Posted by musil on February 24, 2005, at 18:46:40
In reply to Re: Holding up only for my family, and failing, posted by Phillipa on February 24, 2005, at 16:57:24
Well, it does have a road connecting it to the mainland: Mount Desert Island off the coast of Maine, the home of Acadia National Park. A ghost town in winter, with millions of people in a small town in the summer. It's an island that used to have a strong community of locals, which has changed with the tremendous influx of money with rich summer folks that have decided to make it a year round residence. Lots of imported non-anglo non-local help brought with the entire clans, which in and of itself it not a problem except that it takes work away from what used to be assigned traditionally to local folks. So there is now a clear divestiture of rich folks staff and locals. You're right, there's not anything to do 10 months out of the year, especially when house-locked with pain. I'm not whining, at least I'm not ferry-locked to the mainland.
Today's visit to the pdoc indicates that he wants me to up my suboxone (he loves that stuff) but he has nothing but contempt for SSRIs. We've agreed to startup intense analytic ptherapy 3 days per week as he firmly believes in the healing effects of traditional Freudian theatre coupled with his own brand of senile comments and occasional naps at $250/hour. He's just a nice old guy with delusions of grandeur coming from a successful Manhatten practice and retiring to the coast of Maine, bringing his pricing and obstinate attitude with him. It scares me that he has no association with other therapists, no peer-review, nobody to check his activities: he calls himself the last analytic rebel and he almost died last month with a gut twist and called me from his hospital bed and loaded me up with Rx for all my meds knowing that he might not make it through the night. But he made it through and continues to sit complacently in his chair and it kills me that in this small town he really raised his rates from 200 to 250/50 minutes. He's the best I've got, but unfortunately I've developed a strong transference toward him as a grandfather figure and I can stand to be honest with him about how I feel. I'd rather make him happy than disappoint him, and his example is as a non-medicated former depressive who apparently bulled his way out of his depression with his own will and that's what he wants out of me. Frankly, he's never had anybody suicide on his long watch (perhaps because he avoids and transfers patients long before they get to that point) and so as long as he thinks I'm safe to his rep he keeps me on. I wonder if I should keep him as a pdoc for meds and find a masters level therapist for ptherapy.
Physical pain and depression are clearly linked. It's a chicken and egg scenario, not easily resolved.
I've been watching comedy now for almost 9 straight days, through sleepless nights and extreme psychotic anxiety: fear of losing family, fear of ending up on the street, fear of being a failure, anger at my former employer. So I either decide that I've hit bottom and plan to rise from their, or end my life. It's that clear, and I choose to rise from the bottom. At least right now. But as you all know well, and William Styron writes about best, the dark beast comes over like a storm and bring forth black thoughts of death.
poster:musil
thread:461152
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20050222/msgs/462886.html