More problems, more therapy

I saw my therapist today, for the first time since the day after Doug died. I saw her that day because I was in a panic, and because I was blaming myself (which is a long story that I don't want to get into right now), and I knew I needed immediate intervention.

To say that it didn't go well - that session back on Febrary 21 - would be an understatement. In her defense, she's a Clinical Psychologist and not a grief counselor; while there's a fair amount of overlap in skill sets, grief counseling is a unique specialty. Also in her defense, I wasn't ready to have any kind of substantive discussion about anything at that point.

So I found a grief counselor, and then decided going back to work is not something I'm going to be able to do any time soon, and then realized that my preexisting mental health issues (specifically, anxiety) are no longer manageable using the tools I've developed over the years. That's probably because my entire life got destroyed and then there was a natural disaster and now there's a global pandemic and OH MY GOD WHEN WILL IT STOP?

By the time I realized I needed both grief counseling and good old-fashioned therapy, Brooke was out of town for the week, and so here we are.

Today's session wasn't particularly productive; it was mostly me catching her up on everything from the past few weeks. But it was comforting nevertheless: you see, she knew Doug. In fact, we saw her for couple's counseling. (Remember in my eulogy when I talked about how we nearly broke up about seven months after we started dating? That's when we started seeing her. Once we got over the hump, we visited her now and then just to make sure we stayed on the right track. Best investment we could have made. I've seen her on and off on my own over the past four years, when I needed an objective ear and some help with my anxiety. And Doug saw her now and then on his own as well.)

She's also going to be the person who will help me decide at what point I'll be ready and able to work again.

After 50 minutes with her, I was and remain exhausted - all that crying and talking takes a lot out of a girl - but I think tag-teaming grief counseling and sessions with my regular therapist, at least for now, is a good idea. Grace can't really do as much for helping me cope with my anxiety as Brooke can, and Brooke can't really do as much for helping me process my grief as Grace can. And this session made it very clear how broken my brain still is: with Grace, it's mostly me rambling, and then she'll throw in a comment here or there. Today, I did a fair amount of rambling, but poor Brooke would ask a question, and I'd start to answer it and then go on a 10-minute tangent down five different paths... and then I'd forget what the question was that she asked. So, yeah: definitely not capable of being a productive member of the workforce yet.

AND I HATE THAT. I don't think a lot of myself in many ways, but I always felt competent in my career. And now, even that's been taken from me. And that's just another scary thing for me to find a way to manage, at a time when I can't manage... anything, really.

Between the two of them, maybe it's possible to help me find a way to put myself back together. I still don't believe that I can. I still don't want to. I still want to be with Doug; it's all I think about, 99% of the time. But since I am still here, it can't hurt to give them a chance to prove me wrong.