Couch 205: The 5 x 41 Couch

I don't know, I kind of disagree with your therapist. I think distraction can be very helpful, especially if you have severe symptoms relating to SH and SI. And I think it's great that you're so on top of your coursework despite everything else. In my personal experience, when school performance slides due to mental health issues, that actually becomes an aggravating factor for the mental health issues itself. For example, when stress and anxiety reach a certain point for me, it triggers a cascade of PTSD related symptoms that I am not yet able to control very well. If I am already experiencing some PTSD related symptoms or depression or what have you and allow my coursework to slide, my anxiety and stress will increase due to being worried about my grade and succeeding in the course. That anxiety and stress will in turn feed into the precipitating symptoms and it turns into a vicious cycle that can be really hard to escape.

I understand that you need to not neglect yourself, but I think being diligent about your school work is a positive. What exactly does your therapist want you to be doing, though? I'm unclear.

Summertime, I think it is completely reasonable to be upset by that. You didn't give consent for that in any way - verbally or nonverbally.





Do you think he was actually sorry and understood he was wrong to do that?

As soon as I step foot in T's office I act like a complete idiot. I can hold a functional conversation with friends and people in day to day life, hold eye contact etc, act adult and normal, even friendly if I'm in the right place, but as soon as I see T I go to pieces. I can't look at her, can't voice my thoughts and feelings without intense inner scrutiny, just feel reduced to a total mess. She brings out such intense feeling in me. I just wish she could see me how I am at my best as I'm scared she thinks I'm just a stupid idiot.

I used to feel the same way with the therapist. I would say to her “If you could just see me in my everyday I really am a functioning adult.” I would tell her I wish she could follow me around for a whole day to see that side of me.

She always reassured me she had no doubt that I was a functional member of society but that in her office I didn’t need to be that version and she was okay with that.

Something happened with my husband last night that’s been bothering me. I’m trying to figure out how to talk to him about it or if I’m just overreacting. Trigger warning for sexual content. I was laying down, facing away from my husband. I heard him moving closer to me so I turned around, at which point he Would normal people be upset over this? I know he didn’t have bad intentions.

I used to feel the same way with the therapist. I would say to her “If you could just see me in my everyday I really am a functioning adult.” I would tell her I wish she could follow me around for a whole day to see that side of me.

When I pointed this out to Info, she seemed shocked, as though it had never crossed her mind that clients could exist outside her office.

When I pointed this out to Info, she seemed shocked, as though it had never crossed her mind that clients could exist outside her office.

The very short term therapist I had before her didn’t think his clients exist outside therapy. But I also walked in one day a bottle of vodka rolled out from under his desk.

When I pointed this out to Info, she seemed shocked, as though it had never crossed her mind that clients could exist outside her office.

What if we are all just figments of their imagination? Like the ending of St. Elsewhere.
What would the first woman have had to have been drinking to imagine me as the client who hired her?

Absinthe with a dash of pure grain alcohol?

The very short term therapist I had before her didn’t think his clients exist outside therapy. But I also walked in one day a bottle of vodka rolled out from under his desk.