Psyche's Acorn

Hashimoto's Disease

2012-01-08T16:45:00.001-08:00

It's Hashimoto's Disease. I thought I had told you all months ago, but clearly, I've been too sick to remember if I blogged or not.
It's an autimmune disease... the thyroid gland is attacked and destroyed (rather successfully) by the immune system. The treatment (at the moment) includes continued supplements and vitamins, as well as a major dietary change: no gluten, no dairy... and preferably no soy or corn.

Yay.

In truth, I am actually feeling quite a bit better. It's just that I'm still feeling a long way from good.

:)

"Dr. House" Was The Nicest Nickname I Could Think Of

2011-09-26T12:22:00.000-07:00

Assholery, the likes of which is usually reserved for the operating rooms of brain surgeons or mob-movie characters played by Joe Pesci. Di-ick. That is my new practicum supervisor. Brilliant, excellent at what he does, feared by his peers and tolerated by his underlings... and regardless of how talented he is, absolutely NO ONE likes him.

He picks on people. There is one young lady on our student team, a really excellent neuropsychologist-to-be who ended up in our program (even though she didn't want to be) due to lack of placements for neuropsych students at our level in this city. She is a very young and shy person who defers to authority. She is highly anxious as she is not in her element. And every morning at our team meeting, Dr. House picks on her over and over again. He likes to begin team meetings by circulating stories from the tree newspapers he reads every day and commenting on them. One story last week had something to do with "California State University at Berkley." He says to Ms. Shy, "So, Ms. Shy, what state is California State University in?" Ms. Shy doesn't know how to respond... "Uh, what to you mean, what state is it in?" He just keeps repeating his question. She is visibly panicked and uncomfortable. She heard the question, but thinks that he must be trying to trick her. After 5 rounds of this, he switches to a caustic tone and asks another student. "It's in California." Uh-huh. Ms. Shy turns seven shades of red. He directs his next stoopid-gotcha question at her. Great, Dr. House. We're all really impressed that you know how to make nervous-and-very-talented young women nearly cry. [slow sarcastic clapping] We're all really impressed. BRA-VO.

He's done a few things that have got under my skin since we started on Sept. 6th. He's made bets on how far into an interview it would be before a mother started crying. He's made fun of the cities that clients are from. He's made rude remarks about Jehova's Witnesses. He's interrupted people and walked away from them while they were talking to him and in mid-sentence. He has suggested to me personally that I would be given more leeway than younger students and that I would not have to take 5pm clients because I was "over 30 and have a life." My response? "Well, thanks for being unfair in my favour, I guess." He holds court. Fine, but I already have a theatre degree.

But the other day, he became very angry with me because I adhered to a professional standard. Basically, if you were to read ever single book on therapy in the world, and talk to every therapist in the world, you wouldn't find a single one that says that it is a good idea to extend the therapy hour when a client is late. This is important for several reasons. 1. It's important to have boundaries with clients and to establish them early on (especially if you are a new therapist... like me). 2. Extending the therapy hour sends a message to the client that it is okay to be late and that the therapy is not important. 3. Extending the therapy hour has more to do with the therapist's feelings of discomfort and wanting to be seen as a "nice guy" than having the client's best interests at heart. 4. Helping the client to contain their anxiety/anger and make the best of the session is clinically more useful and ultimately more respectful of the client. BUT regardless of all these reasons and more, Dr. House insisted that I "should have known better." Really? Exactly how should I have known that you flout a clinically and theoretically important convention that is adhered to by 100% of therapist excluding you? And how was I to have known that exactly? Was it in one of the many administrative training manuals that you neglected to give me?

On top of this, Dr. House insisted that I had been "poisoned" by the professors at my University (which he added - "only work 6 months a year" and "don't care about anybody") and he declared that he needed to "turn you back into the human being I know you are."

Uh, hold the phone. Are you, Dr. House, giving me a lesson in compassionate humanity? Because if you are, we need to call those three newspapers that you read every day and message all the activist Internet sites that refer to you as a callous-jackass-lacking-in-empathy. Clearly they were wrong and the media should be alerted.

So he asked me to call the client and APOLOGIZE and offer her a more convenient and longer therapy session next week. I told him that I would be happy to offer the new appointment but that I would not apologize. I don't think I've done anything wrong and I'm not sorry. So appologizing would be lying to the client (something else that is contraindicated in therapy, go figure) and I don't beleive it would be helpful. The client ended up telling me on the phone that they couldn't have stayed even if I did offer a long time, and they refused the new time and the extended appointment. Dr. House says that I am "off the hook for now." Mm-hmm. Off the hook. Thank you, oh grand exalted master...

Ah, the humiliating world of graduate work. Anyone want to take bets as to how long into the school year before he swears at me?

And.... GO!

2011-09-14T12:45:00.000-07:00

Let's bring you up to speed a little, shall we, Dear Reader?

The summer was rather a bust. I'm still PFS (pretty fucking sick), although we have managed to nail down part of the picture of what is wrong with me. I'm anaemic and they suspect a sub-clinical thyroid issue. I'm caught up in the endless debate of what constitues "sick" that goes on between medical science and the naturopathic community. I'm feeling a litte bit better since starting iron a few weeks ago, but a long way off from feeling even remotely well. The school year has started with a BIG BANG and I am scrambling up this steep hill called a "learning curve" at my intervention practicum. It will be intersting to talk about it with you, as I am studying under a prominent psychologist in a relatively rare area of specialization. This year's focus will be patients referred for GID - Gender Identity Disorder and I will be working under the supervision of someone that I will affectionately (for now) refer to as "Dr. House." Suffice it to say, he knows what he is doing, but appears to lack empathy and be a bit of a dick at times. Having said that, I do not feel the same sense of apprehension and intimidation that some of my colleagues feel. I know I will learn a lot from this experience, even if Dr. House does decide to let me jump into having clients without watching me in session. Right now I'm taking it as confidence in me because I have worked at the Org for so long and have some experience working in Brief Solution-Focused with transgendered youth on the telephone.

The Practicum Org is an enormous hospital, with many different departments. I have a special badge that identifies me as SANE and allows me free access to most areas, except the cafeteria kitchen, which is too bad because I'm hungry there most of the time. This is due to never having a break to eat, pee, check email, book a client, or have a modicum of privacy. Our student computer room is three long lines, troughs if you will, of closely packed-in computers and shared telephone extensions. Bathrooms are few and far between and require keys. Thankfully, I have the SANE badge, which comes with a special key that allows me access to toilets and play therapy rooms.

I also have a TAship, into to psych for freshmen. My co TAs seem competent and fair, so good luck there. And I don't appear to need to go to the class except for tests. I'm TAing with a woman who I TAed with in my first year of grad school, and it is pretty nice since we have a good understanding of how to work together and get along.

I have one class that I have to attend on Fridays from 10:30-2:30. More on that later. Right now I'm feeling very resentful about it because I got saddled with doing nearly 4 hours of photocopying for myself and the other three students. I didn't realize that I had to learn how to be a copy machine repair wizard as a condition of graduation. But now I know how to fix ANY paper jam and reload ink cartridges. And the people at administrative support know me by name and have classically conditioned stress responses whenever they hear it.

I am hopelessly behind on writing work I have to do for the two OTHER organizations that I consult for (see being sick all summer) and feeling quite stressed out about that. I'm sure if I could stay awake and cognitively functioning for more than two hours at a time, I could get more done. Also, if my SPSS licence hadn't expired... right now it is a convenient excuse to not have some analyses done for a report due in late October.

Other than that, I should be working on my proposal, putting time in at the Org, and thinking about my minor area paper. But I'm just too tired. Dr. Supervisor was really good to point out that I'm quite lucky to be in grad school and funded for three years because if I need to take 4 months off to recoup, I can. It's just that I don't want to. For some (stupid) reason, it feels like quitting, or not being as smart or strong as all the other kids. I don't want to miss anything. I don't want to straddle two cohorts. I want to be the superfit leader, the one charging ahead and breaking ground in my field, in my cohort, in my program. Like if people find out that I am sick, I fear that they will take some satisfaction from it. I don't know if that would happen, or if I am projecting that on to them (in which case, I'm a horrible fucking bitch), but I fear it. Like I have said before, I don't know who I am if I am not special. Maybe this will be when I finally find out. I hope that who I am has grace.

Appointment with the Naturopathic doctor tonight. I'll let you know if anything comes up.

Until next time,
Psyche

2011-07-03T06:58:00.001-07:00

April, May and June passed with some ado. If I were my own Dear Reader, I would be tired of reading about how exhausted Psyche is. But here we are. It's go-time. I have to either void my bowels now or get off the proverbial pot. I'm beyond the phyiscal symptoms now and my brain is staging protests. Word retrieval was the first to go. I'm in some sort of permanent tip-of-the-tonge pergatory until the exhaustion finally passes. And unfortunately, I'm so run down that I'm starting to lose hope that it will. I'm worried that I'm never going to get better. That means no more pushing myself. I have to rest. Whatever that is.

I've tried it before. Whenever summer comes I recommit to doing nothing, or doing nothing but fun things. But I never seem to get it right, or say no with sufficient gusto. I get roped in. This year I have set things up as to not get roped in. People know that I am sick. I don't think that they take it seriously, but at least they know. When I say exhuastion, they reply with, "oh, you're just tired. I'm tired too..." No, collective-honey, EXHAUSTED. It's when you've been so stressed out for so long that your adrenals and thyroid stop working properly and you don't produce the hormones that tell your body that they fight-0r-flight event is over and you can calm down now. "Right, you're tired. I felt that way last week, all you need is a good sleep." Uh, no... I sleep for 12 hours and then don't feel refreshed. I need to completely reboot.

In the past 3 months, I've finished my semester, finished my 1st practicum, convocated, wrapped up some important projects, and bought a house. I also allowed the lines of communication between myself and my parents to be reopened. (Big reaction to buying a house, almost none to graduation.) I've also been trying to get pregnant for just over half a year. (Sigh, yes, I hear you on the inadvisability of getting pregnant while recovering from exhaustion, but once again, here we are.) My brother and his wife just announced that they are pregnant (well, mostly his wife) "by accident." It was only a year or two ago that he was telling me that he fantasizes about getting in his car and drivng away from eveything and not telling anyone where he is going and just starting over. That he doesn't want anymore kids because they are too hard and he doesn't have the patience for them. But hey... of course he's happy about it: every child is a miracle. HIs capacity for denial knows no bounds. And I'm discovering that my life's capacity for waving insult in my face knows none either.

But this isn't just a complaining post. A lot can happen in three months. I've been reminded that I have some pretty awesome friends and that Mr. Husband really does rock in more than the prescribed way. And now I have two months. TWO MONTHS to really hold myself to healthy selfishness. Two months to move into our new house. Two months to find that road back to recovery. Not to magically get better, but to get better habits.

Half An Hour

2011-03-31T04:59:00.000-07:00

In half an hour, I have to give a presentation on CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy, NOT cock and ball torture -- thank you very much Mr. SGM!) to a group of my peers. It's a small group; 5 grad students and a professor. Since it is the last day of classes for us, at least 5 of these people will show up late, not come at all, or at the very least text each other on their Blackberries throughout. The last presentation of the year is always a tough spot to be in becuase everyone has basically tuned out. Those who do manage to show up, are late, distracted, and sometimes just plain fall asleep. This phenomenon is most likely when your class is at 8:30 in the morning. Heh heh heh... They don't know WHAT they are in for. I have mandatory class participation and a very Socratic style. Those in my cohort that have been to my presenations before know that I ask people directly for their opinion (although just opinions, never a "right" answer cause that would be mean!), to give examples, to talk about their own experienes clinically AND I've even been known to politely ask someone to put their Blackberry away. "Oh, Student X, that seems like a really important call you need to take. Do you want to excuse yourself so you can talk to them out in the hallway? I don't want you to miss it if it's important. We'll wait for you. We don't mind." Done in the right tone of voice, this strategy has the effect of letting the offender know you're calling them on their inconsiderate bullshit, while still appearing professional and even considerate in the eyes of your other classmates. Then, if you listen very closely, you can hear the muted pings of 5 other people turing off their cellphones under their coats. Sweetest sound... It's three classes back-to-back-to-back today 8:30-5:30, ending with the exam for the class I TA. Then I'm going to the library, because just because classes are over does NOT mean that I don't have 5 more assignments due next week. I am a GRAD student!

You're Not Paranoid If They Really Are Trying To Steal Your Brain

2011-02-15T11:12:00.000-08:00

My balcony looks out towards the balconies of another appartment building opposite. One of the appartments in this building has all of it's windows covered in tin-foil. Rather, the windows from at least one room. It is ambiguous as to whether it is the windows for their entire appartment. I suppose it depends on if it is a bachelor-style appartment or larger.

It makes me want to take out our telescope and try to get a better look.

Psyche

Get Away -- Get A Good Job With More Pay

2011-02-01T09:03:00.000-08:00

It occurs to me, once again, that I must be a bitch of a psychotherapy patient. Compared to my seasoned, white haired therapist; I know a LITTLE bit about psychology and the psychodynamic viewpoint. And I bring all of these great amounts of a little bit of knowledge into the therapy session like a child whose spine is curving under the weight of too many school books in her backpack. I want to understand, but I intellectualize too much to be emotionally present in the moment. After a lengthy session of discussing this and our recent interpersonal difficulties, I said outright, "I KNOW that I do this! I know I have this third eye looking down on us and editing my every move before I have a chance to make it so that I look smart, informed, and insightful!"

Dr. Therapist's sage-like response?

"Yeah, you should cut that out."

That is such a radical idea to me. To stop editing. To stop trying to impress. It is so radical, in fact, that I have been actively and consciously trying to do it for over 5 or 6 months now, and just realized that I'm not. I may have stopped trying to impress professors, stopped trying to manage my family of origin, stopped (at least a bit) trying to anticipate my partner's emotional responses; but I continue to try to control the therapy relationship like I'm Maria Callas' husband. You might get a great performance out of me, but ultimately I'm just going through the motions. No offence to Maria Callas, she was a passionate singer, but one has to wonder why the Caged Bird Sings.

After dissecting the issue until it fell apart, I felt better. And this week I am faced with the task of being genuinely in the moment and not over-thinking therapy. This is a challenge for someone who's background is in performance and in theatre training spent 3 months not speaking because they were learning how to read subtle-and-unconscious messages in body language. You see??? This is why I am attracted to the psychodynamic methods!

So without overthinking it too much, I think I will probably talk about having just been turned down for a research job this morning. They really wanted to hire me to work 36 hours a week for 4 months, and I can only give them 16. It's funny how I have lots of job opportunities right now for which I am now qualified, but can't take them due to time constraints. And at a time when I am wanting to leave The Org (before the layoffs). Taking a vacation is also a problem in this process. Many research assistant jobs are short-term and I have committed to going away for reading week, which is when these jobs need the applicant to be available to collect data. I need the money yet know I will sink further into twitchiness if I don't take a break in February.

Money. It's a gas...

I better get back to not overthinking it.

Mon-ey-ey-ey

2011-01-04T16:46:00.000-08:00

Since the first time I heard it in my my brother's basement bedroom, I have absolutely adored the vocalist's solo in Pink Floyd's "Great Big Gig In The Sky." I also love the old geezer talking about how he's "not afraid of dying, any time will do -- why should I be afraid of it?" Then this scary pure yet somehow still rock as fuck voice kicks into pure ecstasy...

I'm not sure it would work with my classically trained voice, but then, I'm convinced Meat Loaf could have been an opera singer, so who knows? Really, the only souls who have heard it are my and my cats (my neighbour is deaf). No one has called the police yet, thinking it a domestic disturbance, but then I do live in __________________...

This morning I woke up, only barely because I only got about 3.5 hours of sleep. I took a sleeping pill at 10pm, then half an anti-anxiety med at midnight. 2:35 am was the last time I looked at the clock and then the next thing I knew, the local classic rock station reached deep into my dreams with one of the best guitar-and-cash-register solos ever recorded and it was 6:30. TIME TO GET UP. So I did, grudgingly. I did my best to cover the ravages of time with eye concealer and a cement trowel (later classmates would comment that the operation was NOT a success). Ran out the door. No food in the post-holiday house, so I stopped at a drive through. Got to school on time, a minor miracle, and low and wonder my parking pass wouldn't work. Scan, scan, beep, scan, beep, beep-beep, scan. Nothing. I pressed the "call for help" button. Ring, ring, ring, ring... beep! I got an answering machine. Really? An answering machine? There was a line up of cars (filled with tardy, angry undergrads) forming behind me and no way to turn around. My apologies and braced for hurled epiteths ("hey, aren't you in my section of intro to psyc? watch it buddy!) Eventually they wiggled back their daddies' cars enough for me to back out and look for a pay-as-you-go parking lot.

I paid $20 to park today at a school where I already OWN a fucking parking pass!

