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.

The I U Don't

I recently fainted, as you can read about here: (Of Blood and Butterflies) 

It was scary and seemingly random. 

I tried to think of any other time I could have passed out like that, and I managed to remember one specific incident.

I didn't count this because it wasn't entirely random.  It could have been from a lot of things. 

The whole situation was kind of stupid. 

About four years ago, I was having some serious issues with heavy bleeding forever until signs of anemia. 

Different pills did nothing.  I had already been on the patch for twelve years and it had been amazing for alleviating the intense cramps I had been having. 

They even kept me out of school sometimes as a kid, which is why I was put on the patch so young.


So, it was a little heart breaking when I started having those other, new problems, and needed to try something new. 

Even more upsetting was that a bazillion different pills did nothing. 

My options were then surgery or getting an IUD.  


Clearly, one option seemed a little nicer than the other.

Since the worst case scenarios involving the IUD were pretty much an infection that would happen really early on, if at all, and then it would need to be removed, and/or being unable to get pregnant even after it is removed.  

Because I had already made the choice to adopt if I ever have children at all, this was not a huge downside for me. 

*Cue an uproar of a lot of horrible things people automatically say to me when they hear that, as though my decision to not have children somehow directly affects whether or not THEY can have kids.  …* 

You know what?  My body, my family history, my over populated planet, my choice.

I just want to state here, I'm totally all for other people having babies.  It is a beautiful thing.  It really is. 

For you. 

Not my thing. 

Also, after FOUR YEARS of having the IUD, NOW I'm getting random people saying, "Oh my god!!  Didn't you know there are RISKS??  OH MY GOD YOU COULD BE DEAD RIGHT NOW." 

Right. 

You know, I got this same speech from people seeing lawsuits concerning the very things my doctor had warned me about when I was on the patch too, and again, YEARS after it would have affected me. 
 

Chill the Hell out. 

*ahem*

In any case, there was a little issue because since I hadn't had a child before and since I wasn't married, even though the other option was an invasive surgery, it was going to be a big pain in the ass to convince the gynecologist's office to give me an IUD. 

…

Even though she was the one to suggest it.

The way around it?  Simple!  Have my now ex-boyfriend come in, say we're engaged, and basically give the O.K. for me to have it.

Right.

In this day and age, MY doctor needed a MAN'S permission to do something to MY body to possibly prevent MY BODY getting pregnant. 

WHAT??

The main thing here is that I needed it to not die of something else, so this shouldn't have even been a question. 

For the record, this thankfully didn't end in a lawsuit, but for fuck's sake, it could have.

Also for the record, my current gynecologist from this same office is amazing and very kind and intelligent. 

A lot of the nurse practitioners are too.  I just had some bad luck for a bit.

In any case, once it was all decided that I was going to have this, no one mentioned the real reason why they are iffy about a woman who hasn't given birth having an IUD placed.

The reason I was given was that it could make me infertile and I'd never have the beautiful experience of having a screaming, shit covered animal rip from my loins. 

And really?  I don't hate children.  I don't know what to do with infants… but I like kids a lot once they hit like three years old. 

Until then, I don't know what to do when I'm near an infant.
 

I don't find them cute.

They scare me, actually.

Anyway, the REAL reason it's iffy is because if you haven't had a baby, getting an IUD implanted can be excruciating. 

That would have been nice to know.

I even had an anti anxiety prescribed to relax me for the procedure, but no pain pill was ever offered. 

Fun fact, the anti anxiety did nothing.


I blamed it for fainting later though. 

See, I was still super tense during the procedure. 

I tried to meditate through it, but the nurse practitioner's assistant kept thinking I was passing out (Hahahaha) and kept SCREAMING AT ME to make sure I was awake.

So, you know, that sucked.

After the fact, I got dressed, left the room, and the last thing I saw was a different nurse practitioner who is often really mean, looking at me with the most concerned face I've ever seen. 

Then everything went black. 

I blamed the anti-anxiety finally kicking in, and the stress, and a general drop in blood pressure.  This could all still be accurate. 

I remember Dad's car, and the couch at my parent's place. 

Then I remember the car again, and demanding to be taken the hour and a half back to school.

Here's the fun part.

My body didn't really know what to do with it. 

Contractions happened.

Sort of ironically, this made me really not want to ever have biological children even more than I already did not want to go through that process. 

At school, I was just in time for team trivia.  By the way, I remember this and ask myself, "Where was my boyfriend?" 

There are many reasons that relationship did not work out.  

Anyway, I answered a lot of questions, and I answered them correctly, but they came out kind of… 

We managed to actually win too. 

So, okay.  I've fainted before. 

Hmm.



Guess I'll keep that in mind? 

Guinea Loaf and Other Rodent Mishaps

I already spoke about Frodo the Gerbil and how terribly that went. 

Well, a few of the other pets accidentally led to traumatic events as well. 

We had two mice, for example.  One was grey and one was tan.  They were adorable and tiny and I remember very little about them aside from the death of the grey one.

You see, the mouse was in my hand at the time of her demise. 

I didn't do anything to kill her, but I certainly felt like it was my fault as she spazzed around and had a tiny mousey seizure. 

My friend was there that day.  She told me to put her down and in my panic, I placed the mouse on top of the cage. 

On the one hand, I doubt dying on a metal grid was more comfortable than dying on my hand. 

On the other, she was probably too busy heading towards that mousey light at the end of the rodent tunnel to give a damn.

The second mouse died soon after, and I always assumed it was due to loneliness.  

 EDIT: "Oh dear.  Could you feel it's little mouse heart stop beating?"-My mom.  

She immediately regretted asking this, but what the fuck, Mom?  Who asks that??

I also had two hamsters.  I think they were dwarf hamsters specifically, and no, I didn't have them at the same time.  However, neither one lasted very long.

