Helping Myself

Edited to add- I just realized that the post I linked below did talk about the therapist that didn’t believe me.  I have been wanting to write this out in order to make sense of things and start setting my own goals regarding healing from “anxiety” and “C-PTSD”. I’m putting those in quotes because I’m not sure if the actual diagnoses apply. Back in May, I made this post detailing what I’ve gone through while trying to seek therapy. Since then, I have tried again.  There was one lady that I saw for one “free 15 minutes session” and one actual hour long session. She didn’t believe my story. At least twice, she asked me if I was sure what I was saying happened and not something else. One of these had to do with what year. She asked if I was sure something that happened in 2013-2014 wasn’t “during the pandemic.”  I didn’t appreciate that at all. 

The next lady had a free 15 minute session and three hour long sessions with me. She was great until the middle of the third session, when she got this Jekyll and Hyde personality switch and started basically telling me to get over it and stop living in the past. That’s a very dumb thing for a therapist to say, because we can get over it and stop living in the past for free. We don’t need a therapist to help us do that. When I called her out on this personality switch mid-session, she said it never happened. That was even more of a punch in the face. Some people online said “report her”. I can’t if she’s saying it never happened. The session wasn’t being recorded. Whomever you’d report this to would believe her over me. 

This last lady, the Jekyll and Hyde lady, also seemed to take away my diagnosis of c-ptsd (“complex” or “chronic” post traumatic stress disorder, depending on who you ask, but it all starts with C so it’s ok). 🙄 Her reasoning was based on the ACES test. ACES is a questionnaire you fill out answering which adverse childhood experiences you’ve had. It helps clinicians diagnose you with c-ptsd, but since it’s become more and more clear that it’s very incomplete and very unfair, a lot of them are backpeddling now saying “it’s just a tool” and all sorts of vague shit about what the ACES really is. They’ll say “it doesn’t matter” which of the adverse childhood experiences you’ve experienced or not, but it does matter enough for that to be the very first thing they give you. I actually spoke with a young man online who claimed to be a survivor of the Stoneman-Douglass school shooting in Parkland, Florida, who was told some BS because he couldn’t check any boxes on the ACES test. Perhaps surviving a school shooting should be on there, I don’t know!  Also missing from ACES is bullying and medical trauma. It’s probably because the woman who developed it was a healthy bully. 

Some of the ACES questions are asked in such a way that I am not sure if I can answer them with a yes or a no. One of these questions is, “Did you witness your mother being abused by your father?”  Yes and no. My mother treated my father horribly, and he often reacted. A therapist wouldn’t recognize that as valid, though. It would specifically have to be the father abusing the mother one way.  

Another question I’m not sure I can answer yes or no to is “Did you grow up in a home with a parent with mental illness?”  My mother never went to a psychiatrist or a therapist, so she never got a diagnosis. She does, however, claim to have had postpartum depression for 15 years. As I’ve said before, this would only make sense to me if she kept having children but I was an only child. And does postpartum even count in what they’re describing there?  As noted in the latest news story these days, postpartum is seen as a very valid excuse/reason for most if not all things. It seems to be used whenever women murder their kids. So am I justified in my trauma, or am I just a big uneducated meanie when it comes to postpartum?  

The other questions are a definite no for me. Did your parents get divorced? No. Were they poor? No. Were they drug addicts? No. Were they ever incarcerated? No. Then, abuse questions come up. Were you physically abused? Were you emotionally abused?  Were you sexually abused?  I was physically assaulted by my aunt and two older cousins in my teen years. My mother often did as well, but a therapist might shrug it off as discipline, especially since she was not a single mother. Emotional abuse is written off by therapists as “You just took stuff wrong”. Especially since I could not answer positively to any of the four first questions about divorce, incarceration etc. 

So when it comes to ACES, maybe I scored high and maybe I scored zero. The last therapist I saw said I didn’t have c-ptsd, even though I was diagnosed with it in 2025. 

