Balance

For the most part, balance is achievable through slight readjustments; in fact I find that I give easily and freely of my time, energy, and money, when I choose where I will spend them and do so of my own volition. On Friday I picked up a student and her mom and drove them to the dentist for an appointment they were both nervous about. Colleagues would tell me this puts things out of balance to spend an afternoon of my vacation time doing “work” but it did not feel that way to me because I chose it and because I wanted to remove that particular barrier for them. In giving this help to them I was giving something to myself as well.

This evening Shawn and I spent the evening with a neighbour whose wife died recently. Again this wasn’t like work because I wanted to be there for someone who is feeling alone, and who could use some friends right now.  We don’t really know him, but that’s only because we have never been the type of people who invest much energy in our neighbours, for whatever reason.  As we grow older (wiser?) perhaps we can see ourselves reflected in our community more easily. We moved into a neighbourhood in our early thirties at a time when it may have been more difficult to imagine needing our neighbours for anything... and now ten years later it is somehow very easy to picture ourselves in their shoes.  I invited us to his house very easily this evening- and I invited him to our home next week just as easily.  This is how balance is achieved, not by holding back our resources and hoarding them to ourselves— rather by spending them freely in places where it matters.



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favourite people

Things about today -

1.  Today the DBS who audited our school files told me that mine were the best she has seen in the District.  This gave me, A). a momentary wave of pride, followed by B). a momentary wave of annoyance at everyone else in the District for being dumber than me, followed by C). a lasting wave of recognition that I am a lunatic who can never take a compliment without making it into something stupid.


2.  Today I did EMDR on a student who shared a trauma with me.  This was not my first attempt, but it was absolutely, to date, my best attempt.  It was textbook perfect.  I followed the protocol exactly, and she responded exactly the way we learned it; I did it right.  I think I was even more shocked than she was when we cleared the whole trauma in under an hour.


3.  Today I spent another small session with R, the selective mute student I previously wanted to avoid.  Not to brag, but today he spoke to me.  He said.... (get ready for it).... "uh huh".  He said it because I was talking about video games, not because we were talking about anything particularly meaningful, but the point is that he said something.  I'm celebrating small successes.


4.(a) I'm realizing that I am really good at my job when I can do one thing at a time instead of trying to do everything at once.  And I'm realizing that there will always be a million things to do and so I need to learn better ways to stem the tide when things get really wild.

4.(b) I'm realizing that I might eventually return to my PhD work, after giving it up for a very long time.  Maybe.



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EMDR works

EMDR really works, at least it works on me.  A big part of the training course, obviously, is the practicum part where we try what we're learning on each other.  This time I chose my targets carefully, a real attempt to get some work done rather than a vague trust fall.

Target 1 was my difficulty with R as a client.  R is a selective mute, and not the kind who will happily write down what he's thinking or draw me a picture.  His body is nearly as mute as his voice.  He just sits and looks at me, expressionless, lifeless, barely breathing.  It makes me uncomfortable and I have struggled to force myself to work with him.  I wanted to clear that apprehension of mine, get over my own fears, so that I could persist with this kid.  I processed it, and today I called him down to my office and worked with him a bit.  Just briefly, but not because I was letting him push me away.  Just because I had a plan to titrate his discomfort - rather than my own.  It was interesting.  I was able.

Target 2 was my vacillation around undergoing EMDR therapy with a professional practitioner.  The flaky psychologist who couldn't organize her schedule briefly dissolved my confidence.  I processed that too, my fear and my weird stigma-oriented response to doing therapy even though I make a living at providing therapy.  And then I came home and looked for a new EMDR practitioner, who happened to be a man with big white teeth and a muscle-y looking neck.  I picked him on purpose because he repelled me the first time I saw his picture.  But he actually has better qualifications than the first one I picked.  We have set up a meeting in four weeks.  I have no doubt I will feel nervous about this meeting - but I also believe I will follow through.

So yeah, EMDR works.  I am going to use it more often with my kids.


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How not to choose a clinical counsellor

My first EMDR appointment was supposed to be tonight, Thursday.  I booked it that day on purpose because I am taking the course again tomorrow and I had this nerdy idea in my brain that I would be a better student and absorb more from the course if I had experienced a session just prior.  Things started to fuck up on Wednesday when the counsellor emailed me to say she had thought I was coming on Wednesday instead, apologizing for her confusion and wondering if I could come later on Thursday because she didn’t have time when I had originally booked.  I accommodated this (because I still wanted the session and because part of me was assuming the mix up was somehow my fault- which it wasn’t).

