Uncertainty

Well, I haven’t posted for a while, so I thought I had better write something. Not that I am really sure what to write, but then that seems to sum up my life right now. I am feeling unsure about quite a lot of things, with the psychoanalysis being up there at the top. It is such a rollercoaster ride of emotions that I am exhausted by it all. After a session I can feel upset, flat, disappointed, or just plain relieved that it’s over for the week. But then there are the times when something from an appointment leads to a small insight that makes it seem worth the emotional upheaval of it all.

I have had numerous sessions with the psychiatrist since I first posted about it all, and I still don’t know how I feel about it. Sometimes things seem to make a load of sense, and I feel I am gaining from my visits, but then other times I feel it’s all just a load of crock and is not worth my time. I am still extremely sceptical that my childhood can have so much bearing on my adult cognitive functioning. Anxiety I understand, but things such as procrastination and memory issues are more of a stretch.

I must admit that I have seen cognitive issues in patients who have had traumatic events in their lives that they did not deal with successfully at the time, but we are talking major events, often multiple, in patients with prior psychiatric issues. And they are not commonly seen. My cognitive issues seem to be bigger than my history would explain, in my opinion.

Take procrastination for example, as it was one of the most recent things we discussed. Theory has it that procrastination gained me something as a child, and I have retained it as a coping mechanism due to a “need” to retain some part of my childhood, supposedly because I have not been able to completely” grow up”, so to speak, because of unresolved issues. Maybe because I was not nurtured fully in such a manner to enable me to learn what I needed to become a grown woman. In other words, I did not have enough of a female role model in my life, so have stalled in some areas of development.

Makes sense. Sort of. I certainly didn’t get along particularly well with my mum, as she could be either suffocating, or not very sympathetic when I really needed her to be, and I never had a female role model to take her place until I was in uni and found a close female friend to talk and bond to. But I find it hard to reconcile such issues with why I procrastinate now, and how I ever really benefited from it when I was younger. Children do it as a subtle form of opposition and control, or because it gains them attention. It supposedly continues into adult life when there are unresolved issues that keep a part of a person reliving their childhood instead of moving on. I might not have been close to my mum, but I also don’t think that our relationship was awful either. We just didn’t see the world in the same way as one another. Why should that have such a huge impact on my life now?? And I did eventually end up with a female role model and peer support that enabled me to grow and develop more as a female.

The anxiety I have makes more sense. There were separation issues in my childhood that could quite well explain the anxiety issues. I spent time (weeks) in hospital with serious burns as a toddler, in the era when even parents had to stick to visiting hours. Then, shortly afterwards, my brother was born prematurely and was very, very sick, so I spent lots of time with grandparents and my dad, while my mum spent lots of time at the hospital. I guess that sort of explains why I worry about what others think so much. “Rejection” or “abandonment” by my mum (as I would have perceived it, anyway) seems to be a theme in my toddler years. It seemed to recur too. My youngest brother was also prem, and mum again had to spend time with him in hospital, and mum also had surgery that meant a long hospital stay. I probably wondered what I had done to cause my mum to leave me so much. And maybe it explains the lack of a stronger bond between us, and why I, of all my siblings, bonded the most with my dad and grandparents.

I don’t doubt that there is some benefit to the psych sessions. I have become more aware of my reticence regarding “opening myself up” to anyone, despite a desire to do so, and have a better understanding of why I do this, which mostly due to fear of rejection and/or humiliation stemming from, the “abandonment” thing in childhood and reinforced by events as a youth/teen…..sort of a vicious circle sort of thing where the expected happens (rejection, in my case) just because it’s expected to happen. I kept myself withdrawn, because I was avoiding rejection, and so I was rejected due to being shy and introverted. Even when I did become more outgoing, I kept a part of myself tucked away from others, and because I never opened up to others, I didn’t become close enough to anyone to get the emotional support I needed, or become anyone else’s “pillar of support” in return. Simply being aware of this has opened the door for better communication, and hopefully stronger friendships.

But there is still doubt that things will improve to the degree that I am given the impression they should, in the areas I would like them to. So I am still counting down the weeks until my appointment with the ADHD specialist  in March. I can always cancel it if things improve in leaps and bounds, but it helps to know that it’s there.

Brain Fry

Well, I haven’t felt like blogging much this last week. My medical “stuff” has got me all tied up in knots, and for a few days I really wasn’t faring well.

I had my third psychiatric appointment earlier this week. The first thing we discussed was my decision regarding treatment. I expressed my desire to pursue both psychoanalysis, and ADHD assessment/meds. He made his opinion quite clear – he believes that by treating a condition with medication, any motivation to continue psychotherapy will vanish, and it will then fall by the wayside. He DID say that it was still up to me, I could very well be the exception to the rule, yada, yada, yada, but I still felt his disapproval. I said that my son’s medication helped him, but in no way did it control all of his symptoms, so I did not see that my motivation to undergo therapy would be affected by medication, as medication would not make everything “right”. I also informed him that I was concerned about my driving, and he replied that we would have to be careful, as therapy often worsens symptoms before improving anything! Yikes!!

Most of the appointment was spent covering ground we had been over before, just to make sure I understood (!!?), and he then explained a bit more about the process. He also mentioned that because I wasn’t presenting with a particular issue to deal with (such as gambling, child abuse, rape), then we would have to do some pretty aggressive digging to get to the underlying “conflict” in my life. Great….not!

Then we made a start.

