on pacing, rapidly forcing out my words that were running in circles and not making any kind of sense to me. And that’s exactly what I did.

I told him his office was too small to pace in but I did it anyway. Pacing in circles I guess. I remember I just kept on repeating “the system is broken, the system is broken” because I was trying to get in to see a psychiatrist to adjust my medication and hearing No, No, No when it came to my insurance. I was royally screwed! Which is the other thing I just kept on repeating. I really didn’t look at him the entire time so I have no idea what his reaction was to all of this ‘new me’ bombarding him out of the blue. It was entirely a oneway conversation, no, not conversation, rant I suppose. No, mania. Let’s give it its proper name. This is after all a blog about bipolar disorder.

I wasn’t paying attention to him until I heard him mention this Forrest Pines… Forrest Hill… Daisy Hill Puppy Farm… whatever the hell the institution is called in GR and I swung around to face him and yelled, “Do Not say that to me! Do Not start talking crazy talk!” Ironic isn’t it. He didn’t exactly stop though, gentle natured or not, I could still hear the crazy talk of me actually committing myself. So I was like, “I shouldn’t be here. You can’t help me. I gotta go.” As I bolted towards the door handle he asked me to wait just a minute and sit down. I refused. I left the door though and went to the window. He asked me to sit again. I finally did, because I like this person. I respect this person. And I was fully aware of just how poorly I was treating him.

He started out his career working for two years in a mental institution in Chicago, so he gave it to me straight. How bad it really is on the inside. How I would get thrown into the mix. Rooming with the people who needed to be there when I did not. The difference between voluntary commitment and involuntary. He basically scared the shit out of me so that we could come up with a plan so as to not ever let this actually happen. I was tucked up in a ball crawling out of my skin and shaking as we spoke.

Don’t remember the conversation. Remember calming down. Remember him saying he wasn’t going to fire me (my words) and he would be with me every step of the way throughout this process. I think that’s when I felt okay. Maybe that’s when I felt I could stop and breathe for a moment. I was back on even ground, somewhat, enough that he would let me leave his office. He wanted to see me again in a couple of days though. There was no question in that, just a “Tuesday at 2” or something like that. I was numb… He handed me a reminder card.