But that was okay, because I had my sausage-and-egg-a-muffin and Earl Grey tea. Oh, what's this? My Earl Grey tea is upside down in the back seat for some reason. I am not ashamed to say, Dear Reader, that I drank what was left in the cup, despite the lid having touched the floor on my car. I was THAT desperate for caffeine. I was late however, and did not have the gall to eat my (now cold) sausage sandwich in front of my two elderly-and-extremely-Jewish professors. But don't worry, I DID manage to spill the last of the Earl Grey on my brand-new (formerly) white sweater.

I met more minor disasters of the morning bravely. Like a young british soldier in 1917 who's been told that Field Marshal Haig wants to move his desk another 7 feet towards Berlin before tea time. I had suspected that my run of bad luck was mostly due to lack of sleep and mental unpreparedness to return to grad-skule life after too-little vacation. I hadn't seen my therapist since before my MIL died and breaking up with my own parents. There was a lot to talk about and surely all of this Cluseau-esque misfortune was the manifestation of not having had the chance to talk it all out with good-ol' Dr. Therapist. But I was so sleep deprived that by the time I got there, I was exhausted from making sure I didn't accidentally drive my car into a Boxing Week matress sale, I just didn't have any fight left in me. I started by talking about how tired I was and how my defenses were down. My bad day. My professors. The upcoming layoffs at the Org and how no one is doing their job --

And then he hits me with it. I'm not happy with our relationship, am I?

The Pain of Anger

2010-12-14T14:05:00.000-08:00

It's been said that depression is anger turned inward. And it's been argued that this isn't true. I think that in some cases those who are depressed are repressing a ton of anger meant for other people. Sometimes that anger comes out by going in. That is, they turn unbearable negative feelings on themselves. We see things like self-harm, which is a physically obvious manifestation of all this.

Recently, in my own life, I've been accepting some anger that I have. Mostly it is a long-repressed anger. There's this really great book called, "The Drama of the Gifted Child," by Alice Miller. This brilliant psychologist and champion of children's rights describes the process whereby sensitive children pick up on their parents' wishes for them and make them paramount even when it means stiffling their true selves. ESPECIALLY when it means stiffling their true selves. You see, a child is utterly dependent on their parent figure(s) for their survival. Not just their bottom of the pile Malovian needs, but their emotional survival as well. If the parents aren't ok (whatever ok means) then the child will not be taken care of. They will cease to exist. It's what classic psychodynamicists refer to as "fear of anihilation." I won't take too much time to explain how we all develop defence mechanisms, that's been written about extensively and you can find the info easily... but I will just put it out there that we've all got them. For some of us, we repress guilt. Others, it's anger.

Me, it's anger.

I've known intellectually that it's anger for a long time. But there is a huge difference between acknowledging your anger and expressing it. I have to admit, I know exactly who I am mad at and for what. But I've got no idea what an appropriate or healthy expression of my anger would be. I know I don't want it to be my heart stopping suddenly anytime in the next 6 minutes to 60 years...

My Mother-in-Law died a couple of days ago. We've been waiting for her death for a few months now so the grieving has been this slow, uphill process. It's also come at the same time that my own parents have been descending into poor health and addiction. The contrast between my parents and my husband's parents is astonishing. Mr. and Mrs. Husband never fell out of love, laughed often, supported each other, and had a great push and pull between his highjinks and her helmmastering. Mr. and Mrs. Psyche's-Family-of-Origin never were in love to begin with, fought often, undermined each other, and at times escalated push and pull to yell and hit. When we got married, we thought our mothers would hate each other. His mom is a tiny, health-conscious, high self esteem, competent reader. My mom is an obese, judgemental, low self-esteem, meddler. Now I know I'm biased, I spent the first 19 years of my life repressing a ton of anger towards her. But when I sit here now, grieving the death of my MIL, I realize that I wouldn't be this sad if my own mother had died. The unfairness of it all is striking. My mother has never taken care of her body or soul whereas Mrs. Husband has always been the picture of moderation. His mom always saw the glass as half full. Mine always sees it as more than half empty, with spots on from the dishwasher, and never mind because it's Coke and you know I like Pepsi, so thanks a lot Christmas is ruined because you bought the wrong pop. Anyway, we were very surprised to find out two years into our marriage that they'd been having coffee once a week since we announced the engagement.

Why did she have to die when she brought so much joy, kindness, hope, and care to every single person whose life she ever touched? And my mom, who has been miserable, martyring, fear-monger of an emotional abuser gets to live? To my mom, life is suffering and misery and she's only digger her hole of problems bigger every time she pulls the slot-machine arm. To his mom, life was a delight, and the future filled with the assurance of more happiness to come.

With every "why" the anger boils a little higher. And I'm afaid that it will overflow. Again, I've never seemed to find the way to release my anger so that I actually feel better, not without destroying something (I broke a plate once or twice and you all know about the eating disorder). I am afraid that when I have to talk to my mother at the funeral that I might snap and lose it on her. That I might deliver a verbose flurry followed by a flurry of knuckles in no way suitable for a funeral home environment. That I will be embarassed by how my own issues of anger would overshadow the grief of my own husband, who is much closer to this loss, and that THAT will put a wedge between us.

I don't actually want any harm to come to her. I just want her to go away. I want all the memories to go away. I want to be allowed to find solace in my chosen famlily and not be haunted by all the abuse. I also want desperately not to fall back into my childhood pattern of reaction-formation. I can survive now without my parents being okay. Even though no one in my own family will understand it. I want out and I want this anger to fade.

I am very sad that I won't get to continue this relationship. My MIL and I adored each other. I hinted at, but never told her expressly about what I went though with my own mom, but I think she could tell. I wonder if her friendship with my mom was partly to try to understand this. She was always far to respectful to ever pry. But there are so many things I wish I could have shared with her. She made me feel loved and understood. She accepted me the way I am. Never tried to change me.

With her, I always felt "good enough." God, I felt so much more than that. I felt like a gift. I hope she felt the same way. I suspect that she did.

Thank you my wonderful Mother-in-Law, for giving me a second chance at the mother-daughter relationship. I'm glad to have been your only "closest thing to a daughter." I will miss you and remember you, and keep you with us always. And I'll take care of your little boy, I promise.

Love Psyche.

Waiting For The Ten Count

2010-12-12T09:51:00.000-08:00

So my thesis is defended and I've made and submitted my revisions to my Dr. Supervisor. And now I'm in this metaphorical game of Perfection -- trying furiously to get all my odd-shaped pegs into their odd-shapped holes before the timer goes off and throws said odd-shaped pegs allover my dust and cat crap filled appartment. It's a world of never-ending deadlines. I have no problem meeting deadlines, but unfortunately, nothing short of a difibulator up the asshole will get Dr. Supervisor to sign off on something more than 5 seconds before it is due. This little habit of theirs causes me to experience heart palpitations, sweating palms, expressive aphasia, and dizziness. So much so that I'm either in love with them or desperately want to go all Ali on their ass.

It's like the defence was punching my thesis in the face and laying it out flat (Psyche! Boom-bai-ay!) -- but I'm waiting for the pasty-white ref to slap the floor of the ring ten times to see if it will stay down or get up for one last swing at my sense of autonomy and control.

I don't really like thinking of my academic life in terms of aggressive and violent metaphors. My second reader and chair of my defence committee suggested that "defence" is too militaristic and that the word should be replaced with "coronation." But what would I be queen of? No matter what, my royal advisor would always continue to undermine me at every turn. Refusing to write a reference letter until 3 minutes before it is due it like to refusing to sign a peace treaty until the enemy has it's troops all lined up with every gun and canon and a-bomb pointed directly at my heart. At best, I'm in a constant state of anxiety. At worst, my internal organs will be vapourized and replaced by a mushroom cloud.

So thesis, STAY DOWN! Because I just KNOW that Dr. Supervisor will have some purely subjective style changes for you and let you know about them with only an hour to get everything printed and bound at Kinkos and then driven over to the University. And then the gloves will be off.

Only they won't. Because unlike every single boxer that has ever entered a ring, Dr. Supervisor expects that no one will ever throw a punch. Start putting bail money aside now, Dear Reader...

DEFENDED

2010-12-08T10:20:00.000-08:00

3 minor revisions. It will probably take less than an hour.

Over and out.

The Wa-a-aiting Is The Hardest Part

2010-12-06T20:13:00.000-08:00

OMG. Defending in less than two days. Mock oral went well according to those who were there, however, I do not feel great about it. It was so bloody AVERAGE. Sigh. I just want it to be over with! I want to be DEFENDED DONE.

It's such a military term, isn't it? And all of the horror stories I've heard from others mixed with the tales of underwhelming-ness just combine to make me terrified and bored at the same time. How is that even possible?

Well it just is.

I'd better become more coherent if I'm going to pull this off.

Plan for countdown:

Right now - wait for sleep and sleep hard
Wake up late - get up when I feel like it
Lounge about the computer, reviewing presenation and practicing answers to anticipated questions
Personal training session in late afternoon
Epsom salt bath
Wine and early to bed (emergency sleeping pill available if needed)
Get up early, eat healthy breakfast, try not to vomit
Ride to school with Dr. Supervisor
Bribe committee members with homemade lemon butter cookies
Defend
Lunch with Dr. Supervisor
Faint
Accept scotch from loving supporters

(Contact Mr. Husband for deets on the after "party" -- more of a brief therapy session with booze.)

Over.

Let All Who Are To Mirth Inclined

2010-11-24T17:36:00.000-08:00

I am very sad.

It's strange because, as a budding psychologist, I spend a lot of my time combatting sad, battling depression and dysthymia in World War Angst. It occurs to me that in our society, we are not just dealing with increased incidence (reported incidence) of depression and other mood disorders, but we are also incredibly intolerant of normal sadness. The pursuit of happiness is part of the American dream... and so often assumed to be part of it's quiet upstairs neighbour's dream as well. So much so, that when life's little foibles conspire to make us understandably, naturally, and normally sad, we tend to pathologize it.

Currently, I am intensely and absolutely sad. But it's okay. A dear loved one is slowly being eaten by cancer, our family is shaken, and we are struggling to make sure that those with special needs who are left behind are properly taken care of. Our car recently gave up the ghost and has left us with a hefty repair bill, not to mention left me lugging 40+lbs of psychological tests around with me on the bus every day. We've recently discovered that another dear (yet immensely more problematic) family member has a gambling addiction and that their partner is either moderately cognitively impaired or entirely codependent. A thesis defence date has finally been set and I have a veritable butt-wad of assignments coming due. Oh, and I've started taking on my own cases (including feedbacks) at my practicum site. A whole helly heck of lotta responsididdlyibility all at once. And a whole lotta sad...

But, uh, pretty damned reasonable sadness, wouldn't you think? I do. And I think I'm pretty damned lucky to have the support of compassionate, understanding friends. I'm lucky because I can sense the intense discomfort of some people who ask me how I'm doing and to whom I tell the truth. It's not just the surprise of hearing something other than the pattented "I'm fine. How are you?" It's the shock of having someone tell you plainly, "I'm intensely sad and here's why." It's also the disbelief that despite being this sad, that I'm okay. That I am okay with being sad right now because given my current (and temporary) life circumstances that I am comfortable with being sad. I am supposed to be. And I don't want to rush into some medical or illicit treatment to numb myself from this necessary emotion.

I've been asked if I need to take time off. (And I might when my MIL's death is imminent or I'm grieving.) I've been offered medication from a doctor and drugs from an acquaintance. I've been told that it's okay if I decide to verbally abuse someone (as if I needed to take out my frustration on an undeserving stranger), and it's been suggested that I could increase my drinking and no one would give it a second thought. While I truly appreciate the definite fact that these people were all entirely well meaning... Their hearts were all in the right the place, but unfortunately their heads were firmly lodged directly up their bottoms. While I might in one of my weaker moments engage in an unhealthy coping mechanism, I'm not seeking permission from anyone to do so. What strikes me is that these people seemed to be minorly panicking to say something meaningful to me... to be helpful... to get me UNsad. They weren't trying to be anything other than helpful, but they were also trying to make themselves feel better. To protect themselves from "catching" my sad.

I understand. I get it. I am a therapist after all. And meloncholy apparently enjoys company. I get that people want to protect themselves from sadness. But, it's okay... ya know... to be sad when something sad is going on.

So yeah. I'm sad. And it's okay. I'm going to be okay. It's going to take a while, and some of my relationships with certain family members are going to take some time and pain to change to be more healthy. But it's going to happen. It IS happening. In the meantime, I'm going to be sad. I will allow the beautiful small moments of happy to also come through.

:)

Sittin' On The Dock Of The Warf

2010-10-25T10:01:00.000-07:00

In Charlottetown today, having just done a Bullying Awareness Week rally at a small school on the island. I have to tell you, I do NOT miss having to deal with industry types. Wow do these people love the sound of their own voices...

Pretty good rally, I guess. It was well-received even if the industry people didn't quite grok that excited for an island child is a lot more subdued than the caffinated-ADHD-child-on-ecstacy that is the norm in larger city centres. Still, it seems like a bit of a waste to spend almost a thousand clams to send me out here to do about 8 minutes of work.

Oh, and get this...

PR lady tells me that they can't drop me off back at the hotel becuase their schedule is too tight, so I need to bring all my bags with me and they'll drop me "somewhere" downtown. Okay, fine, I'm pretty easy to work with and low-maintenance. Besides, I have about 5 hours to kill before my flight home so I figure I'll walk around until my bag gets too heavy then find a local pub and eventually call a cab when I need to leave. What do they ACTUALLY do? They drop me back at the hotel (thanks, I could have checked out now instead of at 6am) so that they can all go out for lunch together. Yes, they all go out for lunch together knowing full-well that I have nothing to do for the next 5 hours. Thanks for your hospitality, incompetent douchewad. You really made me feel like a valued member of your little team.

To be honest, I would have declined. I had to listen to these people try to out-name-drop each other for almost an hour in the car on the way back. I don't think I could have done lunch. Besides, if one more of them took a dig at humble little PEI, I was going to shove codfish up their noses and cram their arses with blue potatoes.

So, what did I learn? Not much, honestly, allthough it was nice to speak in front of a school again, and to finesse my ability to talk anti-bullying research without any notes. It's not like the reporter from The Guardian was a difficult interviewer, but you know... it's just nice to do that kind of work again. I also got to rack up a BUNCH of billable hours, so that was nice too.

I've got a couple more hours still before takeoff and I'm full of microbrew... so I think I'll take one last wander, maybe get some COWS brand icecream... and then back home. Thank you, humble and charming isle, for reminding me to slow down. There is no need to rush. Well, unless you've got an arse full of blue potatoes.

Can Anyone Tell Me Where This Is From? (I'd Like to Reference Properly!)

2010-10-20T11:56:00.000-07:00

A dear friend of mine sent me this. Ah...

One sunny day a rabbit came out of her hole in the ground to enjoy the fine weather. The day was so nice that she became careless and a fox sneaked up behind her and caught her. "I am going to eat you for lunch!", said the fox."Wait!", replied the rabbit, "You should at least wait a few days.""Oh yeah? Why should I wait?""Well, I am just finishing my thesis on 'The Superiority of Rabbits over Foxes and Wolves.'""Are you crazy? I should eat you right now! Everybody knows that a fox will always win over a rabbit.""Not really, not according to my research. If you like, you can come into my hole and read it for yourself. If you are not convinced, you can go ahead and have me for lunch.""You really are crazy!" But since the fox was curious and had nothing to lose, it went with the rabbit. The fox never came out.

A few days later the rabbit was again taking a break from writing and sure enough, a wolf came out of the bushes and was ready to set upon her."Wait!" yelled the rabbit, "you can't eat me right now.""And why might that be, my furry appetizer?""I am almost finished writing my thesis on 'The Superiority of Rabbits over Foxes and Wolves.'"The wolf laughed so hard that it almost lost its grip on the rabbit. "Maybe I shouldn't eat you. You really are sick...in the head. You might have something contagious.""Come and read it for yourself. You can eat me afterward if you disagree with my conclusions."So the wolf went down into the rabbit's hole...and never came out.

The rabbit finished her thesis and was out celebrating in the local lettuce patch. Another rabbit came along and asked, "What's up? You seem very happy.""Yup, I just finished my thesis.""Congratulations. What's it about?""'The Superiority of Rabbits over Foxes and Wolves.'""Are you sure? That doesn't sound right.""Oh yes. Come and read it for yourself."So together they went down into the rabbit's hole. As they entered, the friend saw the typical graduate student abode, albeit a rather messy one after writing a thesis. The computer with the controversial work was in one corner. To the right there was a pile of fox bones, to the left a pile of wolf bones. And in the middle was a large, well fed lion.

The moral of the story: The title of your thesis doesn't matter.The subject doesn't matter.The research doesn't matter.All that matters is who your advisor is.

I Went Galumphing Back

2010-10-19T09:32:00.000-07:00

The largest tax on one in graduate school appears to be of one's time. I've been cultivating the habit of saying "no" this semester, and yet, I find myself back in some old yea-saying habits. My time is lacking. I don't have time to turn around. In fact, this morning I slept past my alarm and missed the first half of my class on adult psychodiagnostic issues... BECAUSE I was up until 1am working on a scholarship application (that I won't get) that is due today. I should have said no to the application. But I didn't. I went, reluctantly galumphing back to my old habits of applying for whatever I'm told to and taking on more work than will pay off.

