Tag Archives: therapy

Seriously No One Was Going to Warn Me About the Probe?!

Seriously? No one was gonna tell me about the probe portion?

So today, I ended a friendship. A 20 year friendship that started with drinking late nights at on campus bars and toddling half coherent back to a dorm room located somewhere one should be able to walk to — (if only our knees would cooperate). A friendship based on years of learning to be adults (or feigning such) of boyfriends and husbands and children and Bar Mitzvahs. Well, you get the picture.

So why would I let such a deep and meaningful relationship go? Because she didn’t warn me about the an@l probe! Sure, we all say that phrase a lot as in: “I’d bet an an@l probe on it.” Or “A bird in the hand is worth two an@l probes in the… (well you know how that ends)” or the ever popular: “One day if you go to a doctor that I recommend to you for a procedure that I’ve already done and I forget to tell you an an@l probe is involved, you can totally end this friendship, I’ll understand.” You say those things in passing and you never realize that one day you may actually mean them.

Well, today is the day. Continue reading

DON’T Analyze This

Counseling Addiction –  Those were the words in the title of an email I just received.  I didn’t read on, I didn’t have to.  I get the gist and I’m shocked.

It’s never dawned on me that this would be an issue, but why the f@ck not?  I mean, tons of people love counseling – I’m one of them.  Though I haven’t found the time to go recently, which means I’m probably not an addict, per se.

But, I do get it.

In fact, as a double major – one of them being psychology – I found that many people in my classes were taking these courses in hopes of fixing themselves.

Well, we know that never works.  If it did, no one would say, “you should take your own advice,” in that snarky way that they do.

Needless to say, I spent much time in college and Grad school with people who were anxiety stricken, or OCD (like myself) or narcissists, or bipolar, or… had other fun complexes.  Then they become practicing therapists and now spend a lot of time telling other people what to do and what’s wrong with them.

How rude.

If you went around dissecting my psyche and telling me how to fix it, I would not make plans with you… often.  But, we pay for therapists to tell us such things.  Then we respond with phrases like:  “Yessss, that’s why I’m so controlling” and “oh my G-d you’re so right, I do substitute food for love,” and “sure, sure my passive aggressive behavior is obviously an outlet for my suppressed emotional responses,” and other shit we say in therapists offices in hopes of feeling less inferior.

But, now that there’s a new disorder coming from over-therapizing, I say we get off the proverbial couch and take a stand.  I mean people don’t get paid to tell you things that may happen to you in the future, do they?  Of course not.  So, why should we pay people to label us now?

Frankly, I think we’re all doing pretty good, considering…   The O-Zone is disintegrating, American’s throw away 250 million tons of trash/year, the unemployment rate is 8.6%, we’re all getting older and wrinklier and less bendy by the second, and the shoes in my closet never seem to be perfectly straight!

So, “Say Nay to Thera-pay!”  I know, catchy right?  I’m like the Norma Rae of head shrinking.  Screw Jung and Freud and Adler, who needs ’em and their theories?  The 54 million American’s who suffer from mental illness in a given year?  Nah.

Addendum to this post:  I just clicked the email with the Title: Counseling Addiction  The subject line said this:  Help fight substance abuse as a counselor.

Never mind.

Dreaded Parenting Explanation: Because I Said So That’s Why

because I said so, that's why

 

As a child, I too encountered the dreaded “Because I Said So.”  It was usually yelled in frustration or hissed between clenched teeth.  No matter what the method of delivery, it signified the end of the discussion.  I remember wondering, what exactly does that mean and why is that a remotely valid argument?  It was a parental trap; there was no way to fight it, and yet you felt unsatisfied in conceding.

 

Now, at 30 somethingish I know what it means.  It means you’re losing the battle with a child.  Yep, “Because I Said So” is the phrase used when you are being outsmarted or out-debated by an 8-year -old.  The truth is, sometimes their reasoning makes sense … a lot of sense.  Sometimes, I listen and think, okay, let’s do it your way.  But most of the time there’s a reason I’ve made a particular choice and I have to stick by it, well that or I’m just another stubborn adult standing on ceremony.

 

I never imagined that I would be losing arguments to 8-year-olds or even 5-year-olds, for that matter.  They’re smart little buggers, aren’t they? Want proof? I recently partook in this exchange: Continue reading