We’ve finally got some real honest to goodness sunshine happening here on the Wet Coast, and I think it’s doing me some good.
I feel somewhat more enegetic and “up” today than I have lately, and boy, do I need that. It occurred to me during Therapy Thursday just how down I have been lately.
Nothing like explaining something to my therapist for me to realize how true it is myself. I figure out a lot of things about myself that way.
Honesty, doc, I had no idea how much I hate her till I told you I did.
Told good ol’ Doc Costin about my dissatisfaction with my interactions with Doc Chao yesterday. There’s just something about being there with a doctor that turns me into a passive and eager to please child.
I think it’s the fact that a doctor takes a sort of parental role in your life. You bring them your problems and they solve them for you. You (mostly) do what they tell you and accept that they have the authority to do this to and for you.
And they do it from a place of superior knowledge and experience, just like adults do when you’re a child.
So I react to them like I reacted to my parents, by telling them whatever it was I thought they wanted to hear so they would go away and leave me alone.
And yes, I know there is so very much wrong with that response, It means I was an active participant in my being ignored because when people did pay attention to me, I told them what they wanted to hear, which was that everything was fine and therefore they can go away and stop thinking about me again.
All I can say is that I didn’t arrive at this response by accident. It came about because if I told them the truth about how hard things were for me at school, they wouldn’t stop everything they were doing to deal with it, like some sitcom family.
Family meeting, everyone!
They would just stand there looking awkward aqd shocked, their eyes silently pleading for me to do what I was supposed to do and give them permission to leave.
If I had been someone with less empathy and a stronger sense of self and self-worth, I would have refused to rescue them and let them deal with the truth of my pain.
But I knew they didn’t really care. So to hell with them. I’m not going to let them kick me in the head over and over again on the off chance that THIS time, they mean it.
It’s amazing how so many seemingly complex parenting issues basically boil down to “stop punishing them for doing the thing you want them to do!”.
If when your kids call you, you rant and rave and attack them verbally, don’t be surprised when they stop calling you.
My father never learned that lesson. So he died completely alone.
God as my witness, I have no idea where I was going with all this.
Oh well. Whatcha gonna do?
More after the break.
That salad I love
Did my weekly-ish online grocery shopping today. Ergo I got potato salad.
As I have mentioned before, I really love potato salad. So I get it when there is room in the weekly buidget for it and I am in the mood.
I shouldn’t.. It’s basically carbs and fat and protein from the eggs.
Oh, right. It’s actually potato and EGG salad, which is way better than just plain potato salad in my books.
Those of you becoming overwhelmed by the sheer thrill of this hot news are advised to find a dim, cool place to lie down, fan your forehead, and drink cold fluids.
A shot in the arm
..can be surprisingly painful.
So picture this. Yesterday I notice that the flesh part of my left shoulder hurt. Felt like I’d gotten hit there with a rubber bullet. It was very uncomfortable and sore.
So immediately I think, oh god, another random malfunction of my body. Another part of me developing a weird fault out of nowhere. Another part of me that is going to end up taking out a chunk of my flesh.
And on and on like that.
It was hours before I suddenly remembered that I had gotten two shots, one for the flu and the other for pneumonia,. when I was in Doctor Chao’s office that morning.
And they had been, of course, intramuscular shots in that exact spot.
D’oh. I felt pretty silly about my outrageously negative earlier assumption. But that’s where my mind goes when suddenly stressed.
I instantly leap to the most negative of conclusions based on vastly insufficient evidence. It’s like I am always expecting the worst to happen and soI will immediately conclude it has at the slightest provocation.
I’m really not a sensible person, am I? Sigh.
Thank god I’m at least cute.
Anyhow, I don’t get where this negative assumption comes from. It’s not like I have hads a lot of really terrible things happen in my life.
In fact, my life tends to lack events of any kind at all. Which is its own problem.
So maybe I leap to negative conclusions in part because I am so eager for ANYTHING to happen in my life that even a bad thing happening has a certain appeal.
Could be worse. I could leap to absurdly POSITIVE conclusions and then be absolutely crushed when I have to come back down to earth.
At least when I get a grip on myself and counter the negative conclusions, it’s a relief.
Phew,. things are not nearly as bad as I just thought they were. Thank God.
Can’t help but be a little disappointed too, though.
For a minute, it seemed like something was going to actually happen.
I need to think about what I can do to make GOOD things happen in my life.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.