Why am I such an idiot, you may ask?

Well, it's a bit like an addiction. Like a roulette game, the more numbers you play, the more likely you are, statistically speaking, to actually win anything. In the end, when you tally up your hours, it was hardly worth your time... but there you are with all the other slithy toves. I gyre and gimble in the wabe of hope that something will pay off with sustaining moohlah.

And mostly it is the sustinence funding that drives me. Opportunities to get a chunk of cash, for what at first appears to be "no work" is utterly tempting. Who are you to resist it, angh? But then, when you figure that each application takes about 35-40 hours including writing, editing, fact checking, lit reviews, and most of all tracking down your bloodly references who don't bother to submit anything until the last bloomin' second... and let's say you do 5 of these stupid things... Well, you start to realize that $15,000 from the provinicial government was what you earned at $75/hour. Now don't get me wrong, $75/hourX200hours is pretty awesome. But not if all of those 200 hours are worked in a single 3 week period. And you're also working your part time job of being a graduate student!

Am I whinging? If you've never stepped through the brillig doors of higher academia, you'll likely think so. The fact is that I do all that work without ANY guarantee of getting a dime. That's the roullette part.

There is also a tulgey wood of grad student subservience that I whiffle through to the best of my ability. Sometimes your supervisor, or one of the many glorified administrative assistants of your supervisor, will "ask" you do something that you get a kind of frumious feeling about. Something tells you that although this request was posed in the form of a question, that there is no room for saying "no." You have to do it, no matter how time consuming or bizzare the request. I mean, unless you have two family members who have recently suffered strokes and have cancer of varying degrees of severity AND are suddenly thown into taking over your parents' finances (bingo!) you canNOT say "no."

So why didn't I?

Ungh... why the fucking hell hell hellish hell didn't I say no? I owe backtaxes to Father Time and I still went galumphing back to my "Sure I'll Do That Thing Everyone Else Is Too Smart To Do." So I'm getting up at 5am on Friday to drive many many miles to a school rally for Bullying Awareness Week on Friday, THEN cancelling my nice, easy PAID shift at The Org on Sunday so that I can fly to our nation's most quaint island province for another rally on Monday morning.

For the love of DOG, what the hell is the matter with me?

I do have hypotheses other than I'm just an idiot.

1. I need to get away. Even if it is for work, things are just way too stressful and serious on the home front and physically getting away will give me some much-needed psychological distance from my problems.

2. I want some alone time and the best way to get it is in transit.

3. Doing public speaking events taps into an area of brain that has been starved for oxegen since my theatre MA.

4. It gives me something else to think about in a crisis mode other than cancer and money.

5. I'm punishing myself for not being something-enough. Smart enough to win internationally acclaimed scholarships. Thin enough to fit in with the "girls" in my program. On top of it enough to have prevented the financial downfall of my parents. Medical enough to manage their care and prevent them from getting life-threatening diseases.

Breaking free and saying "no" requires constant reevaluation and reaffirmation that you are doing the right thing by leaving your yes-man life behind. It means valuing your own measures of whether or not your life is successful more than other people's, even if those people are instrumental in your day-to-day life or upbringing. Like gambling, it is a monkey that is very difficult to get off of one's back.

C'mon red 75.

So I'll take my vorpal blade in hand... and hopefully something other than me will go snicker-snack.

In Reference To References

2010-10-03T19:39:00.000-07:00

I forget to mention something. When the faculty asked to rework the scholarship application, I had to get my references to rewrite their letters. They both agreed and I gave them the changes and the timeline. I also got the head of the department to contact them to impress upon them the importance of this being done in a timely manner. You see, they have to upload the letters to a website, and only then can I go in and validate the application and make sure the page numbers are correct.

Did I mention all of this has to be done by 8am tomorrow? Oh, and that I'm basically managing a giant TON of family illness stress and looking after my husband and FIL as they await news of their mother/wife's possibly untimely mortality?

Yeah, I've been up a lot lately, worrying and trying not to worry so much, and I WANT TO GO TO BED. So hurry the fuck up, Dr. Reference#2! I'm waiting on you to do your letter so I can go crash and mentally prepare for what might be an incredibly difficult day tomorrow. You've had a week to freaking do this... why must I white-knuckle to the very end? I do not trust myself to wake up on time, nor the application website to function tomorrow morning, so make with the positive yak yak and let's go for fuck's sake, shall we?

"I'm Loosing My Perspicacity!!!"

2010-10-03T19:04:00.000-07:00

As you all know, I am Lisa Simpson, and she uttered this line in one of my favourite episodes ever - when the teacher's went on strike and she became anxious, withdrawn, and depressed as a result.

Well, don't worry, there is no strike (not until next year, at least). But I do feel as though I am losing my keeness of mental perception and understanding, as well as my ability to dredge up more than a single synonym for any one word required on a scholarship application. The good news is that I have been contacted by my faculty of graduate studies because they want to forward on my application to a very prestigious (and financially grand) scholarship. I made it to the final round of this application process last year and was disappointed when I didn't win it. So I am extremely grateful to know that the department and the university support my application. They asked me to tweak some of my submission, however, and requested my references rewrite their letters to focus more on my specific leadership experiences and abilities.

Honestly, I can only think of so many ways to say that I led something or someone. I've used words like created, spearheaded, inspired, facilitated, liaised, managed, supported, presidential, chairperson, guided... I'm out of words. I really don't know how much more I can hammer home the leadership thing. I'm careful of not revealing my Clark-Kent online, otherwise I would tell you all in great detail what my leadership acheivements are... but those of you who know me know them anyway, and I can say this: They kick the ass of the two other people I know who have one this thing...

I WANT it.

Oh, but lordy, I know better than to get my hopes up. These things don't work by the normal rules of deserving. You don't "win" a scholarship any more than you "win" the lottery. Winning implies some sort of competition in which there are sane and reasonable rules that all parties invovled are aware of. No, with scholarships, your A averege gets you to the evaluation committe. After that, it just depends on whether someone evaluating your application happens to like your area of reserach, your supervisor, or the way your name looks in 12 pt arial font. The process takes 9 months, but it's just that random.

So wish me luck, I guess.

In other news... trying to finish your annual scholarship applications before the deadlines is difficult for anyone in full time studies. Doing it the same week your supervisor gives you a hard deadline for your thesis is upping the ante. Having all that going on at the same time you are dealing with your own ailing parents making the biggest financial mistake of their lives AND your MIL having a stroke is another thing all together.

Awesome MIL has been in the hospital for 6 days. She been sick with what I can only describe as a wasting disease all summer. She's a tiny lady to begin with and now almost 20 lbs lighter than she ever should be. She fell in the tub and hit her head and instead of waking up her husband who was sleeping in the bedroom, she called MY MOM! Yup, Mummer was dispatched to Awesome MIL's house and (in a rare moment of her catastrophizing being correct) suspected she had suffered stroke and took her to he hospital. Husband and I have been at MIL's, helping FIL keep his shit together all week. And hey, we are happy to do it. We LOVE and ADORE MandFIL. Seriously. LOVE them. But I have to admit, the timing is a little crazy. In the past 4 days I have done two scholarship applications and wrote my entire results and discussion sections. Which brings me to my next and final piece of news:

The thesis draft is finished. It has been sent off through cyberspace to Dr. Supervisor (who is sympathetic to the family stress but can't do anything about my timelines). They get one more edit, then it is off to second reader, outer-university committee member, then we defend and DONE. I only hope that I (and by I, I mean Dr. Supervisor) didn't miss the departmental deadlines for me to have my draft in to the university for me to graduate and actually keep my scholarship. I just found out that drafts have to be in by Oct. 29th or somesuch, and that each of my readers is allowed to take up to 4 weeks with it first. So yeah, that's not going to happen clearly. Tomorrow I will make a panicked phone call to the department to figure out what the dilly-o, but until then... family worry + thesis worry + hard unfamiliar bed = another sleepless night.

We're supposed to get a formal diagnosis for MIL tomorrow. If you believe in gawd, please pray. If you don't, well, maybe pray anyway... there is a lot of stuff going on right now for which I have enormous concern and very, very little power. Any good vibes are appreciated, acknowledged, recognized, valued, treasured, prized, aprehended and comprehended.

Some People Are Master's Students AND PhD Students: Get Over It

2010-09-21T09:00:00.000-07:00

As I sit in the computer lab, attempting to tune out the incessant noise of 2 illegal phone conversations, I'm left to ponder my status. I officially started my PhD on Sept. 1st of this year. I started PhD classes and my first PhD practicum. But I haven't defended my Master's thesis. This leaves me in a kind of graduate purgatory from which I soon hope to escape. But first I have to get through, what is it? seven circles of hell? Or risk becoming the dreaded MA year 3. NO one wants that. Not me, not Dr. Supervisor, not Mr. Husband, nobody.

In order to help me finish this hellish task, I have enlisted the help of minions. I have two, very perky, slightly professional undergraduates working away at my behest to qualitatively code a giant pile of data. They claim to be virtually done, and I will meet with them soon to go over their work and resolve their reliability (statistical) issues. I would be excited about this if I had actually slept more than 3 hours at a time in the past week.

Yeah... apparently sleep isn't something that happens easily in graduate purgatory. This is likely a combination of things all stemming from various forms of stress. New school year. New profs. New responsibilities. New practicum. New schedule. Old anxiety disorder, old family dysfunction, old pillow. Now, the pillow I replaced as soon as I realized it was a problem. But I'm not convinced it is the right size or shape for the bizzare curvature of my poor widdle neck. I went for xrays the other day and discovered, lo and behold! that not only is the space for nerves to flow through C3 rather diminished, but I have also lost pretty much all of the curvature in my cervical spine. (Huh, huh. Cervical.) Doc says it's a problem. Great. He sees a lot of this with Dentists and lifetime academics. So get your computer screen up at eye level, get an erganomic chair, practice good wrist and spine posture. I'll get right on it.

Also contibuting to my nocturnal remission is the anxiety caused by concern over my family. I have a real love-hate relationship with these bastards. But when one of them has two strokes in a row (father), another one tells you that they foolishly drove themselves to financial ruin (mother), and another one has worse anxiety than you do and finally decided to open up to you about it after 35 years of bullying the shit out of you (brother) -- well... you feel conflicted. At this point, I have such an intense mixture of genuine concern and cow-combusting anger that I'm surprised I have not held hostage an innocent passerby, demanding that I be given an airplane and directions to Belize lest I remove piece of them and mail them home to mother.

I suppose the fact that I am shutting down by not sleeping is better than shutting down by sticking my head in the toilet or in a bottle of scotch (OMG, SCOTCH! Why didn't I think of that?)

Do you want to know what is keeping me going right now? It is a beautiful memory I have tatooed on my brain, of an absolutely essential 24 hour getaway I took to visit an old dear friend at the end of the summer. It's just past dusk, there is sand a lake so dark our voices disappear into it as we shout across the water. In the background, rolling hills, deep green with trees pointing upwards at the invading stars. It is water that at first is freezing, then warms one deeper than the skin. The converstation is familiar, heartfelt, and joyful. Hearts are as bouyant as the dock and this time sits on top of them staring out into the night.

While I pull myself out of this hell here, my mind is in heaven there.

I keep asking myself why I am here. I know that there is a reason. I just can't think of it right now.

So it's off to a meditation class tonight, to try to keep me sane. I feel ike I need this thesis OUT OF THE WAY before I can feel refreshed. That's fine. Come minions...

Back To It, Whatever The Hell IT is.

2010-09-16T08:08:00.000-07:00

Clearly a lot of time has passed since I last wrote to you. This was due to the fact that I just SHUT DOWN for about 3-4 weeks. I turned off my laptop and cellphone and let what hell come as may.

Hoooooo-Nelly! Did it ever come. And it's name is PhD year 1.

What kind of world do we live in where a scholarship application is due on the first day of class? And what kind of world do we live in where one's supervisor can submit your reference letter to said scholarship application's website 11.5 hours AFTER you asked her to get it in because you knew ahead of time that you wouldn't have time to work on the website's formatting because you were running a mini-conference on that aforementioned first day of school?

I ask you.

I'll tell you what kind of world it is. It's a world wherein all of your classmates and colleagues have annoying up-speak accents or valleygirl-vegan patois. It's a world wherein giggling and saying, "Whoops! I'm so stupid!" when you make a totally idiotic mistake eases your professors' insecurities that you are somehow going to overshadow them. It is a world wherein you have to pay up to $20 a day to park on fucking campus. THAT is what kind of freakin' world it is!

I've been back to school for less than four days and have already clocked one major panic attack (see scholarship application, above). The rock garden has reinstated itself between my shoulder blades, and I'm considering deliberately cultivating alcoholism.

Maybe I just have to get used to the water temperature... because it's not the heat that'll kill you, it's the stupidity.

Would You Think Any Less Of Me

2010-08-04T18:50:00.000-07:00

... if I took a full bottle of Bombay Saphire Gin from my supervisor's basement? Because really, I was doing them a favour. They'd had enough...

:)

The Never Ending Pile

2010-08-04T11:19:00.000-07:00

So... just got back from a meeting with Dr. Supervisor.

My dream of finishing my thesis draft by this friday and having 2 solid weeks off is fast disappearing. My composite scale does not hang together, so that means I have to throw out some of my analyses and start over seperating out and reporting on all three questions that previously made up the scale. (It's actually very common for scales with less than 10 items to have this problem.) I need to find an undergrad or two to do some reliability coding for me. AND Dr. Supervisor wants me to report all kinds of shit from the qualitative analyses. This means that she wants me to go back and work on the analyses in such a way, let's call it "sensible way #1" which is exactly how she told me not to do it when I set up the database.

"Oh, no, Psyche! I know you've never done qualitative analyses before, but whatever you do, don't organize it in a way that makes sense to you! Take 80 hours to free code everything and THEN end up taking another 40 hours organizing it the way you wanted to afterwards." That is more like the "So un-sensible you must have a pickle soaked tea towel for a brain way #62." Dr. Who said that time is not linear, that is more like a big egg filled with wibbly wobbly "stuff." I wish I could go back in time and leave myself a note to kidnap David Tennant and make him write my thesis for me.

Sigh... I know it is NOT Dr. Supervisor's fault. It is the nature of the beast. And this beast is just a malevolent ontological paradox (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blink_(Doctor_Who) that has me trapped in a never-ending do-over.

I also had a clinic assessment fall in my lap this week. Normally, I would be thrilled. I'm the only student available, so no working with anyone incompetent, annoying, or competitive. And it is with one of my favorite profs EVAH, Dr. Second Reader. BUT... now that I have all this extra thesis work to do, it's going to be hard to find the time to learn some new tests I have to administer. So, if anyone wants to join me, maybe on Saturday or early Sunday before work, and let me practise administering some memory and executive functioning tests to them over a pint, let me know.

I think I need to just select a two week block of time before classes start in September, block them off in my calendar, and if necessary, pretend I was hit by a truck and am in hospital while I really take a much-needed vacation.

Who wants to hide me at their cottage or beach house?

Uh, Psyche? Who's Flying The Plane?

2010-08-01T14:34:00.001-07:00

"Who's flying the plane?" is the phrase we used back in my camp director days when a group of overtired, overworked staff taking a break on the patio would suddenly realize that no one was supervising their dorm groups. It was a terror-blinding moment of realization that Lord of Flies could very well be taking place right there in the middle no-where, and that whatever the wee beasties had got up to, it would be entirely your fault.

And it was usually hilarious. Like the time one of the counsellors rushed into the unsupervised dorm to discover that all his 8-10 year old international (ESL) campers were experimenting with drag and had used some (poisonous) berries to fabricate lipstick. We had the most hilarious trips to the wilderness ER.

But these days, I'm more concerned about who is flying this plane, MY plane, the LIFE plane. Nine years ago, I left performing behind me because I didn't want to be in a career where I was judged for my appearance. I chose psychology because it had always been interesting to me and because I really didn't know what else to do with myself. I figured it was better than just tending bar until I figured it out. If I never figured out what I wanted to do with my life, at least I would have another education. I'd be able to get a job. I'd have accomplished something. I could contribute to society. Yeah, well, I may not be judged for my height, the size of my boobs, or my hair colour -- but boy howdy do those psyc profs ever know how to be judgemental! At the end of each school year, all the profs in the department get together to "discuss" each student's progress. It is supposed to be an academic evaluation, but often it becomes a venue to vent about students and discuss their thinly veiled anxiety about younger students threatening them in some way.

So yeah, Dr. I-love-CBT, choke on my psychodynamic fireball! You don't like me because I am close to your age, don't kiss your ass, and have a backbone. Your issues about "professionalism" are the epitome of projection. Suck on your own defense mechanism and move on with your life.