Whether or not I am someone who deserves to say they have something validating like c-ptsd, I still have the symptoms. You might think I’m just a bitch who isn’t grateful she got to grow up with two parents and doesn’t understand postpartum, and that’s fine, but I still suffer from almost all symptoms of c-ptsd. In addition to having what I consider (but you may not) to be a difficult childhood, I then grew up to take on very hard jobs for very low pay, working with children at risk and elderly and disabled adults. I believe this compounded my “c-ptsd”. I was forced to absorb the trauma of multiple children and adults. Again I’m putting my it in quotes because no one can agree on whether I “have” it. 

This puts me in a situation where I have to come up with a game plan to get better, and no one is going to help me do it. I have to do it myself. Being in such a healthy environment in Austin now is a great foundation for beginning to do this. I live in a great place, have a great job, enough money, and my physical health. The only downside is that my husband isn’t here full time yet but he will be. Having a supportive partner is also an enormous plus when it comes to healing. It’s better than being single, but being single is better than having a shitty partner. 

I have him to lean on, and my mother is 3-4 hours away now. I have minimal contact with her. I have a supportive friend or two, and my daughter is doing great. I really can’t complain. Therefore, I need to start working on goals to feel better. I have the perfect stage to do so. 

Continuing to take a weight loss supplement so I’m not always hungry, and exercising every day is a start to physically feeling better. I get muscle symptoms in my arms and legs. It feels like spaghetti muscles when it gets really bad, and exercise helps work this out. Doctors will often ask if this feels like “pins and needles.”  I really don’t know about that description. It’s not how I would think “pins and needles” would feel, but I can see how someone else would describe it that way?  Something I can do every day is really make myself go out to the fitness center in my complex or the park two blocks away. I also need to keep Mitchell away from my earbuds, because I can’t exercise without them and he loves them!  Since Mitchell came into my life, I’ve probably been through 20 pairs!

The next way to channel my anxiety is through my creativity. I have all of my 6 inch squares sorted into this shelving unit inside our massive closet in this apartment. I’m still working on an Etsy shop with quilts and wreaths. I also need to hit up Dollar Tree for more wreath frames. My sewing machine is set up on my desk. 

I also have a spiral notebook for each writing project in my head. They are all chartreuse colored and college rule and were $1.47 right now during back to school days. I write a line and then skip about six lines. Then I go back through them and jot things down in the six empty lines that go between the thing above it and the thing below it. When that gets to be full, I start another notebook with five or six more lines between each thing that is now in the old one. The Child Advocate is now on its second spiral and I also have one for another book in my head, and my missing people who may be still alive writing advocacy project. 

If I can just propose each day to do something for exercise and creativity, I will likely feel at least 20% better by the first cool front. 

Physical things I can do besides take gabapentin (I can take it sometimes but not always)- bathe with bath bombs for athletes. These bombs are expensive, but they do wonders for the spaghetti leg/not really pins and needles feeling. Also if I find myself paralyzed in bed, just simply going out to my car to organize something or throw away a piece of trash will help the paralyzed panic feeling. 

Cuddling with my cats also helps. Mitchell isn’t a big cuddler, but Jordan is starting to be. Alex is still with my husband in Hempstead and will go live with my daughter in San Marcos. (She asked for him). He used to be an instant therapy cat when he was younger but is now retired. Jordan can cuddle somewhat before he starts play biting. 

If I can think of anything else, I will edit this and put them here. Ironically, this is the kind of list a therapist would help me make. And here I am making it for free. I’m just saying, why go through the hell of trying to convince them to help you when you can help yourself. For free!  I have to adopt this mentality or else I will not survive! I hate being a person that cannot get therapy or mental health care, but on the other hand if I was a person who could get it then I might depend on them too much and have no autonomy. 

Good and Bad News

The new person that was hired on the Houston crew of Kevin’s job quit today. I was super disappointed. I have no idea how obligated Kevin is to stay there “until they hire someone”. I am tempted to regret coming out here so soon after we decided to move here, but I’m not. It’s such a nice place and I have a nice job. I’m not sorry. Kevin said the new lady had a “rough day” yesterday in which she forgot to change her sections and the entire inventory was run together. To be fair, her first few days were spent at a store chain that doesn’t want us changing sections, so it was the first time she was expected to. Did they tell her? Shit idk. Ugh. I just miss Kevin a lot. Fuck those people. They give him a hard time too. 