Not nice. I went blank to start with, and then I brought up something I had been angry at my mum about when I was a teen, and we explored that, and my defense mechanisms that occurred as a result. Then time was up, and it was all done for now, thank you, see you next week. It was like being shut off mid-sentence.

I felt okay when I left, but the tears started halfway home, and I really let loose once I had privacy. I felt angry all over again at my mum. I felt upset over the lack of support over my decision to try medications. I felt frustrated that the therapy seems doomed to focus on the negatives, when I have so many positive memories from my childhood. I felt confused, and overwhelmed. And I wondered how my plan to be assessed for possible ADHD (that I thought would be a simple process) had evolved into this mess. My son had a test. He got a referral. He got offered medication. How did I end up on this convoluted path instead?!

And the doc was right. My symptoms did get worse. I ran a red light later that day. It had been amber on my approach, so it had only just gone red, but the fact that I didn’t even notice until I was nearly through the intersection terrified me.

I will continue to give therapy a go, because I can only grow stronger from the process. But if I am to stay sane and not kill anybody through my driving, then I need a pharmaceutical “crutch” for a while. So I have made an appointment with the ADHD doc (another psychiatrist), whose name I ended up getting from my current psychiatrist. It feels like I am back to where I was in May, when all of this started, because I now have to get a referral from my GP, and wait another 4 months for the appointment. And to really rub salt into the wound, it is with one of the first three psychiatrists I tried to call, but who didn’t answer the phone….so I impatiently moved on to the next on the list!!

Treatment Torment!

For all of my life, making choices has been an agony of indecision, unless of course they were made and acted upon impulsively. If I was unable to make a decision immediately and impulsively, then it tortured my brain for eternal hours, my mind going around and around, completely unable to make a decision one way or the other.

So of course, what happened with my psychiatric appointment yesterday? I was offered three treatment options, and I need to decide which one I want to follow through with!!! Complete and utter TORTURE!!

What I found to be even worse was the psychoanalytical perspective that does not put a label to a condition. It was proposed to me that my current symptoms could be caused by internal conflict as a result of growing up with a controlling mother and absent minded father, but nothing was said about anxiety, ADHD, depression, or any other specific disorder.

So if I feel this way, why did I not immediately take the doc up on his offer of referring me to an ADHD specialist who would almost certainly diagnose me and prescribe medication?? I honestly don’t know! Maybe because the doc was so reasonable about everything. I got the opportunity to basically select my diagnosis and treatment – anxiety, and be referred on for medication and CBT; ADHD and be referred on for assessment and medication; or the un-named set of symptoms, with roots in my childhood, that are “talked through” in an effort to allow insight and understanding, and thus growth and change.

Maybe it was a desire not to be seen as a drug seeker. I know that my doc believes that medications are very overused, and are a quick fix method of treating many disorders. I certainly agree, but I also believe that medications certainly have their place and should not be dismissed out of hand (not that my doc was doing this). But what is the right course of treatment for my issues? Who can say. I certainly think that therapy has it’s place. And maybe it can help me deal with the anxiety that has plagued me for much of my life. But will it help with my ADHD-like symptoms?

I have Googled psychoanalysis to death, and have been pretty disappointed with the results. Not much comes up with regards to the success or failure of it as a form of treatment. I found a couple of articles that supported it, including one on kids with proposed ADHD, but the kids with ADHD symptoms that were treated successfully with psychoanalysis were actually products of dysfunctional families. And I mean dysfunctional. They had separated parents with major issues of their own (such as drug abuse, or depression), or they were victims of emotional, sexual, or physical abuse or neglect. That is so NOT me!! Sure, I had some issues with my parents, but who doesn’t?! Mine were certainly “normal” growing up kind of issues.

I suppose now is as good a time as any to examine my anxiety issues. My doc proposes that they have developed as an adaptive mechanism to some form of mental conflict during my growing up, especially in my early teens when kids are the most vulnerable. So how does that explain one of my anxieties – phone phobia? I remember a time when I would happily answer the phone when my parents were busy, and when later asked who had called, I would not be able to give an answer because I had not remembered to ask. And it happened over and over and over. I was constantly chewed out because of this, and I eventually hated answering the phone because I knew I would not remember to ask the appropriate details. Hey presto…phone phobia! Is this history of mine a sign of the presence of childhood ADHD (the constant forgetting and inability to learn readily from mistakes) that subsequently developed into an anxiety/phobia? Or is it a result of some form of subconscious “oppositional” behaviour aimed at asserting my independence when I felt I had no other way to do so? Both explain the development of the anxiety, and this is where I come unstuck in my ability to decide what to do regarding treatment.

To top it all off, I nearly drove up the back of another car yesterday. Again. I really need to get things sorted before I do some real damage to somebody. This time it was because I was distracted by a car pulling in ahead of a big truck. I wanted to see who was stupid enough to do such a thing, and I nearly didn’t notice in time that the car in front of me had stopped.

The near miss has made me more impatient for results. I don’t know if I can wait. Psychotherapy takes time, and I am not sure I can afford it. Middle age and the hormonal imbalances that come with it have escalated my symptoms such that I even find it hard to dig up enough motivation to shower!

I think, for now, that I will attempt to pursue a mixed treatment. I would like to ask to be referred to the ADHD specialist, so I can get some chemical assistance for driving in busy traffic. But I would like to see where therapy takes me too. Because let’s face it, I am curious. I want to know what it’s like, and if it works.

But you know what they say about curiousity and Kats!!!