I now have a rather elaborate Scott Pilgrim-ish fantasy where I must fight 7 evil professors; one for every year of my grad skule experience. Because Psyche is the GREATEST FIGHTER IN THE WORLD!!! Or maybe the fantasy could be a Alan Moore-ish reconceptualization; The League of Extraordinary psychodynamicists! I could team up with... oh forget it. I'm off topic again.

The point is, recently I've begun questioning why-the-fuck-I-am-doing-this. Why am I in a university structure that claims (falsely) to encourage new thinking and challenge minds to debate and explore existing dogma -- when clearly all professors want is to dangle their power over you and make you subscribe to their way of thinking without every questioning it? And why can't I get a decent gewurstraminer anywhere on campus? I'm going to need a lot more gewurstraminer if I'm going to survive this thing!

Right, so the question before me is: WHO is flying this plane? I spend many hours each week working on projects for Dr. Supervisor. I am not in a position to do research that I am actually interested in becuase I have to please Dr. Supervisor and negotiate with The Org and other real-world institutions without their support. I have a very limited selection of courses to choose from that are mostly CBT focused, taught by profs who seem to hate the psychodynamic outlook and who can't come to terms with the fact that CBT was brought into being by (wait for it) psychodynamic theorists (see Ellis, Beck, etc)! You know what, dipshits? (Not you, Dear Reader.) Theories evolve and grow. No one sits around taking piss out of Aristotle or calling Plato a hack, despite their theories being grossly out of date. Yet ignorant, modern psychologists think nothing of calling Freud a sex-obsessed idiot. Why are you all so fucking ANAL? Okay okay... don't get all in a tizzy, Psyche... The point in all of this is just to question your decisions and check in with yourself. Is this really what you want to be doing? Will the ends justify the means? Is it possible to be happy WHILE doing all this? If not, what the heck else do you want to do with your time? Take flying lessons?

Psyche?

Internal Valium

2010-07-11T16:41:00.000-07:00

I need one.

I'm taking a short break during my shift at The Org right now becuase I am feeling a bit wrangy. I have a coworker that whistles and sings throughout their entire shift and it is maddening... especially when you consider that I've asked Bflat to please not do this as it is difficult to hear my own counselling conversation and that, well, whistling grates on me like the Devil's own fingers on a chalkboard. I've lost count of the # of times I've asked and just got laughter in return. That's right, Dear Reader, this person is a counsellor for children and youth and enjoys knowing that they are pissing off 50% of their coworkers. I seriously hope that a dog pees on them. Hand to Gawd, I hope this with all my heart.

I liked it better when I worked in the theatre and whistling was considered bad luck by all. I want to just run up to Bflat when they are on a really challenging suicide call and just start screaming into their face (and phone), "MACBETH MACBETH MACFUCKINGBETH!!!" But I doubt that they would get the reference. I wonder what the telephone counselling equivalent is to the Scottish Thane? Are there any great Scottish therapists or theorists? And does my tonally challenged colleague actually have any exposure to theory anyway? Judging by the way they play Tetris and Bedazzled during all of their counselling calls, I somehow doubt their education or dedication to the field.

But I do feel better for getting it out.

The Psychology of Conferencing

2010-06-16T09:23:00.000-07:00

Every now and again, my life permits me some undeserved and unexpected joy. On my current trip to the Banff Television Festival (tagging along with someone who is actually attending - whoo! free press hotel room!) I had the pleasure of sharing a scotch with the Canadian correspondent for a famous hollywood-type newspaper. Mr. V is possibly the only person in my three years of hanging around this conference that hasn't made me want to grab them and demand to know how they can stand to live with themselves. Trust me... this is high praise for someone in the entertainment industry.

But Mr. V was much more than tolerable. He was pure delight of discourse -- someone born outside the Matrix of fake boobs, iPhone addictions, and $20 martinis. While most of the industry people my husband has introduced me to can barely sustain eye-contact with me once they realize that I have no power to grant them fame or fortune, Mr. V actually TURNED OFF THE RINGER of his crackberry when I told him that I was studying to become a clinical psychologist. He wanted to know how psych conferences compare to the gaudy showiness of entertainment networking... Here are some interesting comparisons:

1. Mr. V noted that beautiful young people often want to talk to him, and while this makes him feel good, he understand that they want to talk to his magazine, not necessarily to him personally. I have noticed that at conferences, I want to talk to professors/doctors who are "famous" or with whom I share a research interest. They rarely want to talk back. Unless of course I happen to let slip who my graduate supervisor is... then they are all ears.

2. Apparently, there are as many ways of "doing TV" as there are TV professionals. Despite the stench of gin and desperation, there seems to be agreement here that no one really knows what they are doing or why anything really works. Why is Wheel of Fortune a 3-hour long daily show with bellydancers in Turkey? Why do people cry when the get money on Dragon's Den in Japan, but the show never got picked up in the USA? Why, although Paul Gottlieb Nipkow has the first patent on a television-like contraption, can no one agree on who actually invented the darn thing? Despite the fickleness of our eyeballs and money, these conference goers all seem reletively at-ease with the ambivelence that pervades this industry. They make peace with it and still try to make and sell entertainment. However, in psychology, Freud is generally credited with bringing the science into the world, many psychologists hate and despise the man to whom the owe their livelihoods. But much worse, psychology proclaims to be a science, while all the while, scientists cannot agree on what seems like a damn thing. Psychologists proclaim that their research base, their theory, their mode of therapy is the key, the ANSWER... that they KNOW HOW TO DO IT! As a profession, psychologists are very bad at admitting what they don't know. Hmm... the only exception I can think of to this might be the rare breed of psychodynamicist who doesn't have a pickle lodged firmly up their rectum. So far in my short graduate career, I've been told by countless professors that "CBT is the only thing that works for depression," or "people with Borderline Personality Disorder are a hopeless bunch that will never improve and can only be managed," or "anti-depressants should never be given to children under 16." Psychologists proclaim their hypotheses as if they are truths with more conviction than lawyers. The one wonderful exception that I have encountered to this phenomenon lies within Dr. Art Caspary, who told me quite plainly, "If anyone ever tells you that they've got the answer to anything in this business, call horseshit and run out of the room!" TV people seem to know that they don't know anything and freely admit it, while it's questionable how many psychologists either know this or are willing to admit it.

3. TV people tend to be narcissists, psychologists tend to have god-complexes. Both are overrepresented on the addictions front.

After some delightful and witty banter, I eventually got around to posing a question that I always like to ask TV/movie people: Do you know of anyone in this industry who is using their power for good? Honestly, with the exception of Jim Henson bringing on Sesame Street, and a handful of educational/documentary shows, I really can't think of anyone who uses media exclusively to do good in the world. Movies and fashion prey on our insecurities and young people in particular tend to internalize their values in ways that leave them open to psychological and relational problems. Documentary makers take advantage of editing to further their politics and take advantage of people with alzhiemers to make them look like one-dimensional idiots (I'm looking at you, Michael Moore!). Even Sesame Street, the most psychologically researched TV show in history pepper their developmentally sound educational bits with advertisements for the latest diabetes-inducing cereal. After my rant, I think that Mr. V is going to need counselling. He concedes that no, no one is doing anything that is actually GOOD. Well, maybe a few people in Northern Canada or Sweden.

And then he brings out the spinach metaphor. It's true that no one is really doing anything good for us on television. But then why, he remarks, are we watching television in order to get our spinach? Why don't we just go eat some spinach?

Touche.

Mr. V freely admits that he doesn't have children, and that if he did, he would probably have a harder time justifying the monster from which he makes his living. It's remarkable that as a television writer, he actually watches very little of the box himself. "Are you kidding?" he says, "If I watched this stuff, I wouldn't be able to actually talk to the people who make it. And I have to talk to them to do my job!" Perhaps this is the most delightful difference between Mr. V and the Louis Vutton wearing lackies that surround him: he does his job to live, he doesn't live to do this job. He has perspective. And while I cannot shake the feeling that everyone in this industry might as well be working for a tabacco company, and he thinks that William Shatner actually deserves to be famous, we can share a knowing wink and understanding.

Everyone here is crazy but us.

I'd Like To Take A Moment To Tell You All How I Sprained My Thumb

2010-06-13T19:08:00.000-07:00

Indeed. Today I proudly wear a thumb splint, a little something I picked up at the behest of the emergency doctor less than 12 hours before heading out on my vacation-that-will-not-die. It is a shiny metal, four-pronged contraption, covered in virgin-white velcro straps. It has bright blue padding on the inside, and nevertheless cuts into my chubby little digit. It is my thumb splint and it prevents me from doing again what I did before.

And what did I do before?

Well, I'd like to preface this by saying that I've been hitting the gym pretty lately, and that despite uping the weights on my flies and incline flies... that thumb stretching has never been my #1 priority warm up. I have recently made a return to competetive thumb wrestling after a prolonged absence to hitch-hike across the country to raise money for thumb research... Oh, and I'm so positively lately, every movie, play, standup show or psychology convention I've been to recently has recieved an overly enthusiastic two thumbs up! My thumbs are exhausted... Really, it's no surprise that what happened happened.

I pulled up my tight jeans too hard.

That's when I heard the snap echo throughout the washroom at the movies, and I felt the pain of someone stab the appendage that seperates me from the animals with a rusty knitting needle. I did scream. (No one came to my aid...) And the knitting needle assailant must have run off because when I looked down the blood from the puncture must have been cleaned up and my thumb was still, miraculously, attached.

Now, I've never given birth to a human child who was 4 months overdue. But I imagine that what I felt is exactly like having a 30lb screaming infant pass through a small hole that someone has dug out of one's thumb with a small push pin. I have been punched in the face by a grown man. I have been hit by a car while (helmetless) on my bicycle. I have been forced to projectile vomit out of my own nose due to an abcess on my tonsil. But I have NEVER felt pain, physical or emotional, that even came close to rivalling this.

It also makes it very hard to type on this tiny netbook keyboard. But I will never be silenced, Dear Readers. However, I do think I'm going to lose 5lbs before trying to haul my ass into that particular pair of jeans again.

Now to find a bedazzler to trick this MF out! Oh, and figure out how to drive with only my left hand!

I'm Tired Of Making You Laugh

2010-06-02T15:52:00.000-07:00

Every time I re-commit to not taking responsibility for other people being "okay," I realize that I'm doing it again. One of the biggest ways that I do this is by not allowing any emotional tides that I am going through to affect someone else. They say that the Asian countries are super-polite in and overly communally focused in that people shove down their own feelings in order to not bother other people. Well, they ain't got nothin' on me, sister.

I had a shitty birthday. Not like absolute gorilla shit that's been licked off of a baby gorilla's arse and then re-shit by its mother. Not THAT bad. There were some kernels of undigested banana in that simean poo. But by and large, it was poo. My parents FORGOT my birthday. This is something that has happened several times since I was a teenager, with my Dad forgetting almost every year, and my mom only forgetting up until it's that day, and then somewhere between breakfast and bed realizing that she has forgotten and making some lame attempt to make me feel better. Once, this involved unceremoniously thrusting a cheque at me in the line up of a MacDonalds. No card... just, "here." My brother did his best impersonation of EYORE on my voicemail, and chose to repeatedly comment on how my husband was laid off recently. My partner, who is a delightful person, who genuinely tries at these things and knows what a touchy subject each trip around the sun is for me, was actually really sweet. He gave me an incredibly thoughtful gift that I love.

Wanna know what it is?

It's a t-shirt with a picture of the middle child from The Simpsons, and it says quite simply beneath it: "I am Lisa Simpson."

This simple phrase sums up how I feel on a day to day basis. In fact, change the rampant alcoholism for smoking in Homer, and you've pretty much got my family down-pat. For while there, I suspected that Conan O'Brien and the others were sercretly filming childhood in some creepy direct- psychological-observation-to-cartoon conspiracy. The similarities are EERIE.

Anyway, I had some people over on the weekend, and with the exception of one guest that I insisted on seeing so badly that I bought her a bus ticket, I wasn't really feelin' the love. Have you ever hosted a party only to realize that absolutely none of your guests has asked you how you are doing, or inquired about your life in any meaningful way? I feel like I spent the night babysitting introverts who couldn't figure out how to play duck-duck-goose while all the cool kids went in the kitchen to drink. "Duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck... you know Jimmy, you need to actually say 'goose' at some point or the other toddlers won't have any fun."

The next day, I went to a petting zoo with my partner, and I could feel myself getting antsy... I was a bit hungover and feeling VERY thin-skinned about things... little things that don't normally get on my nerves were lighting fire to every last one of them. And when we pulled in to the farm, I saw lots of families carrying grocery bags of lettuce, celery and apples to feed the animals. I looked around the car. No veggies. I got out of the car. I looked around the farm. No veggies... I walked over to a goat and heard a daddy ask his little girl, "Do you want to feed a carrot to the pony?"

And that's when I started to cry...

Not only did my daddy not have anything for me to feed the pony, he didn't even call me this year. And my partner, wonderful as he is, had dropped the veggie ball on this one. I could tell that HE could tell that I was upset, and he immediately went into damage control...

So I made a joke. "Hey, are you kidding? These are the chubbiest bunch of geese I've ever seen. It's not that they won't fly away, it's more like they CAN'T!" Ba-dum-bum- CHING! Hey don't worry about ME... I'll make a joke so I don't have to worry about YOU being made to feel uncomfortable that I'm upset.

That's what I've done my whole friggin' life. Oh, don't worry that you forgot whatever incredibly important and special to me thing, family! My birthday, my graduation, that time at camp when everyone's families jumped out from behind the curtain to surprise us and you didn't even bother to show up. Don't worry about it! We can't have you feeling guilty or sad just because your little girl is down in the dumps. Besides, she'll get over it.

Wow, I'm a downer, aren't I?

Good.

I don't have to make you laugh all the time.

You Take The Low Road And I'll Take The High Road

2010-05-14T17:17:00.001-07:00

Sometimes taking the high road is very unfulfilling. Like, someone insults you and you have the world's greatest zinger at the ready, but you hold off to let the other person save face and address them in private. It takes calm, cool, collectedness. It means being unflapable and trusting that other people can see their idiocy without you having to point it out.

Unfortunately, I just don't have that high of an opinion of other people. Too many "other people" are idiots. Half of the population of the world, by definition, is below average - and I don't like those odds.

Psychologically speaking though, we're ALL idiots. We are terrible at accurately recalling what we have just seen or heard, emotions cloud our judgement, and apparently we spend more time shopping for key chains than we do for car insurance. Our eyes are easily fooled by optical illusions, we can't inhibit our responses... hell most of us can't even remember where we put our cars keys (behind the orange juice?)

I guess that's why I'm simultaneously understanding and annoyed beyond all bullshit when one of my fellow human beings (or ME) does something that betrays our all-too-human idiot-ness. Recently, I started taking a class for people who wanted to try their hands at standing before an audience of people and attempting to make them laugh. It's obvious from day one that the instructor couldn't organize their way out of a wet paper bag. Classes start late and finish early. There is always some excuse. They have to perform at another show. The rest of the students aren't here yet. In fact, InstructorB does very little instructing at all, preferring instead to have us talk our ideas into a small camera and give us "notes" along the way. So less than 6 hours before our last class, InstructorB emails us all to ask if we want to go on a $field $trip and have class at different bar/comedy club than the one we paid to have our classes at.

Uh-oh.

They say that majority will rule and since everyone else is agreeing, I reluctantly go along with it, despite the club being a much farther trip for me, and not really wanting to stay out late, since I have work responsibilities in the AM. Then after closing down my computer and heading out, InstructorB emails the group again to say that the commedy place we were supposed to meet at doesn't open until half way through our class time so we'll meet at another bar.

Let me get this straight. You're taking a bunch of students who paid Bar 1 for classes to TWO OTHER BARS for their class? Uhm... does the management know that you're taking a sizeable group of customers to what is essentially a competetor for the class you are supposed to be doing there? Uh, I'm a therapist, so I'm going to ask a very cliche question: How do they FEEL about that?

Oh, but wait. It gets better. Of course, a bunch of people were late, because they didn't get the 11th hour emails and went to Bar1. But then InstructorB can't REMEMBER if they have downloaded their other class's videos of their camera, so they can't record our bits and give feedback. Cut to Classmate6 trying to film us with an iPhone in a noisy bar with honkey-tonk playing over the speakers and using a table candle for a spotlight. Half way through this "class" we have to leave to make sure we get seats at the other comedy club/bar. The performances were meh, and the MC was so mean to almost be Yuk-Yuk's worthy. I realize it is getting late and decide to head out between sets. Of course, I get picked on by the MC, but I expected that. What I didn't expect was for the InstructorB that I am paying good money to learn something from would insult me in front of the entire crowd. "Where are you going?... Aw, you guys SUCK!"

Of course, InstructorB denies this particular verbal characterization of the events... and I DID have two glasses of wine over the 4 hours I was seated in a bar that evening. I don't know how many double whiskey's they had.