I believe they were "Grim" and "Grim 2" respectively.

Hamsters are delicate creatures. 

No, I didn't smoosh them or anything like that.

As it turns out, they don't always travel well.  Most people have no problem with this.  They go from the pet store to the car to the home and everything is fine.

Some hamsters are not so fine.

When mine started shitting himself, we took him to the vet.   The vet explained that the stress of moving occasionally makes hamsters have diarrhea, and often this is incurable. 

…

Kay.

So my hamsters shat themselves to death. 

The mouse was still worse. 

This post, however, is meant to talk mainly about the guinea pigs in my life. 

They will clearly one day evolve into tribbles.

We've had many. 

Heidi:

She used to ride in my Barbie convertible too.

Bunny:

...Apparently, guinea pigs substituting for my Barbies was a thing.

There was Furball, Silky...

I even made a plush guinea pig in school:

Hmm.  I'm not entirely sure where the other ear went.  

Oh well. 

Along the line of this long list of rodents, two guinea pigs were mine, so of course they were the ones to suffer really awful deaths that I could do nothing to stop.

'Cause, you know, my life.

One was named Theodore Edward Bear, or just Ted E. Bear because I was super clever. 

When he had a tumor removed, (which took up most of his body because he was a freaking guinea pig) the hair never grew back and the scar was enormous.  So, he became "Frankenpig"

None of us seem to remember the name of the other one.  He was smooth and brown.  I think I used to call him Poopie because of that, but I'm sure he had another name. 

In any case, my mother called him a "she" up until the day he died, which was only problematic because he died from a piggy version of testicular cancer. 

It got to the point where he couldn't stand up because his balls were too big. 

This was another case of a vet saying, "There really isn't much we can do.  …  He's a guinea pig." 

Currently, we have Cutie:

So far, so good.

Lets go back to the first pig for a moment though.  You see, she was super fun when she was alive.  Eventually though, like all things, Heidi passed away. 

Here is where my family's ability to be well meaning smacks into their terrible timing and my over active imagination. 

My mother has this meatloaf she makes, and she went through a phase where she tried to make it more interesting.  She worked very hard on this particular loaf, which is why she was very confused by my reaction to it.

You see, in order to help us mourn the loss of our pet, she attempted to fashion this particular loaf into the shape of beloved Sesame Street character, Snuffleupagus. 

The nose wouldn't stay up and it very quickly stopped looking even remotely like a muppet. 

Instead, it kinda looked like a guinea pig.

My immediate assumption was, of course, "OH MY GOD.  MY FAMILY IS EATING OUR DEAD GUINEA PIG." 

Because, you know, I was totally stable.  

...

Yep.

It's a Snake!

Over the years, my family had a lot of pets.  This was mostly because of my sister.  

This means that some lived well past the age that anything should be alive, and others dies really horribly.  I have a thousand stories about guinea pigs, birds, dogs, cats, fish and so on...  

This post is reserved for snakes and rats... and a gerbil. 

That poor gerbil. 

For snakes, we had Trent, Lilith and still Wally.

Wally is a Western Hog-nose and he has lived WAY LONGER than they are supposed to live. 

He looks like this: 

Trent was a Burmese Python.   He got to be about ten feet long, I think, before we realized that we couldn't really take care of him, lest he eat the other animals.  

He was named for Trent Reznor of NIN and at one point bit my mom in the face.  

Mom was fine.  

I was terrified. 

Lilith was a Ball Python and you can actually read about my special relationship with her here! 

Mom has always been fearless when it comes to the snakes and actually takes them in to show her students.  

nooo...

One of them got stuck in a couch at one point.  It was one of those fold out bed couches.  

There was an adventure getting the snake out.  

In any case, at some point, we started breeding rats to feed the snakes.  I don't know if this was always on purpose, but either way, we wound up with too many.

This was partly caused by late bloomers.  

See, we'd separate the male from the female, but every now and then there would be a male who's balls hadn't dropped yet, and we'd think it was a lady rat:

Until he was going around screwing his mom, sister and aunts.

Even before the breeding happened, I was getting accustomed to hating snakes based on the fact that I didn't like worms and I loved rodents.  Rodents are fuzzy and cute and don't do this: 

It became a common thing when friends were over or just because my sister assumed I'd want to watch this happen.  Since I had trouble talking in a clear enough way to make a point, I'd just kinda suck it up and cry as I sat for the show.  

I remember being extra confused because my sister took great joy in feeding the snake, but claimed to love the rats too.  

She was such an animal lover that she was a member of animal rights groups and talked about throwing red paint on fur coats.  

(Which would actually be really stupid because a well kept fur coat can last for generations, whereas someone who had one already would probably just buy another one if theirs was ruined, so those animal rights activists are actually murdering more creatures every time they do that.  Just saying.) 

Eventually, one of our snakes started to tire of rats.  That was how I got my pet rat, named for the star of Willard. 

See, my family put the rat in the tank with the snake, but the snake did nothing.  

They drank the same water and just kinda hung out for a few days.  The rat would even sleep on top of the snake. 

So, the snake moved on to gerbils for a bit.  

And once, my family fed the snake two gerbils at once.  

The snake ate one while the other looked on in horror.  

 ...and then it freaked out and ate half it's own tail off. 

Well, the tactic worked, because the snake didn't want anything to do with that gerbil.  I called him Frodo from then on out.  

It gets worse.  

My family had no sense of what torture really was, so they set up this gerbil to also be a pet, having been rejected as food...  

And put the tank right next to the snake. 

Before all that, we "briefly" had a Garter snake and a Grass snake.  

...We don't talk about those much, as one was a little traumatic for my poor father.  

There was tape involved.   It was a learning experience.  

Anyway... 

I'm not a fan of snakes.