New Sewing Machine

I got a new sewing machine today!!  I’m so excited about this. My old one had several problems that couldn’t be repaired. I know way more about sewing machines now, so I’m keeping the manual, keeping all the parts that came with it, and watching all the YouTube videos that come up when I do a YouTube search for the model number. Walmart had an entire endcap of this model Singer sewing machine on sale for $144. I also bought Kevin and myself a Christmas tree, a keurig for Anna for Christmas, Christmas decorations in pink and red with several red cardinals, and a handful of groceries. All of that and it won’t even be payday for three more days. Working 60-84 hours a week helps. 

On another note, my coworker sent me this picture of her dog. I love “cookies and cream dogs”. And just look at his face. He looks like he’s so sick of her shit. 

 

Well That’s New (to me)

 A couple days ago, I reached out to some therapists to see about group therapy. One of them got back with me in a “consultation”. Something new about this one- he was a man. He was very monotone and to the point, which I liked. Maybe I would do better with a male therapist?  There didn’t seem to be this, “Oh my god you did THAT?!?!” Level of drama and judgement. Plus, he must not have a problem with the fact that I married my boss, because he said his wife does his scheduling. So she works for him. 

He told me that he does “cognitive processing therapy”. It’s specifically for PTSD. He said this AFTER I told him that one therapist diagnosed me with it and another one took the diagnosis away. So he must really believe that someone with my background can possibly have it. I agreed to it for $160 per hour.  Then I started researching cognitive processing therapy, and basically- it’s just telling you that your interpretation of your trauma is wrong. Oh wait excuse me. They don’t tell you it’s wrong. They ask you and ask you and ask you until you tell yourself it’s wrong. Why would I want to be argued with?  One guy online said that if someone has a traumatic experience in a large crowd, then they may walk away from that thinking “all large crowds are bad.”  And the point of CPT is to get them to believe that not all large crowds are unsafe. 

So- it’s a big “not all” fest?  What if someone gets raped?  Does the therapist then try to get them to believe “not all men”?  I don’t mean to bring up the one example where “not all” is losing popularity, but the whole process just seems like button pushing. Sounds like a real dick head thing to do to someone with ptsd. 

Besides, if I go in there and say, because of my trauma, I believe ABC.  They then proceed to “question” me out of believing ABC into believing XYZ.  Then what happens if I go to another therapist and say, “Because of my trauma, I believe XYZ?”  Will that person then question you full circle all the way back to believing ABC?  Technically yes, unless of course you volunteered the information that you saw someone else. But you don’t have to. 

Maybe it’s just me, but I was always under the impression that if someone holds a certain view of something due to trauma, then just leave them alone about it, unless that belief is somehow racist or otherwise discriminatory. A good example would be my coworker blaming energy drinks for her husband’s death. I can either not drink them around her or put up with the lectures about them. There’s no reason to try and get her to drink them. “What would happen if you just had one Red Bull?  Are you sure that would happen?  What are the chances that you would DIE?” How obnoxious. It would be interesting to see what would happen if she went to CPT, got into a 6 a day habit, then went to another practitioner and became against them again. I don’t know. 

Besides- if you don’t want to believe something to be true about your trauma, then you wouldn’t be going to and paying for therapy to “get someone to change your mind” about it.  The act of going in the first place tells me that at least a little part of you already believes the new thing 

I sent him a brief message saying I researched it and wasn’t comfortable. He responded that the only other thing he offers is EMDR. Blah blah  EMDR strikes me as a placebo at best and brainwashing at worst. However, I realized this morning why I’m so afraid to do more “physical” therapy methods like EMDR or brain spotting. It’s because so many people report feeling a lot worse before they feel better. There’s nothing wrong with that!  However, if there’s any possibility that “feeling worse” could get you locked up in a psych ward losing your freedom then that’s a concern. Is “feeling worse” just going to look like being exhausted and having  a headache?  If so that’s fine. Take something and go to bed. Or is it going to look like loud crying or a meltdown?  In that situation, you could end up in a psych ward for a month or longer, lose your job, who would care for your children and/or pets, etc?  That’s catastrophic. I’m not willing to let that happen. And you don’t know how something will make you feel worse or react until you actually do it. Why take that chance. 

The reason why I’m writing these things here is just so I can have a record of how much I tried. A big misconception is that people who don’t want to go to therapy “just don’t try” and I’m trying, it’s just different for me. A lot of people do not worry about losing their freedom over an extreme negative reaction, and that is either fine for them or it makes you wonder if they just have no idea. If a cop is called on you during said emotional breakdown, what if you get shot?  I’m just saying, a lot of cops know nothing about mental health. 