On a better note,

I was off from the group home today and did side jobs. The merchandiser app offered me a route with a nice travel bonus across towns called Llano, Mason, etc. I took the offer and also looked on other apps like field agent and iVueit  for other stuff to do to and from. I stopped for gas early in the morning and saw this poor boo-boo hanging out in the front. 

I also forgot to mention here that the group home I’m working at has 8 stray cats who just came back from being TNR’d. Does anyone want one 😭. I brought cans of friskies from my own pantry and mixed it all with leftover elbows and meatballs that the ladies made. The cats loved it. I would love to find them homes! 

I think aside from the Houston setback I had a good day. I would not have left Austin if not for that travel bonus. I love driving through country areas, but I noticed I’m more cognizant and afraid of deer running out into the road now that I’ve hit one. 

 

I Did Good (1 Month in Austin)

One month ago was Fourth of July weekend when Kevin and I were anxiously awaiting our move Monday the 6th and me starting this job training class on Tuesday the 7th. I must say, we really did a good job. The only problem is that he isn’t here full time yet. They hired one new person on the Houston crew and are training her, but he will move here for good on September 1, whether they are ready or not. 

We really did great. It was honestly starting to suck over there. The AC had gone out in the guest house, except for one specific spot to lay in if you wanted AC (it didn’t circulate). Plus, the guest house had an invasion of ants that Kevin took care of with bait. They bit me all over my arms and legs, which are now scarred. It looks like I was shooting up. I wasn’t. 

My job working for gift card boss was ok, but very stressful to go to different places and families all the time. She was a nice, understanding boss, but it really did wear on me to enter different peoples homes so regularly and have to learn their routines. I would get this dread, like what if they suck and hate me?  Being the “damage control” didn’t help- it sounds like a compliment, but I would go in right after someone had a bad experience with someone else, too. 

Working at this group home is nice. It’s a little bit lower pay per hour, but I have guaranteed 40 hours, so my checks are bigger. Working overnight with clients who sleep well is a breeze- especially clients who are self sufficient enough to do their own house chores. This isn’t to say I’m without messy days. One of them has a propensity to throw up while taking morning medications, and this morning, she basically puked everywhere. I heard that she tended to do that, just hadn’t witnessed it, and she was already puking when I thought of the garbage can. Oh well. I cleaned it up. Then another one of the ladies insisted she was having seizures, but the nurse says she isn’t. I’m keeping a very close eye on her. She was ok this morning except for freaking out when she couldn’t get her shoes on. I simply bent over and loosened them and slid them on and tied them. She instantly felt better and thanked me. So it’s not all easy peasy all the time, but it’s much easier than what I was doing in Houston - because I can get used to these people and care for them on a daily basis. 

Our apartment is extremely nice. I love it. The only noise issue is that the guy upstairs walks around a lot. That’s nothing. My husband thought we would hear loud music and partying. There is also security at night. We have an Amazon locker so don’t have to worry about package thieves. We have a fitness center.  We also have a washer and dryer in our unit. I have only had that when I lived with my parents. Never in my own place. 

It does feel like we are the old kids on the block. We are probably the only empty nesters. Everyone else seems like they are single and in their 30’s at the most. There are only about 3-4 kids waiting for a school bus in the morning, in a complex of hundreds of units. 

Kevin loves it here, too. He literally can’t wait to start working for the Austin crew of his company. I can’t wait till he does either. I did ask him- please don’t volunteer me. I’m not looking to get back into that persè, but a lot of the people on the Austin crew are kind of old and have a lot of physical problems. I told him, if two or more of them keel over, I could help out on my mornings off/come in late on mornings I work till 8.  But don’t say that until/if that happens. If anyone asks what I’m up to, say I’m working in a group home- because that’s the truth! 