This person has left a class I paid for half an hour early so that they could go work in another show. They've changed the class schedule so that we'd finish on the same day as another class despite people having booked off certain nights at work. And more than halfway into the course, can still not get their head out of their own genitals long enough to tell us when the performance night is... or where. They are starting to rival StoopidClassmate.

JournalistHusband keeps telling me that organization is not the strongsuit of the average comic. That there are huge problems with publicity in particular. He can't understand why they complain about not getting any publicity and why no one comes to their shows! After all, they did send out an email blast on $facebook 3 hours before the show started! Shouldn't everyone have dropped what they were doing, left their dinners half-eaten, their babies without sitters, and their coitus interrupted to run across town to sit in a dank hall with pissy, unwashed waitstaff to listen to them tell the 108th variation on why men and women are SO different (back me up ladies!) to the same crowd of mutually masturbating other comics? There's a real Peter Pander syndrome thing going on here... I'm not convinced that if you can make an audience (populated largely by other am-comics) laugh at one of these things that you can make an actual audience laugh. And why the hell are MCs so often SO mean?

Don't get me wrong. I really have no idea if I could even make a bunch of really nice drunk people laugh. It's not so much a judgement as plain old scientific bewilderment. I want to know why...

Also

2010-05-14T10:07:00.001-07:00

I dreamed that I was testing a kid who sneezed directly into my face at close range. So I hand-sanitized his face.

Comedy Ain't No Joke

2010-05-14T10:00:00.000-07:00

I've been taking a comedy class and last night our "teacher" had us go to see a show (great way to not actually teach for the money your class is paying you). But I had to leave before the show was over. I knew I would get reverse-heckled for getting up to go, so I waited for a break between comics and went for the door. At this point, the MC totally started digging at me, which hey, I expected. But then, when I was about to leave, the stand-up comic teacher of my "class" yells out to everyone, "You suck! You're stupid! Where are you going?"

Uh, I'm going home to bed so I can get up in the morning and go to my big-girl job.

Douche.

Urge To Kill... Rising...

2010-05-12T13:29:00.000-07:00

Today sucks.

Basically, all I had to do was go get my eyes checked and go to the U to get my advising worksheet signed. Not too difficult, huh?

Except for the fact that I must have driven under a ladder to avoid a black cat and accidentally crashed into a mirror warehouse, knocking over a salt silo, in a previous life. Because the luck is something I do not have.

I left with plenty of time... but I took transit. And that was a good clue that my day was going to suck right off the top, cause really, it demeans us all. Got on the bus... oh great, no juice in the ipod, so that means I get to listen to the winners of the city's "Definitely Not Our Best And Brightest" Contest listen to Justin Bieber at 90 decibels and have domestic disputes on their cellphones all the way downtown. Awesome! My pen broke, leaving me unable to finish the crossword ("way out" is an "exit" you witless baby-boomer across the row, not "cool.") Apparently B vitamins make me nauseated if I don't take them with food -- add the gentle and graceful lull of the city bus lurching like a horny jackrabbit every 15 seconds, and you have one very pukey Psyche. So I get downtown, find a place to eat and try to order something somewhat healthy. I get a quinoa salad (a VERY expensive quinoa salad) and some quiche, only to discover that the salad is full of parsley. Seriously? People actually eat that shit? [One time my brother was told by his girlfriend's father that if he finished his entire plate of food he would pay for anything on the menu, so Brother ordered the most expensive steak in the house, and an hour later finished it in great pain. When the cheque came, father of the girlfriend said he wouldn't pay because Brother didn't eat the parsley garnish... so, Brother got the plate back, ate it, and then barfed in father of the girlfriend's trousers.... it was awesome.] So I paid about 10 bucks for a quiche... dammit. Then I head off to the Optomitrists, only to discover, I've gone to the wrong mini mall. I'm now going to have to get back on transit and be late. As it is, I got there only 3 minutes behind schedule... but only after sharing a bus with 20 screaming teenagers here on some sort of cultural dumbass exchange. I seriously pitty the country who got our dumbasses, btw... And take solice in the idea that somewhere in Eastern Europe, there is a stressed out grad student dealing with Canadian teens screaming nonesense about Kraft Dinner and beavers in her ears. Now the eye appointment is done and I have precisely enough time to get to the U to meet Dr. Supervisor who just needs to sign my advising worksheet. That's all.

I get there, I rush over to the office...

I sit down, get out my paperwork...

I wait patiently...

I get bored and decide to check my email...

Oh, there's an email from Dr. Supervisor...

Oh, they just realized that they told me to meet them at the U when really they were going to be in their home office. But that's okay, because I can CALL them. Really? I can CALL? Well that's just fucking great because I need your SIGNITURE, and the last time I checked it was impossible to send your John Hancock through 25 kilometres of fibre optic cables!!!

Ok, Psyche? Maybe you're overreacting? It's not that big a deal? No... I suppose not. It's just the sooner I get this signiture, the sooner I get in line to register for courses which fill up very very fast. And for once, just once in my life, I would like to get the decent course, with the prof that everyone likes, instead of the demonic succubus masquerading as a purveyor of higher education. It's complicated... I'm trying to get into a course with very limited enrollment, and I just figure... hey... it's not gonna happen, not because of anything I did, but just becuase the path of life is mine field of dogdo.

Gonna go meet a fellow slave to other people's idiocy now for an herbal tea or something. Bitchiness loves company...

Pinching Out A Loaf

2010-05-01T12:46:00.000-07:00

I knew that title would get you.

Look, I like Meat Loaf. A LOT. Okay? You're just going to have to get used to it. Meat Loaf helps me cope with life's little annoyances and injustices. And it reminds me of what was great about being a teenager, which wasn't much if I remember correctly.

I dreamed about my teen years last night and had one of those hypnogogic wakings in which I actually decided to pinch myself to see if I was still dreaming (I wasn't) -- and there you go folks, We have a title!

As you know, I've been doing a lot of driving back and forth to another city these days to do giftedness assessments with grades 4 and 5. I'm averaging 1.5 hours commute in the morning and about 2 hours on the way home. While cars have many advantages over public transit, one advantage they do NOT have is being able to read while travelling. My sign language has got better due to the abundant numbers of douche-drivers I encounter on the road. But other than that, I'm falling behind in all manner of reading, both school and pleasure... and email related. As a result, I did not know that there is a fun party to go to tonight. But that's okay, because I also didn't get the email from Dr. Supervisor telling me that I need to do another rewrite on a proposal EVEN THOUGH THEY'VE PUT THE MARKS IN ALREADY because they want me to have the "learning experience of the process." Please note that no one else in the class is being directly supervised by this prof, hence, I am the only person who is engaging in this learning process by staying home from a fun party on her Saturday night to rewite a paper for the umpteenth time. I feel like a dog that when all the other dogs are out on a beautiful day chasing birds, cars, and cats, is stuck at home practising the violin. It's not fair! Arf! Arf! Howl!

Umpteenth... huh huh huh... that's a funny word.

Anyway, it kind of feels like being a teenager (the not so awesome part) when I had to stay home and work on something boring when all of my other friends who didn't live in ultra fundamentalist christian wannabe households were out partying, experimenting with catnip and being disappointed by the sexual prowresses of teenage boys. But I digress... like in my teen years, Meat Loaf is making it all better.

And now that I have a car at my disposal, I realize that I can make my very own Meat Loaf Mixed Tape and listen to Paradise by the Dashboard Light by the dashboard light. And I will... as a way of procrastinating and not doing my assignment until it is too late for me to get a decent night's sleep and I've already missed the party anyway! Teen angst rumination -- here I come!

Come to think of it, the last time I had a car, I was in highschool. I did love and listen to Meat Loaf with my barely 17 year old boyfriend, although I was far to modest to be barely dressed.

Oh! Oh! Another thing I have to tell you about is that while I was driving to work the other day, I saw, and I'm crapping you negative on this, a liscence plate number that read: 911 KKK. I'm not even making this up. It was a super old plate, all beat up and clearly from the days that predate vanity plates and vanity plate censorship. OMG, I tailed the truck for a while, but didn't have time to follow and find out WHO owns such an unfortunate auto-moniker! But I wish I could have. I mean, really? This person... there can only be 3 possible scenerios:

1. They are too elderly/sheltered/out of touch/stupid (not that elderly people are stupid) to realize the horrorhilarity of their liscence
2. They DO realize the connotation of their liscence and LIKE it for some reason -- which is really the most horrifying possibility... or
3. They DO realize the significance of such a plate and are just too tired or don't care enough about the visiting Americans with "God, Guns, and Glory" bumperstickers that pelt them with trash from White Castle (if they're LUCKY) enough to stand in line at the DMV to change it.

Wait. There is a 4th possiblity... that the DMV won't let them change it. That they've visited the endless liscencing line up on several ocaissions with their tail-pipe between their legs, and practically BEGGED some Patti and Selma look-alikes to please let them trade it in for a vanity plate that reads "USA OK" or "NOTAH8ER" or even the Canadian classic "SRRY."

Oh well. That's my time. I'll be enjoying crazy piano licks and multiple references to fenderstrats and car engines for a few hours now. Have a good night folks!

Creating Insecurity in Health Research

2010-04-15T17:42:00.000-07:00

Sigh...

Did NOT get funding for next year.

Feeling pretty gosh darned dejected, and the massive head cold I picked up from a kid this week is not helping me bounce back. If I hadn't already slept all day, I'd just go back to bed. Ah, wtf, I'll go back to bed anyway! My eyes feel like two piss holes in the snow.

I just think that they should stop calling them scholarships and just refer to them as a lottery. The reason I got turned down is because, "the candidate has changed field of studies at least twice, which raises th econcern that this candidate does not have th eperseverance to complete a PhD and move forward towards an academic career." They also claimed that my referee said that I don't "criticallly evaluate [my] own research plans and proposals." Interestingly, my referee's letter states explicity that I DO think critically in the evaluation of my research plans and proposals! So yeah, my reader #2 missed the point that finishing two degrees in the SAME discipline and then switching disciplines because I needed to recover from an ED means that I am MORE likely to persevere and finish something. Add two more fucking degrees to that, now in psychology, and for fuck's sake!!!

I was warned that these "competitions" are very much like lotteries before I applied. That they will look for any "excuse" to disqualify you. But I didn't think it included what appears to be deliberately misreading what an applicant wrote. I had that application checked by two supervisors, the application clinic, and the fucking dean. They said it was air-tight!

So yeah, I guess I'm bitter right now. I know it will blow over and I'll cope and deal. I just really did not want to have to deal with a TAship next year. I didn't want to have to work my ass off the Org. I feel like I work at the MacDonalds of counselling centres sometimes. Well, minus the scholarship opportunities, clearly. I made way more money when I worked as a booze jockey... and I was allowed to drink much more at work for that matter. And Jeebus, considering the two TAships I've had so far... I'm primed to expect some kind of hollocaust denier who frequently mistakes their cock for blackboard chalk.

I will call him Professor Chalky-Dink.

See, Psyche? You're feeling better already!

You know, I'm just so sick of worrying about money. I just got a big chunk of $$$ from my supervisor for work I'm supposed to do next semester and I was going to use it to go to a conference in Zambia. But now I feel like I should save it for the slim-pickings of PhD1. Sigh...

You know, one of the reasons I left the theatre was because of never knowing if I would have enough money... But I seem to have changed it for a career where the audition process is just as dubious but instead of preparing a monologue, I spend 40 hours putting my heart and soul into a research proposal. It's just that now, instead of not getting the role because I'm 10 lbs heavier than a twig insect, I don't get the scholarship because some egghead with a god complex can't slow down enough to read the difference between "does" and "does not."

So yeah, I guess this week's lesson in grad skule is that life is not fair. And that really honks. But I'll deal. And we'll just have to see what happens. There's always another surprise around the corner. No one knows what tomorrow will bring. Platitude platitude platitude.

Driving the Bell Curve

2010-04-14T14:58:00.000-07:00

So I’m now working on a spring contract for a board of education about an hour and a half drive away from home. And before I start going on and on about how much fun it is to high achieving kids for giftedness, let me just tell you that having access to a car frickin’ rocks! This is seriously total and complete awesomeness the likes of which I have not known since I was 18 and my brother and I shared a car in my last year of highschool. Yeah, we had OACs back then...

It’s like you can drive around a really large briefcase and clothes closet. I’m staying with my parents for a few days, because they are MUCH closer to the schools I’m visiting... and I don’t even mind the excessive intrusiveness and house full of clutter that would rival any OC type on the show Horders. I have a CAR. I have hundreds of pounds of steel surrounding me and protecting me from having to deal with the cesspool that is commuting. With the bottom feeders that are my fellow commuters! I don’t even get riled up when someone cuts me off, tailgates, or decides that stoplights are a modern convienience they can do without. As a pedestrian, I get sidewalk of the extreme that will eventually see me living out my final days in a cold, dark cell. But as a MOTORIST! Well, you could pretty much do a shit on “my” hood and I’d bronze it and call it a hood ornament.

Sigh... it’s my father-in-law’s car... and he’s a veteran, with one of those veteran liscence plates. So yeah, I’ve had about 4 people so far stop me as I get out of the car to ask me where I saw action. This is understandable, because I do not look the army type. But I also look considerably younger than I am. At times it is not understandable, when said stoopid lady from a few posts ago asks me the same question. “Seriously, Stoopid Lady? But... you KNOW me. You know I was a PERFORMER before I went back to school. You know my whole sordid life story. And you know that I FREAKIN BORROWED THIS CAR!!!” So yeah, I told her I was in Nam, and please don’t tell anyone else, because I’m really older than I’ve been telling everyone. Sheesh. Her IQ is so low it could walk under a snake with its high hat on.

But I digress in ways that only Psyche can digress. I want to tell you about the delightful gifted children! Now, look, I pride myself on giving a very standardized but “human” WISC-IV. And I am completely flabbergasted by some of the incredible responses I get. Now, I can’t actually tell you any of the questions because putting them out on the Internet would give little Jeezurs like the one I tested today an unfair advantage. This kid, who was NINE btw, told me that he knew what we were doing. I said, oh? What? He says, “this is a memory subtest and I suspect that you are testing my working memory and not my long-term memory.” He had been online “practising” at the behest of his helicopter parents. Another kid, who was doing a test that measures their ability to use logic to find patterns in a series of pictures, got to the final item and when I turned the page to reveal the last (and most difficult) puzzle, he said, and I quote, “JEEBUS, Psyche! This is reDONKulous!”

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had my share of shy, and slow to warm up kids. I don’t know if it’s because I am some sort of super-rapport machine, or if kids today are just more outspoken than when I was being tested, but Jeebus, they are a lot more outspoken that I remember being.

Having said all that... I’m loving giftedness testing (except when you get some kid whose parents you suspect of bribing the learning resource teacher). They are so bright, articulate, and for the most part beginning to bloom with some self-confidence. They seem so happy to be in a situation where someone is talking to them like an equal instead of talking down to them. And I’m happy to do so. I DO remember what it was like, after all.

I’m rooting for all of them. Really hoping that they will meet teachers who realize that just because they may be “gifted,” that doesn’t mean that they “will be just fine” if left to their own devices. They need guidance, they need help to build and grow their skills, but also their personalities, their citizenship, their mental health. I pray for excellent teachers. These kids need and deserve as much special attention as those who are on the other side of the bell curve.

Speaking of bell-curve... one of the girls I tested this week was a fellow Triple 9er. I desperately wanted to tell her! This information will probably never actually get to her (unless she tries out for Mensa or the actual Triple 9 society – bastions of superior intellect and poor social skills) and that’s probably good. I suspect her EQ of being far too high to feel at home in either of those clubs. I’ve noted her name. I hope I run into her again someday. Bless her heart. Bless all their hearts. Geez, I’m starting to wonder if I should leave the clinical field to advocate for the gifted?

I was identified as gifted when I was in grade 5. I went to a small school with less than about 80 kids in K – 8. There were only 7 kids in my cohort. There was this weird rivalry between myself and a guy in my grade so each year, instead of giving an award to the top student, we always got “top girl” and “top boy.” It pissed me off more than you can know. I mean, surely they were just being nice to him, right? HAH! In retrospect, this fellow definitely skooled me in reading and verbal, and I kicked ass in anything to do with numbers or visual-spatial problems. Exact opposite of what you’d expect considering our genders. I’m going to see him in a couple of weeks at my grade 8 reunion. We both went into the gifted program in grade 6, and I got to leave my childhood “bully” behind me (cause she was nominated for gifted but didn’t make it!!!) WIN! Rot in hell enormous BITCH who cut my hair off while I was asleep at a birthday sleepover party! Whoooooot! I revel in my relative superiority! I have no idea what’s become of you, but can only think of you as my pint-sized tormentor and the girl who thought it was a cool insult to call me “dickless.” What can I say? You were technically right.

I, ladies and gentlemen, am a dickless woman. Well... let’s be honest. I DO have a dick. It’s just that my husband has it most of the time...