Unbelievable Writing

 Recently I talked on here about the struggles I had with my writing by and talking about it in therapy. My therapist thought that the part of the beginning of my outline, the element that describes the main character’s pressure on her to *not* marry or have kids being “not believable” because “women are pressured *to* marry and have kids.”  She had no concept of anyone having a different experience than she did. I never went back to her, but I countered it here on my blog with examples of writing that showed experiences of individuals that were vastly different than my own. Just because that’s the case in a story doesn’t mean it can’t be written about.  

Have you ever watched “The Crown”?  I believe it was on Netflix. This scene shows a newly-crowned 20-something Queen Elizabeth II having a conversation with her grandmother, Queen Mary of Teck. She basically asks her grandmother, why do you think I have to answer to God? (In so many words). Queen Mary replied, that monarchy is a gift directly from God to Grace and dignify the Earth. The monarch is someone who people can strive to be like, ideally. 

Woah, ok!  I remember being taken aback by this scene. Of course, I’m a 20th century American, so I know zero people who feel this way about monarchy. Of course that doesn’t mean this scene shouldn’t have been written or portrayed. Queen Elizabeth’s grandmother most likely really did tell her that.  There’s a certain appreciation for humanity when you understand that different people can have different experiences than you. To think otherwise is very myopic and unintelligent. 

That’s all for now!! 

100th Birthday

This was the oldest child of my grandparents, Kosta (Gus) who only lived to be four years old. I believe he may have died from a burst appendix. If he had lived to see my mother’s birth, he would have been 19 years old. And if he were still alive now, then today would have been his 100th birthday. 

When my daughter was born, a lot of people on my mom’s side said she looked like him. Here’s a picture of her at a similar age for comparison. 

 

Giving Therapy More Chances

 I continue down a vicious cycle in which I talk with others online about mental health and anxiety, which in turn causes my algorithms to be inundated with mental health advocates and therapists. In these online circles, not going to therapy is NOT an option. If you have negative experiences, it’s either because you should “switch therapists” or because you’re a bad person who deserves to have those bad experiences. It’s literally never a valid option to say hey, this isn’t working for me AT ALL , so I’m just going to walk away and not pursue it anymore. You must always “find another one.”  And, they always tell you the unbearably high number of therapists they went through “before they found the right one.”  

In other words, there’s no therapy version of “I just want to be single right now.”  You must always “find someone.” 

One person suggested to me to try group therapy- in their mind, it would take away my fear of the therapist not believing me like the one I saw this spring, and also the possibility of them snapping on me and telling me to get over it like the one I saw in May. This would be because other clients would be present, so if the therapist was going to pull any of that crap, there would be people around to witness it. I thought they were right. Since they very suspiciously won’t allow me to record sessions to protect myself from this, the group option seemed viable. 

So I spent this weekend submitting inquiries to 12 practices that claim to offer group therapy. Yesterday, which was a Monday, I heard back from 7 out of the 12 saying that they don’t actually offer group therapy. Each incoming call or email was way more devastating than it needed to be. If I simply reminded them that their profile or their website said they did, they would just matter of fact say “well actually we don’t.” 

I never gave any history in any of these inquiries. So they had no concrete reasons to reject me at all. I can’t tell you how utterly devastating it is when I try and just get more and more turned away. I almost felt like something was wrong with me, like I was “seeing things” when I saw that they had group listed on their profiles or sites. Their condescending attitude and pervasive belief that they’re the expert on everyone else’s life makes one feel like they’re crazy in this regard. I have also noticed they do this with “specialties”. They’ll list all kinds of specialties that they have and then when you actually talk to them they’ll do a complete 180 and say they don’t specialize in it. 

The tricky thing with algorithms is that they feed you whatever they think you want to see.  So if you click on one topic, like it, comment on it, etc, it just causes the algorithm to give you more and more of that.  What happened here was just that I was getting too much information from content creators who are either therapists themselves (who often go on and make fun of their clients) or people who “strongly believe” in mental health and that since it’s the right choice for them it must be for everyone.  

I deleted my TikTok account because of this, and uninstalled the app.  It would be nice if someday in the future I could go back on and see short clips having to do with my actual interests, but my algorithm is so inundated with therapy crap that my whole account needed to go. 

It would also greatly help if therapists learned to not misadvertise.  Trying to seek help as someone who they do not believe is as deserving of that help as other women has been a nightmare for me.  The fact that they constantly turn it around on you and say “you just must not want the help” is so extremely cruel.  I do not know what kind of person you have to be to say that to someone who is paying out ten times what they make per hour to try and get said help.  (And yes a lot of their fees, I personally would have to work ten hours to pay for one hour). They are just vile.  

In some ways, I am jealous of women who can get the help, but at the same time I really am not, because those people essentially don’t have any autonomy.  I say that, because of how a lot of them had such a huge problem with the fact that I married someone I met at work, who was my supervisor.  If I was to end up seeing a therapist who didn’t believe in that, then I would have to leave my husband.  That would make things exponentially worse for me at this point. 

