The Stress Snowball

I am very familiar with the Stress Snowball. 

You see, it starts off small. 
It's so small, that I ignore how cold it is. 



I even ignore the rock in the middle of it, which makes it dangerous, but I'll get to that later.

I ignore the snowball, thinking that I can handle it. 

…

I'm wrong. 

Eventually, I drop the snowball and it starts to roll around. 

It picks up other stress inducing things.

This happens because I didn't take care of the small things, and now I'm too stressed to deal with the bigger things…

It picks up pretty much everything, from school stuff, to work stuff, to even other people who were just there to help.
 

This can get overwhelming to the point where I just don't want to do ANYTHING and so the ball continues to grow. 

 


When it gets this bad, we are tempted to dive in and get to the source immediately, but sometimes that gets us stuck in the ball. 

Instead, take a moment to take a closer look.
 

In general, if you can peel off some easy tasks and stresses first, just little ones from the top, you can start to get some layers of snow off of your stress snowball.
 


Keep at it, and before long, your stress snowball will start to shrink to a more manageable size.
 

More layers removed, and you'll get to the rocky middle. 

The stress which started it all.


The stress I thought I could handle, whatever it may be. 

The stress I didn't realize was so heavy. 

For me, it looks like this:
 

This center of stress is generally just a failure to keep up with the tasks of taking care of myself, along with everything else.

I have learned to keep this center of stress happy with tea and comic-books.  

It is often tough to find time for this though, so to-do lists come in handy. 

I treat taking care of myself just like any other task.  

This is the key to avoiding the stress snowball. 

Do I still fail to do this on occasion?  
Of course.  

I'm actually a little worried about this coming semester, since it's my last.  

Here's hoping I remember this post! 

Therapathetic

People find themselves drawn to different professions for a lot of reasons.  

Personally, if I had my way and all the money required, I'd be a cartoonist.  

Still, gotta make a living somehow, and being a Psychologist not only makes sense for me, but allows me the opportunity to help someone...
...Or accidentally screw someone up pretty badly. 

Exciting!  

Okay, so I'm actually pretty terrified.  

That being said, I learned what to do from my classes, and what NOT to do from most of my therapists.  

I've had a lot of therapists.

I take this as a strength.  
I've been where the client is.  
Also, as a therapist, I'll know that not all cases will be the same.

I even had a therapist direct me to a hypnotist who got SUPER excited over the idea of me puking in her office.

Let me explain that one.

See, I told her that I was having nightmares.  
She asked what happens when I wake up.
I told her that if they are really bad, I get sick.
Her response was: 

And so my response was: 

And my mother promptly removed me from the woman's office.

Mind you, I've had nice, sane therapists too.  
My current one, in fact.  

She's been very helpful, which means she's been supportive in a way that allows me to come up with what I need to do for myself. 

She guides without telling, and gives hope when needed.  

The one before her also wasn't awful.  

She was an art therapist and helped me learn that I like art therapy techniques but would like to do other things with clients.

The one before that one was mostly...  Good?  
...ish? 
 
She went out of her way to say that once I was diagnosed with PTSD, that would be my life forever.  

Don't tell your client, who is in your office to get better, that there is no such thing as healing or a future without intense psychological pain.  

Not cool.

Also, she was wrong. 

So, let's get to the utter shit of it, shall we? 

When I was of Bat Mitzvah age, I went to a woman about my crippling anxiety and dealing with some physical pain.  

After hearing that I was not going through this traditional Jewish ceremony (which was a very minor part of my story), she explained to me that: 

Yeah.  

She decided to let me know that I'd be "letting my congregation down" and that the rabbi and my own PARENTS would hate me for not doing it. 

This was utter crap. 

I responded with a: 

And my parents reassured me that they weren't going to disown me AND that I didn't have to see that woman ever again.  

It turned out that my family actually knew her, but didn't realize that she had a different last name than her child.  

My father was training her child for his/her Bar/Bat Mitzvah.  

Projection!  Don't do it!  

Next up was a woman I actually had twice.  

What I mean by that is that I saw her for many months, then switched to someone else, and then tried her again.

I had left the first time because she was very open about also being the therapist for a frienemy of mine.  

She'd talk openly about said friend/enemy and I felt uncomfortable, realizing she was probably doing the same about me.  

Breach of confidentiality, for one thing.  

The second time was somehow worse.

I was talking about something... I don't remember what.  

It triggered her. 
She started crying.
A lot. 

I was not crying. 

Pretty much everything this lady did went on my "Don't do this to people" list.

Still, not as bad as a woman who forced me to take drugs. 

Look, if you have a chemical imbalance and want to be on medication, more power to you.  
It can be helpful. 

I didn't want it. 

Beyond that, I had ZERO signs of clinical ANYTHING that wasn't direct cause and effect.  

I had anxiety and some depression because my legs didn't work right and my sister was scary.  

I wanted to talk about it. 

I wanted to find ways to work with it and build my life into something better.

She decided that would be too difficult, and handed me a pill. 

Since I had said from day one that I did not want to take any medications, and she had agreed...

I figured I must be REALLY screwed up for her to demand I try them.  

...So I took the pill.

It didn't take long before I started feeling like I wanted to kill myself.