In other news... I’ve just emailed off my final take home exam for the year, and I’ve decided that if my partner for my other course’s paper (Ms. Stoopid) doesn’t get her act together, that I’m just emailing the prof and saying I’m done. So really, I’ve only got my thesis and this teachers’ guide to work on now. That and work. Summer is coming. Relaxing time is almost here!

More news to surely come soon. Stay tuned!

Ack!

2010-04-08T12:58:00.000-07:00

Really? Remaking Nightmare on Elm Street? Is that necessary? Could they at least add some Freudian "Interpretation of Dreams" stuff into it?

Sigh... kids these days.

Have You Ever?

2010-03-26T10:21:00.000-07:00

I wonder sometimes if my admission into this program is really all that much of an acheivement. Sometimes when I consider the adaptive skills of some of the people I see around me, I loose faith that the process by which we were admitted had anything to do with intelligence, acheivement, likelyhood of success, or indeed basic hygeine.

There is a "person I know" who doesn't seem to believe in showering. So much to the point that I am starting to suspect that they are the Wicked Witch of the West in disguise. They always smell BAD... Bad like the B.O. of a week old corpse bad. With just a hint of some sickningly sweetish musky perfume. OMG, have they been Febreezing themselves instead of washing? How can I get a skin swab without them noticing? I have to know...

And there is another person who so seriously gives the impression of an IQ so low that they'd have to stand on a chair to raise it. I'm not just talking about being slow... I'm not talking about the silly mistakes we all make because we are nervous, or tired, or HUMAN. It's not just that they aren't the "sharpest knife in the drawer." It's more that they are an EGG in the KNIVE DRAWER. And you open up the knife drawer, looking for a knife and you're like, OMG, who put this egg in the knife drawer. And you have to call your mom and your friends because you just need to tell someone about how absurd their stupidity is.

This person has:

asked me if a banana peel is bio-degradable
got into an elevator and waited a full 3 minutes before pressing the button because they hadn't noticed it wasn't moving yet
inquired if there was meat in the peperoni pizza
freaked out about the possibility of sushi style "dragon rolls" being made of real dragon
wanted to know what "closed captioning" was (Their excuse? "I don't watch a lot of TV." Me: "Yeah, but you are aware of an invention called TV, right? And that on this invention called TV that they have things called shows? And you are aware that there is a population of deaf people in society, right?)

I should also mention that upon doing any of these or other borderline brain-injury induced behaviour, that this individual will say something like, "Hee hee hee! I'm SO STUPID!" Then giggle obliviously that they are making themselves sound even more stupid with every second.

How did this person get into a highly competetive program in clinical psychology? How do they manage to STAY in a highly competetive program in clinical psychology? For that matter, how do they manage not to fall out of windows without child locks on them? Or not choke on their tongue in their sleep? Or not mistake their car's exhaust pipe for the straw in their Diet Coke?

OMG... and why do I always seem to draw these people as project partners, office mates, or accept rides home from them? Okay, clearly that's ME being stupid. No matter what the cold Canadian lousy SMarch weather brings, I wouldn't ride with a drunk driver, so I shouldn't ride with a clearly stupid-person driver either, right? Imagine the PSA for that one:

The pirate on the pack of zig-zags takes off his bandana and replaces it with a mortorboard and says: "Don't do it please! I'm begging you. YOU are stupid. WAAAAAAY too stupid!" Followed by a shot of the same confused/dazed look on the stupid person's face as was seen on the blitzed teenager.

Ahhhhh.... so much less angry now. Thank you, dear reader.
Psyche.

Update

2010-03-22T13:20:00.000-07:00

I suppose there is not much funny going on. I've got one major presentation tomorrow, then two tiny ones, a rather large assignment, a 10 page paper (grant proposal), and a take home exam to go. Then classes are officially over. Then all I have to do is collect my data, run my analyses, write my thesis and write a teachers' guide for a school product -- THEN I'm done for the summer.

I was not selected to win a rather large scholarship for next year. A bit disappointed about that. But I'm still up for another rather large scholarship so keep your fingers crossed. I start a spring contract at a school board next week.

I guess things are coming down to the wire and getting a bit hairy.

I keep shaving though... preventative measure.

It's my sincere hope that when all this pressure starts to ease off that I will return to something resembling sanity. Wish me luck.

Oh, I also have a bunch of practicum interviews this week and next. Oy.

Like I said, not much funny. Just an update.

Psyche

They Don't Prepare You For This

2010-03-15T13:39:00.000-07:00

My left hand tingles all the time now. I've had two hospital visits, one day, during which the staff inserted needles into my body and sent electric charges down them. I've seen a physiotherapist who can only tell me to "watch my posture" in various non-specific ways, the chiropractor, and of course I go on and on to my therpist. My nose runs almost constantly and my poop is green. And I'm serious, it's not even St. Patrick's day and my bowels are clearly longing for the Emrald Isle. I'm jittery, I have no sex drive.

All anyone can tell me is, "Well, you are a grad student. Try to watch your posture."

Seriously? WTF? My ocaisionally slumping after 9 hours at laptop is causing me to shit shamrock shakes? Why oh why is ANYONE under the illusion that medicine has anything to offer the average individual?

So I'm wadding a bunch of Kleenex up and stuffing it in my schnoz, putting on a wrist brace, and working near the bathroom. Because I seriously do not have the time for this.

Besides, I'm feeling all little and mopey and abandoned sitting here looking out the window and the glorious sun, feeling like the little dog who has to stay in and practice the violin while the other dogs chase squirrels. I am open to suggestions for gratuitous self-care and selfish self-love.

Fucking ides of March.

This Is How Tired I Am

2010-03-10T12:38:00.000-08:00

This morning, I fell asleep duirng my MRI.

2010-03-10T12:37:00.000-08:00

Sunday March 7th, 2010

The Prodigal One

I’ve just returned from a week long trip to another province – where the hats are tall and the beef is prevalent. I went as a speaking to do presentations for the Org. Thinking it would be fun and well-paid, I even took the week off of school so that I could stay for the full week, speaking to groups of students, parents, and community mental health professionals about the Org and online safety. It was indeed, Online Safety Week.

I worked my ass off. I actually had to ask for a cushion on the plane ride home because I had worn off so much of my ass as to make sitting painful. Actually, that may have been due to the fact that I stood in high heels for most of the week and my butt muscles were screaming in protest. But try to put that aside. The point is, the term “working holiday” is utter bullshit. Even if you have a light official schedule, you still have to be ON all the time. You are expected to have lunches and dinners with people from the regional office, or contacts you are supposed to schmooze. (Seriously?? I’m a counsellor! I have to schmooze? WTF?) For a counsellor, this is dreaded stuff. We already spend all of our professional time listening to clients talk about their problems, now all the people we meet KNOW that we are a counsellor and corner us, admitting with teenage sincerity that they “don’t know why” but they “feel like they can trust” us and just “need to open up to someone.” In the course of a week, I had the ED of a large company tell me in detail about their childhood abuse, a computer specialist discuss at length how they were traumatized by images of illegal child images, a media specialist disclosed her many pregnancy scares and drunk driving, and an employee from a rather large airline disclose the multiple suicides in their family. I was surprised that only one employee from the ORG asked me for advice on a parenting situation (they were worried that referring their emotionally disturbed child to therapy would make the child think that something was wrong with them!) because usually I get asked a ton about this. Oh, and did I mention that absolutely none of these people were actually participants in any of the talks or presentations I gave? These were just people I met professionally – other professionals working for the Online Safety Week.

Naturally, by the end of the week, overworked, having let my schoolwork slip, and quickly slipping into an Alberta Beef coma, I wanted nothing more than to pass out on a plane (thank you lorazepam!) and wake up back home. But no... a lady I met during one of the presentations was on my plane and wanted to chat. I pled sedation and kept her well-meaning, over the top, and loud voiced self a few rows behind me.

Honk-shu.

Pills, Chills, And Bellyaches

2010-02-06T16:47:00.000-08:00

Hello Readers.

I knew that grad school was going to be hard work. I knew I was going to come up against passive-aggressive personalities, and I knew that it was going to place hereto unforseen demands on my schedule. But I did not bank on it being this socially isolating or triggering the fuck out of me.

It's no secret that I've struggled with my own mental health issues. Anxiety progressed from depression to eating disorder and back to depression in my past. I've been in therapy for most of the past eight or nine years (with a couple short sabaticals) and figured that I had most of my shit figured out. I didn't understand that some of what I called "worked out" might really just be a purely intellectual understanding. And if learned anything in my former career, it's that knowing something in your head and knowing something in your body are two very different things. I've likely being using intellectualization as a defense mechanism for some time. Maybe a couple decades.

I have a very heavy theory-based semester where I am learning out 1. cognitive and behavioural assessments of children and adolescents, 2. psychopathology from a developmental-contextual perspective, and 3. theories of psychoanalytic psychotherapy and psychotherapeutic change with children, adolescents, and families. I've always been very big on working through my own personal issues so that I don't bring them into my role as a therapist (as much as possible). But I realize that just studying this stuff so heavily this semester has left me feeling very vulnerable and broken. I am aware of old psychological scars that I thought had healed. Or, perhaps the dressings have been pulled off before they were healed enough to withstand this process. Or, more likely and moderately, perhaps this is just a natural and necessary part of the learning process that is brought on more by my developmental age. I am between six and eight years older than the rest of my cohort, and even older than the people in my lab who are at the end of their PhDs. So it is very possible that I am at a more reflective stage, with my defenses more relaxed, 8.5 years of therapy and self-awareness under my belt. Perhaps it is only logical that I would be feeling triggered by memories. Feeling ripped off that the level of awareness the profession and society in general have now, the help available, the increased success of helping interventions... that all of this was not available to me as a small child -- not available to me as a teen -- and that I had difficulty trying to access help initially as an adult. If I were a client seeking my own help, I would likely point out the differences that exist for children today compared to when I was growing up.

To increase th intensity of this difficulty, I have a loved one, a very young person in my family for whom I am "God Mother," who is stuggling with their own mental health issues in a difficult family situation. On one hand, I feel this intense frustration on their behalf, wanting to support them and force their families to see clearly what I can see now in terms of the benefit of early intervention that targets the entire family system. On the other hand, I feel intense jealously that my own parents are doing a MUCH better job being supports to this child than they were to me. Don't get me wrong, I am glad that they have improved on their own journey. But I do grieve the loss of what was never available to me. And I fear for this child. They are geographically distant from me, and I feel quite powerless to influence or help the family in any concrete way.

All of these things, combined with my lack of a social life these days, are certainly affecting me. I realized about a week and a half ago that I needed to say aloud to my therapist that I am worried that this might be capital D Depression. My therapist is awesome, and the one real stoke of luck that I have had on my own journey to mental health (for reasons too numerous to mention, one important one being that I can afford him). He brought up the idea of medication, and reluctantly I've decided to go that route. It's not a med that I have taken before, but one he claims will have a minimum of disruptive side-effects and be more energizing than relaxing (seeing as I am complaining of always being tired no matter how much I sleep). I didn't want to go on it, mostly because I didn't want to admit that I'm depressed. For someone who works and studies in mental health, I sure do have a double standard! I feel like a failure. I feel weak. I feel like I need a crutch to help me through something that others are doing without the same help. I also worry that I will have withdrawl symptoms when coming off of it, and a few other things in terms of the meds keeping me from doing some things that I want to do in the near future. But I've decided to put my immediate psychological health first and make sure I can complete my semester.

I'm not gonna lie to you, the side effects are bothersome right now. I feel quite nauseated and tired. I also get really keyed up around 5pm and have a bit of trouble sleeping. But I need to remind myself that I would be much gentler and offer more compassion and understanding to ANY client I've ever worked with than I have been offering myself. This double standard has to go.

I'll try to keep you posted on how things are going. I promised I would stop working at the computer 15 minutes ago, and I need to do that. I hope self-care is the way to go, and that I don't need so much of it that I never stop and can't get back to work when I need to.

That's it. If you love me, thanks for loving me. If you care, I appreciate that too. If you were hoping just for humour, give me a few weeks til the meds kick in! :)

The Last Plane Is Out For The Winter...

2009-12-17T15:40:00.000-08:00

Do you remember the scene in The Thing (uh... let's go with the John Carpenter version -- they're both good, but c'mon, Wilfred Brimley!!!) where the final plane leaves and the researchers are left alone for the winter (technically summer in Antarctica) and our heroes are plunged into months of darkness?

Well, that's not how I feel.

HA! Gotcha... bear with me, Dear Reader, we'll get there.

I just finished my semester. I attended my last class on Tuesday and got stood up by my last undergrad during my last office hour right after. Fuckers. I composed this beautiful email to them saying that my TA hours were over for the semester and wishing them all the best of their exams and for a happy season. Sure nuff', 3 hours later, I've got 20 emails from them. I'm crappin you negative! And they were all exactly the same: "I know that the midterm was 2 months ago and you've given me about 80 chances to correct any problems or grade errors, but can you change my midterm grade because one question you marked wrong I actually got right."

Uh, kid? Do you really expect me to take your word for this when your final is only 3 days away and it's obvious that you are only shitting yourself because you just read the chapter on ANOVA this morning and you have no fucking idea what to do? Seriously, I got about 10 emails today asking me how to do a question they got wrong from their first assignment, and about 30 asking what a t table is. What it IS!!! Not WHERE it is but WHAT.... These are students who expect to pass stats in 3 days. Honest to dog, I hope that they shit themselves to death. Seriously to death.

Okay, I don't mean that. But I do hope that Frau Professor DOES. It would make me totally happy if on her way to the exam, when she parked her car, a whole flock of birds shit all over her car, and her... and just kept shitting until she was drenched it bird crap, then panicked, and shit herself until she DIED. Oh, and if the bird crap went in her mouth, all the better.

So the classes are done. A plane leaves.
The TA hours are done. A plane leaves.
I brought my books home.
I cancelled going to some wrap up things that I just couldn't make myself go to because my brain just refused (get up, Psyche... get up, you have to go to your clinic observation... you have to go... -- Nope. Brain shut off... the last plane has left for the season.)
And the planes all spin their propellers, and take off, and fly away into the low, low, burnt amber sun. And as the last plane reaches the horizon, the sun dips bellow and both are gone.

It's not actually the responsibilities that have left as the cold dead winter sets in. Rather, as the longest night approaches, it is my brain that has left. Flown away. Gone for a period of total darkness. It refuses to work. It has gone limp like a non-violent tree-hugging protester. Well, brain, congratulations on your incarceration. I hope you get out before the new semester starts.

And I hope I survive, although I am pretty sure I will. Keep in mind that the entire cast of characters from The Thing was made up of males. I think I'm more like Sigourney Weaver in Alien/Aliens. I survive it, along with the cat. Like I survive every semester, enter a lengthy period of sleep (with cat), after which I waken to find more face-hugging soul-suckers begging to burst out of my chest. When I return to school, I feel like Ripley entering that Alien nursery. The slow dawning realization of the amount of terrifying work I have to do. The feeling that any single one of these projects could burn me into oblivion.

It's interesting, the way The Thing and the Alien movies are similar but different. One is a testement to motherhood in every disgusting, biological, sweet, desperate, how do I choose a carreer or a child?, return to domesticity -- while the other is a bunch of guys sinking deeper into paranoia then destroying themselves and everything they've worked for. Well, I guess both films embrace the descent into parnoia due to a small group of isolated people being beset upon by a horrible alien. Blood and acid figure prominently. So on. So forth.

Are you still reading? Do you want to make a double bill now? Fuck, I do! Watching these two movies together is the exact opposite of doing grad school. And like I said earlier, the last plane is out. I can't do anything other than mindless stupid bullshit and enjoy.

And that's what happened when I left. I was exhausted all day until I boarded the bus and left school behind. I was on the last plane? and it was like falling awake. I felt more like myself than I have all semester.

Tucked into my bed, with my cat. With a girl with a headless doll. Happy to sleep until the next crisis. Until the sun comes up. And hoping I don't find an exploded icy crater full of frozen corpses - although if you've ever been to my university, it's not too far from the mark.

Honk Shu Honk Shu

2009-12-10T17:03:00.000-08:00

Psyche sleep now. Or soon. Psyche sleep soon.
The last assignment was handed in on Tuesday. I'm cancelling tomorrow's office hours because undergrads are liars and don't come to your office hour appointment when they say that they will. And I just have one last little piece of stupidity to hand in tomorrow. I have to give a little 20 minute presentation on how I've developed professionally this semester.
Seriously, Professors... fuck OFF. I'm not a 20 year old whose never had a job before. It's just stoopid busy work, like when you were in grade 1 and on Valentines Day you all had to build a construction paper mailbox to put the valentines IN. Just a waste of 20 minutes so your teacher could write cheques for her utility bills. I don't think that these profs who "co taught" this course planned a single class. They did subtley insult each other's opinions from time to time, which was interesting.
Anyway, I'm obviously grouchy and tired (and hungry?) and not drunk so I'm just sounding off.
It's my blog, I'll do what I want.
I'm just so looking forward to it being OVER for a little while so I can get a little break. I'm just hoping that my proposal does NOT clear ethics right away. I need the break before data collection. I need the time to sit and vegitate. I need to get my brocolli on!!! (Notice how I picked the least falic vegetable possible so as not to mislead you?)
Seriously... I'm sooo tired.
Time for some chocolate Jesus.