Cleaned Out the Fridge

 Last night was a good night to clean out the fridge at the group home. 

Holy Yogurt from 2024, Batman! I threw out an entire 13 gallon bag about 3/4 full of long expired stuff. I took shelves out and wiped it all down. It was so gross!  

Not even my parents’ fridge has ever been this bad. 

On a good note, I slept long hours at home yesterday. 

Tidbits

 Anna sent me this perfect picture of Tommy. What a good, photogenic boy!!  This picture is now my phone background. 

My life has become a big cycle of 12 hours on, 12 hours off. This group home is getting cleaner now that I’m cleaning it. The house supervisor refuses to do household chores (and also seems unable to) and the residents of the group home aren’t able to do much either. My Clorox wipes are finally not coming up so “muddy”. This place was gross when I started. Now we can walk in and not immediately smell funk. 

Every few mornings, I make the guys a big pan of scrambled eggs. They know how to do everything else breakfast related.  Except clean up after themselves. One of the guys helped me in the kitchen. I gave him one simple task at a time. Like, “find me a frying pan.”  “Get out the milk”. Etc. Then I told him to put a little butter in the frying pan, and he scooped half the entire tub into the pan. When I saw it, I was like ohhhh. No, just a teeny amount of butter. I showed him how much and dumped the rest back into the tub. A couple days later, the same thing happened. I asked him to put a little bit in, and he didn’t remember my little lesson about how much butter to put in a pan. Once again, he dumped half the tub out. 

That was eye opening. While this job may be easy, it’s still necessary. These people truly can’t live on their own. When I was a CASA volunteer, I worked with some teens that had “preparation for adult living classes” that taught them this stuff. They all caught on, as did my daughter whenever I taught her basic skills like this at home. 

I still have a lot of down time at night. I often doze off, and set my alarm for the top of every hour. This dozing causes me to not sleep much at home so I need to stop doing it if I want healthy sleep. So I brought my laptop, and I try to work on my writing. It’s hard, though, knowing that I was not believed in therapy about some key elements of my story. I just wish people knew that I am absolutely understanding of the fact that other women had different pressures put on them than me. When I told my cousin that my first boyfriend and I wanted 7 kids, she grabbed my hair and slammed my head against the wall. I got away from her and kicked her in the crotch and she grabbed my hair again. Then she forgot about the 7 kids and told me to cut my fucking hair or she would. At the time, my hair went all the way down my back. There was another time that she assaulted me that she spit in my face. That’s actually more disgusting than you think. 

What would eventually happen was that, of course, I would end up working at the child abuse shelter in Arizona. I would contract lice from the kids and it would be too difficult to comb them out of waist-length hair. So I cut it. It was also too infested to donate to a wig maker. With short “boy hair”, I was able to comb the lice out successfully. My major haircut was only a few days after the 9/11 attacks. I was watching rescue attempts at ground zero when my long ponytail was cut off. It was probably 9/14 or 15 😢. 

I wish I could be the type of woman who is believed and who “deserves” to be heard, etc. Then maybe I could go get help for some of my trauma responses. Writing my book, The Child Advocate has made me realize the astronomical amount of things I’ve been through working with children, elderly, and disabled people in precarious circumstances. I’ve absorbed a lot of *their* trauma as well. Normal people can go to therapy and unload this and be validated. I can’t. That makes writing hard. 

So I don’t know what else to do with my down time at work if I want to not doze and get healthy sleep at home. I do not want to bring any sewing projects whatsoever, because I’m afraid the nastiness of the house will embed into my sewing projects. 

The good news is I got an amazing paycheck and bought a couch for our living room with a hide a bed!!  I have a hide a bed couch at my mom’s house in Houston, but it was lest cost and hassle to just get a new one. Previously, there was no couch in our living room, just a table and chairs. Now when Anna comes, she can spend the night!  

Kevin reiterated several times that I never got a paycheck that big when I worked at his workplace. He does, because he makes a salary. (He’s a supervisor).  But I was hourly, and I reminded him that I did get paychecks like this when we had a lot of hours. I knew it was not what he meant. He meant that this is more steady. I know, and I’m honestly still jealous as fuck of him being on the Austin crew. The Austin crew seems so much more chill than the Houston crew. But not only are they fully staffed with my husband on board, but my husband is actually so extremely proud of me for other jobs I’ve had that aren’t working with him. He doesn’t really understand the astronomical amount of trauma and burden I uncovered by writing about it. 

So since I’m trauma blocked from writing on my down time, and the dozing interferes with my  regular sleep at home, the only other option is to doom scroll. I try to “positive scroll” but it inevitably turns to doom scrolling. 

I can’t wait for my next big paycheck. They’re a plus!!