So I drove over there tonight arriving five minutes early like a respectful little client.  And waited in the waiting area and waited and waited.  Finally, nearly half an hour late she emerged from her office and walked past me in the waiting room, heading out to go home.  I stopped her and asked about our appointment.  She was flummoxed and confused and didn’t realize that we still had an appointment.  She made a halfhearted attempt to say something about having an appointment then, but I said no.  Not unkindly.  Just that she had that look of someone who is done for the day and there was no way I wanted an hour of time that looked like me keeping this woman from her bed.

I chose her very impulsively, because I liked her face in the profile picture she posted on her website. She looked older and wiser, and with a smiling sense of humour.  Maybe someone who would get me.  I picked her after scrolling past a couple of men with big white teeth and muscle-y looking necks.  I also scrolled past anyone with bleached blonde hair (personal bias) and anyone who appeared to be under the age of thirty.  Apparently this is not a good way to select a counsellor.  Shawn laughed at me when I told him what happened and told me the twenty-somethings would have better apps to manage their calendars.

The counsellor has sent me two emails since I got home, the first one apologizing and the second one inviting me to have a Skype session with her tonight.  Eww.  I have ignored both emails so I can think about whether I really want to do this after all.  With her. Or with anyone.  I was quite nervous about the whole thing and it took a lot of inner push to get there at all.  Now that I’ve been botched twice I seem to have lost some of my initial resolve.  Shields up.

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none of this

Cannabis has been legalized, and I have tried twice, totally unsuccessfully, to get high with my husband in the last week.  Why I have been unsuccessful I do not really know.  I have never been much of a weed smoker, since a really scary experience in high school.  It just isn't my drug of choice.  (When learning about addictions counselling we talked a lot about the concept of drug of choice, and why different people gravitate toward different drugs.  The most popular DOC is opioids, the least popular is alcohol.  Those, like me, who prefer alcohol tend to cite social reasons for their choice; this makes perfect sense to me.)  Anyway, I spent most of Saturday in a cheap white lady kind of buzzy haze brought on by pink champagne served at a one-year old's birthday party, and when I thought about that the next morning it kind of made me hate myself a little bit.  So I decided to lay off the drink for at least a week and see if I'm actually a drunk (i.e. will I go into withdrawal?) or just an overanalyzing idiot.

So it's Tuesday now and so far I seem to be fine (no delirium tremens).  Fine, except for the fact that I tried to get high on both Sunday and Monday night, but both times without luck.  I don't know how to use cannabis properly, not the kind we have in our house, which is THC/CBD oil.  My husband just puts a drop or two in his mouth and seems perfectly happy, but this idea scares me because I don't know much is too much or too little - because I haven't smoked pot since I was about eighteen and I think that was laced with something else because it was a horrible experience.

So Shawn decided to make some candies with oil in them, diluting the product, but perhaps too much?  I have been tentatively nibbling at his homemade candies, and can't seem to feel a thing.  He, on the other hand, is enjoying himself.  Tonight I didn't even bother trying.  Too bad weed, you just don't seem to be my thing.

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My EMDR course is continuing this weekend - Friday through Sunday.  It's an intensive course.  I hope one day I can use what I have learned to help people.  Right now I might just be giving people headaches.

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I decided I would see an EMDR therapist myself.  It is absurd that I am a professional counsellor who has never been to counselling.  (I say that to myself, and then I remember that I went to family counselling once with my whole family after one of my sister's many suicide attempts as a teenager.  I was resentful.  I cannot remember why there was only one session.)  Anyway, I made an appointment to see an EMDR therapist.  My first appointment is on Thursday night - the day before I go back to my course.  My goal is to experience what I am trying to learn from the client's perspective because I feel so inauthentic trying to do this magic on other people when I do not fully understand what they are experiencing.  If I can also figure out a way to sort out some of my own shit in the process, that would be even better.  I would like to go into it with my mind open to the possibility of being happier (at work) because I am so frustrated (at work) lately that I want to tell K to go fuck her crutch and then I want to tell N to go fuck K.

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The book I am reading is called My Year of Rest and Relaxation.  I think the reader is meant to be saddened at the image of the young heroine drugging herself to the gills with Ativan so she can sleep all the time, but the part of the image that actually bothers me is the fact that Ativan is an opioid, and not really my thing.  If she were to spend a year in a wine-induced fog I would be all in favour.  (I don't know why I am saying this - I'm not tired.  I'm just fucking sick and tired.  I'm also not really a drunk.  I just aspire to be.)

None of this is true.

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