This morning I had a follow up phone call with my shrink who is no longer going to be my shrink. She was already semi-retired when I started with her last year (has it been a year??) and now is gearing up to retire for good, so is only working with her very serious patients so she can transition them to their new doctors. I get it, I was kind of dissapointed when she first told me a few months ago, because I really like her, but I get it.
In the course of our working together, we only had five face to face appointments and three over the phone ones. I wasn’t expecting her call today, but she wanted to check in with me as my biggest hurdle in our sessions was getting me to admit some things to myself in order to be able to move on from them.
I think I’m doing pretty okay now, but…fair warning. It might get all kinds of crazy up in here without a shrink to fall back on for emergencies.
I have no idea how I’m going to be this winter. I plan on using chocolate to medicate.
On the upside, with all the book excitement lately, hopefully I’ll be well and truly distracted.
So, why do good girls do bad things? According to my shrink, (and in my personal case) a once shattered and then very poorly and shoddily re-built self esteem that is still full of cracks causes constant needs for approval. Usually from the absolute WRONG sources because those people remind us of whomever it was that shattered the self esteem in the first place.
In other words, we beat up on ourselves. Especially when we’re feeling down, because girls with horrible self esteem will sometimes subconsciously seek out negative people or situations because they believe they deserve to be punished.
Messed up, huh?
At least I have some better ideas of how to try to avoid some of this stuff in the future. And I am getting better.
Nuala Reilly: A Writer's Journey 