The Big Gaping Hole In My Face Has A Big Gaping Hole In It

2009-12-06T08:40:00.000-08:00

I just had "crown lengthening surgery" yesterday. Yeah, my endontist works on a saturday... and is from Transylvania apparently ("hey don't make an appointment for Oct. 31, that's our national holiday and I can't be trusted!" wacka wacka)...
It was weird and I was very nevous going in. It's not that I actually THINK I'll be in any pain or that ANYTHING bad could possibly happen. My brain is just fine with the entire thing. It's my cortisol levels that over react and go through the roof causing my body to tremble and me to cry for no reason. So when Dr. Vlad asked me, "What's the matter?" All I could do was sob and say, "Nothing! You're a very nice nice doctor!" Ungh... this is me after a dose of lorazepam. Whoever I inherited my central nervous system from should rot in hell for this.
Then instead of recuperating and spending the day watching old reruns of monster movies and Road to Avonlea, I spent 8 hours scoring and preparing a WISC/WIAT. Today I will write it up, probably while at work, while I also prepare a powerpoint presentation of my proposed reserach that I forgot I have to do on Monday.
I am really glad that my face doesn't hurt because apparently this kind of procedure can leave a person swollen up for days and in a lot of pain. But I seem to be doing just fine, as long as I keep to soft foods (Fillet Mignon Smoothies?). But I still have a ton of work to do and feel stressed out of my gourd.
Oh well. Nothing I can do.

Help Yourself

2009-11-24T04:46:00.000-08:00

There is a sign outside on of the classrooms here that simply reads: HELP YOURSELF. Now usually, there is a pile of outdated textbooks and journals there. But today there is nothing. Just the sign.

I feel like it is speaking directly to me. Like that road sign in that Steve Martin movie...

Help yourself, Psyche.

Sigh... I'm such a mess. I lost my wallet last night for the second time this year. It's been like I've just been itching to lose it. I take it out of my coat when I use the bathroom so that I can leave my coat in a waiting room or classroom and not worry about the wallet getting stolen. But then I forget to bring the wallet with me out of the bathroom. So far I caught myself and went running back to find my wallet about 3 or 4 times in a week. And yesterday, my luck ran out.

No wallet.

No bankcard.

No ID.

No school ID.

No money.

No husband (he was away at a business event).

And a big presentation in less than half an hour and no way to print out my slides or notes, or the two page hand out I'm supposed to give to the class. So I'm praying for charity. I just don't need this right now.

I'm also fighting a sore throat/cold. I can't get it until Monday though as I have a scheduled assessment in the community to do a cognitive battery (sounds meaner than it is) with a child. I booked mine early so I wouldn't get caught up in trying to schedule around other people needing the tests and camera... so there is NO WAY I am rescheduling this. I don't care if I'm so sick that my arm falls off, I'm doing it!

So no sickies. Pray that someone turns in my wallet today. And hell, just pray for Psyche. She can analyze herself to pieces but she needs to learn to HELP herself.

When You Are This Tired

2009-11-23T11:32:00.000-08:00

I don't think I was this tired and in pain when I was working nights at the org. NOTHING could have prepared me for the sheer mindfucking fatigue I am experiencing right now. And the funny thing is, I don't actually think I am THAT busy.

But so much is happening, and has happend, Dear Reader, since I spoke to you last. Omg, how ARE you? How could I have been so selfish?

I am no longer self-conscious about drinking in the middle of the day. Don't get me wrong, it is a strain on my pocketbook. But red wine and I have becomeREALLY good friends ever since shit started breaking crazy in this hood.

Good news? Sure... After only 3 months of asking incessantly for a key to a GD office, I was given a key. The office is full of 8 year old exams and I think I saw a Phyllis Diller's skeleton cracking jokes when I walked in (HAAA!). But there is a desk and a chalkboard. There's a telephone too, but there is no dial tone. It is in the extreme netherregions of the third floor carry-a-flashlight-or-you'll-be-raped hallway. But it is mine (for a month). So I couldn't be happier.

The other week I told my supervisor that I felt disrespected by the department and cried. She actually apologized and got that key (see above).

I have been passed on to the final round of a rather prestigious scholarship. Then asked to apply to ANOTHER scholarship. It's funny that when the head of the department emailed me with one line, "Psyche, call me immediately," I just assumed that I was either in touble or my advisor had died. Who knew that she thinks I'm a genious? Who knew that the department would actually express pride when someone does something well?

GAWD. I'm tired, and I feel fucked in the head. My therapist says that my intense murderous rage fantasies are entirely normal given my situation.

Oh, goody.

Gotta stop. My whole left arm is tingling. Back to the wrist brace.

Oh, and if you are someone who wears UGGS and can't pick up your fucking feet when you walk... watch your back, motherfucker, because my murderous rage fantasies involve you.

You and people who whistle on the subways.
Bitches.

FUCK! I hate this wrist cast!

2009-11-21T21:50:00.009-08:00

I can't type a bloody thing with it ion!!!!

Hurts

2009-11-21T21:50:00.007-08:00

I Mean, Yes, It Hurst

2009-11-21T21:50:00.005-08:00

I Mean, Yes, It Hurst

2009-11-21T21:50:00.003-08:00

I Mean, Yes, It Hurst

2009-11-21T21:50:00.001-08:00

Yes, It Hurstj

2009-11-21T21:49:00.003-08:00

Yes, It Hurstj

2009-11-21T21:49:00.002-08:00

Yes, It Hurstj

2009-11-21T21:49:00.001-08:00

Yes, It Hurstj

2009-11-21T21:49:00.000-08:00

Back From Craptown

2009-11-21T16:58:00.000-08:00

Fucking... DUDE...

Jesus fucking crap on a cracker I seriously can't believe what school is fucking doing to me. I can't even find the time to bring you up to date. Must do so slowly, like coming up from deep sea diving... Otherwise you'll all have popped blood vessels (if you're lucky).

But seriously... fucking carpal tunnel goddamned motherfucking syndrome with a side of thoracic outlet syndrome, but insurance is all used up and just JESUS ALAH BUDAH you guys!

WWBSD? (What Would Ben Stone Do?)

2009-09-17T20:38:00.000-07:00

I wish I could say that I sprained my ankle doing something extraordinary. At the very least, doing something admirable – like running a half-marathon for charity. I was running along having collected 10,000 dollars for breast cancer research when I saw a little puppy lost in the jumble of pumping legs and sneakered feet. When I reached down to pluck him from the many-laced danger, I stumbled and went over on my ankle, but somehow managed to keep the puppy up out of Harm’s way. I handed the puppy off to a little orphan girl and a nun and then proceeded to continue on to the finish line. And my fundraising efforts made a cure for cancer possible!!!

I wish I could say that.

But I can’t.

What I can TRUTHFULLY say is that I went to see a certain Quentin Terintino Jewish revenge fantasy in the local cinema. Now, I am fastidious about peeing before the movie, but when I’m faced with a film of more than two hours in length, or extensive trailers… I usually have to duck out again at a boring part to take the pressure off. (OMG, I nearly DIED at Titanic! I was full of coffee, beer and watermelon and that thing is full of nothing but rushing water and panicky people. Good thing there were lots of boring parts!)
Terrintino movies are full of things: action, witty dialogue, intese tension-filled awkward pauses, blood, gore and cringe-worth depictions of violence. One thing they are NOT full of is boring bits. And MAN did I have to pee.

So I waited for a story arc to peak and drop off and made a beeline for the bathroom – which was convieniently located on the other side of the building. Seriously, they should install shuttlebus service. Not wanting to miss anything, I ran. I ran fast. And I ran back. Also fast. And I fell. And went over on my ankle. I barely registered the pain due to the overriding embarrassment that happens in these situations. But AFTER the movie, I got up and left the theatre. I took a few steps, every other one with increasing stabby pain shooting through my ankle. I couldn’t get 20 feet.

The next day I went to a walk in (hop in?) clinic and met the world’s most apathetic doctor who basically shrugged and said, “It’s not broken! What do you expect me to do about it?” Not being able to walk, I was hoping for some advice on icing, rest, elevation, and oh, I don’t know… a tensor bandage and some CRUTCHES!? No such luck. He said, as he exited, “go buy a cane a something.”

Thanks Dr. Arsewipe, for essentially accusing me of malingering. Oh, and where the hell do you buy a cane in this neighbourhood?

The pharmacy? Nope.
Medical supply store? Now that would make a ton of sense. But nope.
The dollar store? Bingo!

I hobbled around on this dollar store cane, doing an increasingly accurate Dr. House impersonation, as I realized that the world is really pretty hostile towards the aged and infirm. I couldn’t cross the street in the time allotted by the walk/don’t walk sign. Someone actually SHOVED me to get in front of me while getting on the bus. And don’t get me started on navigating a parking lot. Holy Jeebus! I would have an appointment to get a filling replaced the very next day on the other side of town…

So what’s my point? How does this relate to psychology? Well, I’ll tell you.
First of all, I never realized just WHY people with mobility issues tend to be such raging assholes before. But now I KNOW. It’s because the rest of society has no appreciation for how difficult it is for them to get around. They don’t understand that if the automatic door with the wheelchair guy on it doesn’t open, that you can’t get in to the building you need to be in. They don’t grok that if you bump into them that there is a real risk of falling right over. They don’t get that it would be nice if someone would just offer a seat on the bus instead of you having to make a scene by asking for one.

I used to be one of these unenlightened assholes (actually, I don’t think I really was, but any residual assal traces are now gone) but now I GET IT. And yes, you Sir or Ma’am with the cane, stroller, wheelchair, limp, fussy child – AFTER YOU. And if I find that the automatic door isn’t working, I’m taking out my cellphone and calling maintenance for you right now.

The second point has more to do with my own psychological reaction to having a (temporary) disability. I hated it. I was in total denial. I didn’t want that cane. My husband bought it, he forced me to use it, and he helped me chuck it down the garbage chute when the stupid piece of shit broke in half in front of my first tutorial (moral: don’t buy medical supplies from a dollar store). I didn’t want people to think of me as anything other than completely functioning. I’m uncomfortable with accepting help, despite the fact that it angered me when people could see I was struggling and didn’t offer help. I feared being labeled a faker, a malingerer – “You just want attention, Psyche!” As though wanting and accepting attention is some sort of cardinal sin in our modern culture. Something that successful people attain with ease but that we put down the person who struggles for craving. When the cane broke, I felt uncomfortable. It didn’t do anything to actually help my ankle heal, but it provided this sort of safety and security. People were less likely to bump into me in a crowd. I had this literal and metaphorical crutch for when I was feeling weak, something I could sink back into and BE for a moment when I didn’t want to deal with something difficult. (Wah! My foot hurts! I can’t do this right now, I’m in pain!) I think that we both envy and are fearful of disability. We all want to be given attention and be looked after while being scared out of our minds of NEEDING to depend on others. I mean, let’s face it, societally, we’re not the most dependable bunch on record.

So I hobbled to the bus-stop on my own. And I asked someone to give up their seat for me. And to my surprise I got a pleasant and caring reply. “Are you okay?” “Yeah, I just can’t stand while the bus is moving, blah blah blah…”
Whenever the Dr. Hose inside of me threatens to take over a more significant area of brain space, some humble and quiet citizen proves to me that I don’t need to sink into grinchdom as a permanent personality trait.

And thank goodness for that. Because I would end up sucking as a psychologist if I did. Say what you will about Dr. House. He’s brilliant, he’s a genius. But he’s also a fictitious asshole. And I don’t think any REAL patient would actually put up with him. No, if I have to identify with any fictional TV (anti)hero, it’s going to be Michael Moriarty’s Ben Stone from the original Law and Order. He channeled his fiery rage and disgust and contempt for injustice into the most polite and restrained and EFFECTIVE rejoinders ever uttered.

So excuse ME… SIR. It would be more appropriate, more in keeping with your responsibilities as a CITIZEN to give that seat to that old lady.

Sir.

Tomorrow Tomorrow And Tomorrow Creep From Day To Day At This Petty Pace

2009-09-08T06:44:00.000-07:00

Hey all you Shakespeare lovers! Today is not the first day of school. Tomorrow is. Too bad really cause I was previously all geared up for nothin'.

It's fine because I still have a bit of BTS shopping to do and might as well buy groceries while I'm out. I'll also go to the gym. Why? Because after a week's vacation, it is freakin' creepy quiet around my appartment and I am having trouble tolerating it. So I'm taking some readings with me to the stairmaster. NB. Reading on the stairmaster is a timesaver; highlighting on the stairmaster is an excercise in bright yellow futility.

So yeah, off to see the world as I brace myself for each day turning into the next and trying not to measure out my life in coffee spoons. It's the day before school actually starts and I am already tired. (Didn't sleep well -- rarely do.) I have an 8:30am meeting at Dr. Supervisor's to kick things off. I don't know how bright yellow it will be, but I'm expecting frustration levels to approach stairmaster level 7... so I will be taking a vallium-of-the-mind and hoping to start my year right.

Wish me luck, wish me well. Wish me a fate better than MacBeth's... for I have my own ambition (don't need me no Scottish wife egging me on!) but like him fear to mess with the King. If I find out anyone in my lab was from their mother's womb untimely ripped(!) -- I'm putting a kybosh on the whole deal.

Please note: I am in no way intending to kill "Duncan" while he sleeps. Just being melodramatically apprehensive. Enjoy.

Ways My Department Has Fucked Up Before School Even Starts

2009-09-04T07:35:00.000-07:00

1. Telling me that school starts a day earlier than it really does.

2. Suddenly withdrawing the tuition support they have provided to everyone in my lab for the past countless years.

3. Only giving me half the promised financial support (promoted on their website) because I won an external scholarship. Please note, that when a student wins external funding it brings up THEIR ranking in the University evaluations. So essentially, I am being penalized for increasing their standing.

4. Telling me 6 days before classes start that no one in my lab has an office anymore. Apparently, we can have our office hours at a conference table with no privacy now. Oh, and we can bring our own laptops since we won't have access to a computer anymore. Glad I have a laptop.

5. Refusing to tell me how my funding breakdown works until I get my first paycheck -- and that's 6 days before my RENT is due. So I don't know if I'll have enough money to pay it, or if I can afford groceries until it's too late.

Yeah, not a humourous blog today. My university is run by fucking C students with their heads so far up their asses they can see out their own mouths. Fuckers, seriously.

Psychiatry Vs. Psychology

2009-08-27T05:49:00.001-07:00

Sometimes I really wish I was in med school and specializing in psychiatry. I'm sure it's just as political and just as stupid as this field, but there would be greater access to drugs.

Look, it's no small secret that this profession (and really almost any helping profession) attracts three kinds of people:
1. People who are dealing with mental health issues themselves (either personally or with a loved one) and who are trying to work out their shit -- then work it out -- and go on to be insightful and compassionate practitioners or researchers.
2. People who are dealing with mental health issues themselves (either personally of with a loved one) and who *think* they are trying to work out their shit -- but never really make significant headway -- and go on to traumatize their patients, break ethics repeatedly, do harm, and eventually have their lives come crashing down around them in a litigious comeupance that they ultimately deserve for missing the point of therapy entirely.
3. People who are just a little more than the usual amount of power-happy, looking to restore some childhood malignment to their self-esteem by taking up an "expert position" as a clinician, researcher and/or professor and subsequently torturing their clients, participants and/or students with dickish mindgames the likes of which would make Andy Dick curl up into the fetal position and beg for mercy. But this is really just a subset of #2 and one hopes that they will also come to enjoy their end in the Ironic Fate Division of the Afterlife or Retirement.

So yes, although I'm certain that psychiatry has these basic career categories, and although I have been told by many survivors of medical schools that the competition is much more overt and direct (as opposed to the covert, passive-aggressive weird-o type of competition that is glossed over by Stepfordish harmony in the social sciences), I just think that there might be greater access to benzodiazepines, which would allow me to perhaps cope better (see covert, passive-aggressive weird-o type competition above).

Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay! It's not THAT bad. I guess. It's just so fucking WEIRD sometimes. Like, c'mon, we all KNOW that people only take this kind of job because they were initially attracted to the profession to figure something out about themselves or a loved one. Then some people get their answers and change their lives (or don't) and leave and go on to do normal, sometimes healthy jobs, like remove aesbestos from old buildings or work on oil riggs. But others get hooked because they are hardwired to help other people or get addicted to the Ivory Tower bullshit... but my point is that we are all here because either we ARE suffering, or we HAVE suffered GREATLY. In my profession, the idea is to help the client heal through TALKING. Regardless of what specific theoretical framework you are coming from... you form a partnership with a client and help them through it by utilizing your relationship. I don't care if you're using CBT, SFBT, NT, REBT or AVON -- you're TALKING it through.