I had never felt like that before.  

Thankfully, I was able to see that it was the medication having a strange effect on me.

In retrospect, the fact that she didn't mention that as a possible side effect, the fact that she talked me into taking something at all, and the fact that she didn't mention just STOPPING instead of weening off of it could be dangerous... 

Bitch could have killed me. 

DON'T DO THIS TO PEOPLE.

And you know what her response was when I said I wasn't going to take it anymore?

Thankfully, I had brought Dad in that day. 
I don't even know why I had dragged him in.  

Maybe I was afraid of what else she'd ask me to do. 

He told me I never had to see her again.
...She had always silently repeated everything I said with her own lips anyway.
That was really creepy.  

Like I said before, there have been good therapists in my life.  

They don't need to be on this list in pictures because every day that I talk about the progress I've made shows how not-shitty they are. 

Those are the people I hope to emulate. 
I hope to be a not-shitty therapist.

Cha Cha Hannukah

Surrounded by questions of whether or not I had a Christmas tree growing up, I started remembering Hannukah once again.  

I remember the same things I've told you all before...

And I noticed something else.

First, let's talk about the fact that eight gifts typically happen.  

It's one a night, and parents will generally pick which to give their child each night.  

Sometimes the gifts get a little silly by the end, and sometimes they get better and better.

My parents?

They showed us all the gifts at once. 

In a pile...

Mine would be one wrapping paper and my sister's would be another. 

They were in a pile and it was our choice which present we'd pick first, second, and so on each night. 

This was terrible.

We'd spend every night thinking about what the other shapes contained and whether we chose right, even though we'd obviously be getting the others open eventually. 

Sometimes it would be a miss, like a thing we didn't really care for or something decidedly useless...

Sometimes it would be something completely ridiculous on the other side of the spectrum, and I'd become a little concerned about who my parents had to kill in order to afford it...

Either way, having that pile to choose from and that interesting semi-roulette of Hannukah ended with conditioning me to realize that anything I'm waiting for will eventually come, whether I guess or obsess about it or not. 

It also did something else that is fairly important.

It made me no longer have a crushing sense of curiosity.  

I don't mean that it took the magic out of my imagination or made me want to know how things worked a little less.  

Not at all.  

What I'm saying is that situations that were labeled as dangerous in some way were no longer particularly interesting to me.  

Things that did not affect my life and that would not have anything potentially awesome for me or my loved ones were empty boxes which did not need to be opened. 

When friends saw a door saying, "Do Not Enter," it filled them with a NEED to open that door.  

I was freed from this need.

I no longer cared. 

I'm telling you...  This was freeing.  

A beautiful thing.  

The closed door was now nothing more than a door I did not need to open, so that I could spend more energy opening the doors which needed opening.  

Take this both literally and figuratively.  

On a completely separate note, I actually DID have Christmas this year.  

We had a tree in the apartment and everything.  

It was about four feet tall and we didn't actually have much to work with.

The only real ornaments on it are, oddly enough, mine. 

Oswald, the Lucky Rabbit...

Plenty of candy canes,
Batman...

The ribbon is Halloween ribbon. 

There were lips on there somewhere...

The topper was Trickster #1 from the Broadway show of the Lion King. 

And a bat. 

My Knight's family has taken me in as one of their own. 

I feel a little like a tiny kitten being taken in by a pack of wolves.  

They are very caring and were terrifying before I learned the ways of their people. 

...Like Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.  

This freaking movie.

I don't understand what the Hell I watched. 

My eyes themselves were confused and pained, yet entertained. 

Like watching an empty car explode.  

The movie was so charming and nice to look at that I somehow got through the implications of ...everything bad that could possibly happen to a woman.  

Like the main character himself, all was forgiven with a dance number and a song. 

In any case, we were given many gifts that evening and much joy was had.  

I felt like I was really a part of the family, and that was nice. 

Yay!

 

 

The Acceptance Snowman

I figured out why my relationship is working.  

It’s not that he ignores my mental health issues, and it’s not that he is in some kind of denial in another way…  

It’s not even that he figures I’ll get better and different and he’s just waiting around.  

It’s that he looks at me, knows I’m working to change what I think needs changing, and he’s proud of me for that…
And at the same time, the only thing he sees as wrong is the fact that I’m sometimes unhappy with how I am.  

He doesn’t see how I am as wrong, just the unhappy factor, which he is pleased as punch to help me fix. 


This picture is a perfect example:

I was kind of obsessively balling up Dove wrappers as I ate the chocolates.  
I find their little messages weirdly comforting sometimes, and I started attaching two of the wadded up balls of foil together. 

My Knight in Pinstripes looked at this.  

Instead of saying, “That’s garbage” or “What the Hell are you doing?” he just automatically processes a meaning behind it and goes, “Oh!  We’re building a snowman!” and makes a head for it.  

He accepts that I'm not quite what I would like to be, and he realizes that I sometimes have trouble functioning as well as I would like to, but he accepts me as I am.  

He accepts me as I am, 
he accepted me when I was at my lowest point, 
and he continues to accept me as I grow and change for the better.  

Yep.  

I’m keeping this man (Rob, not the tin snowman) forever.