Some benefits to living in Austin- for me- being close to my daughter Anna. She’s moving into off campus housing 40 miles away from me in San Marcos on August 15th with five other girls including her freshman dorm roommate. I am so glad to be closer to her, especially since she prefers this area over the Houston area. Also, my side jobs, the retail audit apps, are very plentiful here. I made over $1,000 this month with them. There are probably four times the amount of those jobs here than in the Houston area, and it’s always been like that.  And for Kevin, it’s going to be working on the Austin crew. The couple that runs the Houston crew has become increasingly toxic. Kevin can’t find another job as easily as I can, because this is all he’s done for 30 years. Turns out, my dad was right when he told me to have three careers, and all the other people in his generation were wrong when they said stick with one thing forever. There are benefits to how he did it, but I have more job security. 

Austin is also pretty. Sam Houston called southeast Texas “The Great Thicket” because of all the trees and thick green grass. Austin is the beginning of the “Texas Hill Country”, so the grounds are less thick green and have more white rock under the grass. It reminds me a little of Greece, where my grandparents came from. In fact, Austin kind of reminds me of if a city was “3/4 Houston and 1/4 Greece”.  If that makes sense. 

Now that I’m not “just moved here” and “just started a job”, I can really start to set goals regarding health and fitness, money, side jobs, sewing and writing. Maybe I can do what some bloggers do and recap at the end of each week and month. In the beginning of 2026, my goal for 2026 was to bring my student loan balance under $10K down to four figures by 1/1/27. Well I don’t think that will happen, but it might if the rest of the second half goes as well as July did. Here’s to a good second half of 2026 🥂 

One Decade

Tomorrow marks ten years since the car accident death of my little cousin Evan at age 23. Evan was born in 1993, right after my parents and I moved to Arizona from Chicago. 

This week has been riddled with intrusive thoughts about the Large Marge scene in PeeWee’s Big Adventure and wondering how his immediate family is. We don’t talk much anymore. I was very close with Evan’s mother who died of cancer in 2021. 

That’s it. I don’t want to do much tomorrow, not even light a candle. 

2016 was the height of my disabling panic attacks, and I used to think Evan was the lucky one. I do not think that anymore. 

 

Anna’s Summer Job

Today was my 19 year old daughter’s last day as a YMCA 

Summer camp counselor. Today was the last day of the program. Here she is getting tp’d because she either won or lost a contest or a bet with the kids. 

Anna did a great job holding it down with a child who had an elopement issue and 9 other kids. The eloping kid mostly had his own aide with him at all times

But not always. I can’t tell you how much stress this was giving me!  It sucks having an eloper and a bunch of other kids !!!

 

So This Happened

 This morning, someone shot a BB gun at my husband’s car while he was driving to work. He said it was “probably some shit head kid having fun.” I was like- in traffic?  I’m not sure what to make of this. Do I become paranoid or??? It happened on interstate 290 just north of highway 249. Kevin will be here tomorrow evening, and I haven’t seen him for almost two weeks. He’s probably going to move here for good now. Two people have started this week on the Houston crew. That’s enough to replace him and me. I wonder who was having “fun” with the BB gun. 

Overnights

 This job is so interesting. It’s a group home for people with intellectual disabilities. The ladies in the one I work at are sort of elderly (but not that old). They are all older than me, and so are the three other staff members. 

The house supervisor, let’s call her drunk text boss. (See below). I went from gift card boss in Houston to drunk text boss haha. She takes the job very seriously. I noticed that in the beginning, she was calling the residents of the group home “the girls”. I decided on my own not to do that. I call them “the ladies”. Girls are children, to me anyway. I didn’t tell drunk text boss that I felt that way, I just started doing it. The past couple days, she’s called them “the ladies” around me too. I guess she “caught on” and “figured” that I thought girls meant children. I don’t mind what she does either way. But it was nice to see her adapt to my lingo like that. She works 8-4. The 4-midnight shift and the other overnights that I’m off are alternated between two other staff ladies that have been there decades. 

My schedule is as follows: Saturday evening to Sunday morning 8pm-8am. Sunday evening to Monday morning 8pm to 8 am. Tuesday morning midnight to 8, and Friday morning midnight to 8 (driving to work at 11pm Monday evening and Thursday evening.)

Some group homes do 8 or 12 hour shifts, and some do live in shifts, where staff members stay 2-5 days at a time and sleep on the job. This group home has a staff bedroom, and they did it like this until honestly just a couple months ago. The other two staff ladies that have been there decades aren’t used to it at all. They were getting overtime to sleep on the job, pretty much. I would have liked that arrangement too. But this new company took over a couple months ago, and they aren’t allowing staff to sleep on the clock. That also means that you can’t work the ENTIRE weekend from Friday till Monday or whatever else for several days. This company is only allowing us to work 16 hours at a time max, if that. I don’t blame them, I would run it the same way if possible. However, if the clients who live in the group home do not need constant care and sleep well through the night, then sleeping staff might make sense, especially if they get paid less on the graveyard shift. 

We have to prove that we aren’t sleeping on the job by logging into the desk computer in the office and doing bed checks every hour. When I went to training, bed checks consisted of basically looking to see if they’re breathing and/or had an accident. I always check for breathing. 32 years of working with kids and elderly and one child of my own, I look for breathing automatically. The ladies that live in this home never have accidents. I do not check for accidents. That would be an invasion of privacy imo, for them specifically. I just assume they didn’t if I  walk into the rooms and it smells ok. They’d wake up if they did have accidents anyway. 

We cannot cheat on logging bed checks, because the computer logs what time you enter it. This means if you do sleep on the job, you better be awake at least every hour to log the bed checks. Drunk text boss is on board with this and like “yeah we have to do what they say” but the other two staff ladies are outraged. It’s honestly funny and sad at the same time to listen to them become so appalled at having to do their job, and stay awake on the job lol. And these are women basically old enough to be my mother. I don’t express out loud how funny and sad I find them. I just smile and nod, because I want them on my good side. 

One of them actually said it was abuse to check on them every hour. It’s not abuse. You just don’t want to do it. 

To be honest, I could never sleep at night knowing I was getting paid to be in charge of five vulnerable people. I would be scared to death and doing their job checks anyway. Especially since like I said, people with intellectual disabilities have a slightly lower life expectancy, and these ladies are basically there. I would NOT be able to sleep at ALL. 

I do not want to mention to these to coworkers that live in caregiving jobs are all over indeed. Not a lot of people want them, because most people have a place to live. I used to like them when I was living with my parents and my daughter spent the weekend with her father. It was the perfect way to get away for a weekend and get paid for it. And I was allowed to sleep, but didn’t except for just an hour or two at a time!   They could go to any other place and do them and probably get paid better than here. I just don’t want to say it out loud, because in the new person. And they don’t seem to be holding the changes against me, which is REALLY NICE. They’re mad at the company and know it’s not “my fault”. 

I’m not sleeping very well at all, because on my shifts I have my alarm set every hour on the hour. When it goes off I do the checks. I do some household chores that don’t take long, then just hang out on the couch doing the bed checks when the alarm goes off. When 6:30 am comes around, one of the ladies checks her sugar. I start giving meds after that. The resident ladies actually make breakfast themselves. They have rotating jobs of cook and dishwasher, although this morning I was the dishwasher. Yes I’m dozing off in those interim hours between bed checks a couple times a night. Because of that and my daily 6 am Red Bull so I can focus on meds, I don’t come home and sleep immediately. I’m really just sleeping on my nights off. It has to change. 

One way I’m able to sleep during the day is if I take my anxiety meds, gabapentin. But I’m trying to only do this once a week. Gabapentin is hard to get, and I need to have a stash of it in case my anxiety gets really bad. Acquiring it is a delicate balance of finding a doctor who will prescribe it, keep prescribing it, and a pharmacy who will fill it. So far so good. I can get another three months worth on 8/21, and there will be one more refill which I can probably get November 21. Being the only thing that works for my severe anxiety though it needs to last. I can’t just be like “I’m going to pop some gabapentin just because I want to sleep today!”  If I keep that shit up, it will disappear.