But psychiatrists, oh psychiatrists get to (have to?)... (are supposed to?) prescribe psychopharmaceuticals. I prefer to call them DRUGS. And dammit, sometimes I wish I had greater access to them. Not because I want to give them to people, but because sometimes the ridiculous tension of not getting to know my funding situation until a week after classes STARTS makes it a bit difficult to sleep. I imagine that the significant bull-ca-ca that pervades daily life in grad school would be not nearly so irritating if I had a dose of adavan at the ready. I would probably feel like punching people less.

It's just this low-grade tension and irritability caused by underlying tension from PA stupidity and an administration system that predates Moses. I keep asking for my funding breakdown so I can know if I can afford to pay my rent in September, but they haven't invented the zero yet.

It doesn't matter. Tension or no tension. I have exactly 11 days left to enjoy before this starts in earnest again. Maybe I'll visit my doctor and ask for one and only one mother's-little-helper I can keep in a pill box like a pendant on a chain around my neck. A talisman against the onslaught of stupidity I am bound to meet.

Eleven days to go...

Mid-Summer Night's Dream

2009-07-31T07:01:00.000-07:00

Today is the last day of July. Do you KNOW what that means?

It means that tomorrow is the first day of August. And THAT means I have only one month left of summer before I have to go back to classes. I have been doing a remarkably good job of actually relaxing since that root canal. Something about a heavy dose of benzodiazepines that will drain the workaholic vibe out of you... The point is, I've been relaxing, and I've gotten a taste for it. I have also not watched television this month. Not once. So I am actually relaxing as opposed to vegging out, which I think is different.

I've been enjoying my down time in "flow," a concept made accessible by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the Hungarian-born psychology professor. Flow is an enjoyable state of mind wherein the task at hand is suitably matched to one's skillset and abilities and provides meaningful feedback so that the person can become actively and mindfully engaged in what they are doing. This is something that just doesn't happen when passively viewing entertainment. Television and movie watching flow experiences are few and far between (the exception perhaps being trying to stay one step ahead of a really good MYSTERY! on A&E). It happens much more often with games, good conversation, sport, tasks and problem-solving activities. It's the feeling of falling into a groove, when you are doing something and are so engrossed that you suddenly look up and it's 8 hours later and you don't know where the time went.

And I've gotten a taste for it.

I've even felt more like I can fall into flow at work. When I get a good counselling session going and feel totally present, always adjusting my gameplan and strategizing to give my client the best therapy I can. Getting feedback directly from the client in terms of how the session is going for them. Yeah, it feels like the days when I was training and HAD to pay such close attention for fear I'd really screw something up.

And that's the thing. Once you become good at something, the challenge lessens. In order to experience flow, you need the right amount of stress. You need to be challenged enough to keep you on your toes, but not so much that you feel hopeless and give up. If your skills are solid, that's great... but the danger is that you will go on autopilot and not be truly present. It doesn't matter how skilled the therapist is, if they are not present in the therapy exchange, if they are bored, if they are multi-tasking in their mind, the client loses out.

Right now I'm present.

And it feels good and I don't want to lose it. Which is why I started to get a little weird and possessive of my time in the past few days. Suddenly my inbox is filling up with messages from the University. Workshops are being advertized, working groups are planning when they will meet, the mailroom is being reordered for the incoming students, and I'm expected to register. Oh, and a paper that I gave to my supervisor almost 5 weeks ago, which they told me they could turn around in 48 hours, is still sitting on their desk. There are still deadlines counting down in the summer "break." There are things I have to DO.

But I'm enjoying flow too much.

And before you say anything snide, yes, of course I know I can apply my newfound flow prinicples to school work... I just don't want to yet. You see, it's the thing about meaningful feedback. Last year, it was pretty non-existant. In one class I didn't get any feedback until after the semester was over. In another class, the feedback was meaningless because the prof belled grades on such a steep curve... you had no idea what your skills were really like. In another course, my only feedback came in this form:

"Very good paper. A."

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I had to stop writing before I was actually finished that post and now we're a good week in to August and it doesn't have the same oomf as when I wrote it on July 31st. I have a meeting with my supervisor today and don't want to go. It feels like detention somehow, only I go alone and not with a cadre of 1980s teen archetypes. My prof is no evil Mr. Vernon, but just as clueless at times. Not their fault, it 's a generational thing. And this not-quite-a-summer has infected me with a sort of teenish agnst -- a feeling of not-quite-fulfilled-and-i-want-something-but-don't-know-what feeling. So yeah, I don't want to go... I want my breakfast club and I'm not getting it there.

If John Hughes were still alive I'd want him to make a new movie for all of us grown up teens as we ride gen X into our middle age. And I hope he'd remember that some of us are still in school, some of us didn't have a good prom, and some of us had grandmothers who felt us up on our birthdays. But I guess that's what Avenue Q was for.

Time to download a few soundtracks and make one last push for the summer that never was but might still be.

The Root Of The Problem OR Stealing Nerves In The Mines Of Moria

2009-07-15T17:53:00.000-07:00

Today I had my very first root canal. I asked for some of the infected nerve goop that they endontist pulled out to put in my baby book, but he seemed to think I was only asking because I was in a Vallium-induced haze. How wrong he was, how wrong he was.

I have a RATIONAL fear of the dentist. Despite my own dentist being a hug-giving, tiny sweetheart, she is a dirty, dirty LIAR. She filled my first cavity for me when I was in my late 20s, and promised me that I wouldn't feel a thing. Then this wonderful sweetheart of a darling dentist shoved a mining instument into my face and clipped a nerve. Human reflexes dictated that I jump off of the chair and knock over a small tray of flouride. Her sweet Iranian accent broke the tension when she said, "Okay, Psyche... you take a short break and I go get you the Vallium..." We ended up finishing the procedure the next day with additional, extra-strength Vallium.

Naturally, I was out of my mind terrified when she told me that the intense throbbing in my jaw and inability to tolerate heat, cold, sweet, air or even my own saliva on my molar was due to an infected root. Crud. I visited the endonist (who charmingly looked like Carrol Spinney) and he offered me the choice between being awake with no nitrous oxide or being asleep at twice the cost. Since my insurance will only cover the cost of one non-morpheoused tooth, I had to deal. I had to take the pass through the mountains and go with him into the Mines of Moria.

I told him that I as a flight risk and the Spinney look-alike assured me he would give me the max amount of happy pills allowed. I arrived dutifully 45 minutes early and swallowed the blue pill. By the time my procedure began, I was still as nervous as a bag of cats, and he had his hand so far down my throat that he could have put green fuzzy pants on me and called me Oscar. The pills really only kicked in about halfway through, at which point I could have fallen asleep. Then they finished, I went home, and did fall asleep.

The legend goes that the dwarves dug too deep and unleashed an incredible evil... a Balrog that even the orcs and goblins that frequented the deep caves feared. The denist I had previously must have also dug too deeplly to fill my cavity and unleased a terrible evil as well. OR maybe I was the one who dug too deeply because I ate too many raisins and didn't floss well enough. [Side note, no one taught me to floss until I was 28.]

When I awoke, I was slightly dazed and wearing white robes. I can't feel a thing in that tooth. I was given more painkillers, but feel a complete lack of need to use them. So yeah, much less climactic that Return of the King, but there you go.

OMG, don't get me started on Return of the King... but that's another post. Point is, mission accomplished. Well, until I have to go in to get a the crown placed on my tooth. That is, if my tooth will finally accept its destiny and reforge the sword that slew the hand of Sauron 3000 years ago...

What Is Meant By "Anal" OR Vomiting For Revenge

2009-06-30T14:55:00.000-07:00

So, aside from when I was in the throws of a wildly serious ED and not eating enough to actually need to poop, there are basically two times when I have felt like I desperately needed to take a dump and couldn't.
(Wow, Psyche, you silver-tongued devil, you...)

The first was on a weekend road trip with my mom. I spent 72 straight hours with her, mostly alone in a car. We left after work at 8am (yes, AM) and I missed my usual morning BM. This was the most misguided "fun" road trip ever, as was evidenced by my anal sphincter attempting to make diamonds in my rectum for the entire weekend. I didn't go for three days when I was with her, plus about 24 hours before, so about 96 hours total. When I dropped off at my appartment and my mom took over the drivers seat at 7:30am, I watched her pull away from the building, turn the corner and disappear behind an office building.

And then I publicly shit myself.

Okay, I'm kidding, I didn't actually lose control of my bowels. But I did feel things relax down there at an alarming rate. So much so that I ran up the stairs rather than waiting for the morning rush hour elevator, for fear that I would not make it to the toilet on time. Be advised, running up 3 flights of stairs carrying a weekender suitcase, a travel pillow, a purse and trying to fend off a shit cramp is not a well-thought-out scheme. I made it in time, but just barely.

The second time I desperately felt like I needed to go but couldn't was yesterday, my first day back to work after my self-imposed commital to Psyche sanitorium. I am a pretty regular gal, and that day it was just a no-go. It was a little over 55 hours when things losened up very suddenly WHILE I WAS DOING THERAPY WITH A CLIENT on the phone.

Now, I can easily wax psychological about why I can't poop around my mom. I was toilet trained before I was a year old. Too young. A lot of pressure there to do things at mom's command, and as an infant, if one is toilet trained too early, the pleasure centre in the brain can get a little weird around mommy, holding it in, delaying pleasure and all that kind of stupid stuff. If a parent is too controlling, the individual is at risk for either becoming incredibly controlling themselves OR rebelling outrageously and doing the extreme opposite: whatever they feel like whenever they want. As you can tell, I turned out a bit on the anal side, which is why whenever I see my mom my asshole slams shut like there is a herd of Jehova's Witnesses coming up the path.

So what was up with work yesterday and today? And why did I uh, loosen up, around 3pm, just before I took a meal break?

Yes, the org where I work has a slightly Orwellian vibe to it. It is, at times, oppressively parental. Ha, when I first started there, a manager actually commented that I went to the bathroom a "little too much." Uh, you know what? If you never know if your next client is going to be a prank or a two hour suicide call, you go almost every chance you get! I invited this (male) manager to feel free to come into the washroom with me if they wanted to verify if I was peeing OR never mention it again. [He and I actually get along great these days!] Anyway, my every moment at work is clocked... there are codes for almost everything and status reports at the end of the month. Hence my irritation because therapy should not be treated as a call-centre framework. Still... the intense control at the org about things that just don't matter (compared to the issues we discuss with young people - today I had two 45 minute convos with abuse survivors and an hour long psychodynamic session with someone who was sorting out why she let's friends take advantage of her) is very oppressive and I think my brain has crossed wires thinking that holding it in is some small act of rebellion.

When in fact, shitting myself so that I had to go home early would have worked WAY better.

Sigh... unfortunately, I made it on time and without cutting the call short. Sigh... I can see the poster for the support group now, "Excreting Bodily Substances for Revenge and Personal Gain - Public Humilation or Personal Liberation?"

It occurs to me (and has more times than I care to admit) that although I haven't had symptoms for almost 7 years, that I can probably still throw up pretty much on cue and unaided. Sometimes I fantasize about puking on someone I don't like by "accident" you know? Because I must be "sick." Bonus: I would also get to go home.

Clearly I am VERY comfortable with what Jung would call "The Shadow." Very VERY comfortable.

A Post From Convalescence Camp

2009-06-25T13:31:00.000-07:00

Hi Everybody. My name is Psyche and I'm a perfectionist workaholic.

["Hi Psyche!"]

I'm writing to you, dear readers, from a miniature mental institution for one that I have staged in my appartment. I am recovering from bona fide exhaustion. Looks like I am not Wonder Woman after all.

I've been at my job at the org for over 5 years now, most of that full time nights and evenings... I heard a lot of trauma in that time, but it took the end of my first year in grad skule to actually put me over the edge into full-blown burnout/compassion fatigue. Basically, I handed in my last assignment at 11:50 on June 5, after finishing a full time week at my professor's conference. I took a few days of vacay out of province (during which I didn't sleep much for some reason) and then returned immediately to full time + work at the org. Early mornings... 7:45am starts on the phones catching the beginnings of summer prank time with kids-at-home-instead-of-school-needing-help season. Two weeks into this I got a call from a girl who just found out 15 minutes earlier that her mom had breast cancer, had lost her best friend to suicide two months prior AND has had 5 other relatives dies in the past 12 calendar months... oh, did I mention that her father was also a convicted pedophile?

It was the breast cancer that put me over the edge. I started to cry on the phone (thank CHRIST for the mute button) while she told me about discovering her mom's diagnosis. Breast cancer freaks the fuck out of me. EVERY single woman on my mom's side has had breast cancer EXCEPT my mom and I. Aunts, grandmothers, great aunts... great grandmother... ALL OF THEM. I get pissed at my mom for not doing regular checks or wearing sunscreen (she is fair and lots of freckles) and Mummer just tells me that she's "decided" she's "not going to get cancer." Uh, Mummer? I don't think it works that way...

Anyhow... I needed to debrief, maybe even go home after that call. I asked for debriefing but couldn't get it because the supervisor was in supervision. Great. Talking about it with a colleague didn't do the trick. That was it for me. I stared at a computer monitor for the rest of the week, hoping no one would notice I wasn't really working. FUCK! It makes no SENSE to treat a counselling service like a fucking call centre!!! Do you know that I have an actual QUOTA to make with at least the web counselling that I do? Seriously! I am expected to answer a call to counselling on the Internet every 40 minutes. These motherfuckers are an average of 500 words long (sometimes they are 3000 words long!). When I told my journalist husband about this, he plotzed, or would have if he was Jewish. He works for a daily and says that 500 words for print take about 4 hours/half a working day. And, he pointed out, no one he writes for is in danger of committing suicide. Jebus...

I got lost there for a sec, what was my point? Right... I'm burned out. So I'm off this week. And yeah, even though I work for a mental health institution, I don't dare tell them that I am burned out, because they have a track record of acting inappropriately about this stuff. Our old CEO was actually heard saying something close to (sorry, not a direct quote), "So what if the counsellors burn out? We can always hire more counsellors." Nice eh? There was a woman at my workplace that was suffering from post partum depression with a note from her doctor requesting a change from nights to days for a few weeks while she recovered, and management refused to let her counsel period and tried to bully her into quitting. Yeah... I know...

Mental health organizations tend to attract the mentally ill. And yes, I have already thought about what that might say about me.

What was my point in all this?

Right. The point is that I'm taking a week off to recoup. I admit to being a silly dork for not thinking I needed any vacay after hell-year at dipshit campus. Clearly, I neeed a month. But a week is what I'm getting because my GP is on mat leave and the sub doesn't know enough about the hell I've endured at the org to truly get where I am coming from -- although I shouldn't sell her short, I don't know if she would support me in taking more time or not.

But you know... what gets me is how much I just panic when I'm not being perfect. Not being able to handle this... having something inside of me insist on a mental/emotional vito of my workaholic plans sends me into a state of panic. I think that grad school might be really an unhealthy place to be. You're expected to be on call, constantly availalble to professorial whims... doing a FUCKLOAD of work all the time, always expected to be brilliant, insightful, cutting edge... and if you're not... well, you're just an average schmo. Like that is going to get you a high-paying job at the end of this hell.

Okay okay okay... in my mental institution, there is rum... Heyyyyy... the doctor said I needed to take some time for myself and just relax for a bit... so this rum is doctor's orders.

I am patentedly BAD at taking time for myself.

I don't really know what else to say. I'm dreading my meeting with my supervisor to get my course schedule approved for next year. Fuck. Grad skule is supposed to be this mentoring experience and yet, nothing is formalized... there is no template for what you are supposed to do... for example, I have a course entiteled "practical research" that I have done absolutely NOTHING for (that's another post) and suddenly this "A" just appeared on my transcript... because I'm certain my advisor is just too busy to discuss it with me. Seriously... how did I get an A when I did NOTHING???? (And not for lack of trying, like I said, this is another whole post.) Isn't there someone somewhere that I should have to answer to?

Oh, and get this... my therapist (whom I also must conceal I am seeing because of a weird bias in my department... apparently on paper we are pro therpist but in practise it is a mark against you if you see one) says that he has 10 patients from my univerisity to every other patient he has! OMFG!!! Is that not incredible???

Okay, clearly I am too hopped up on rum to go on. Will update again shortly!

As Experienced Sleep Decreases, My Wit, Intelligence and Attractiveness Surely Increase

2009-05-19T16:35:00.001-07:00

Last night I couldn't sleep. Most likely this was because I knew I had to get up at 6 in order to get to my 7:45 am shift at the Org on time. But also, and much more likely due to the fact that I spent the last hour of my shift the day before doing counselling with a homicidal youth.

Yeah... my job entails that I do that sometimes.

Homicidal. As in, with plans and means to torture and kill specific individuals in their community.

It was really interesting and disturbing. I mean, it is pretty unusual for a homicidal youth to seek-help. The fear of judgment alone is enough to keep the young person quiet. And likely there is an abuse history as long as your arm... no real models of typical development, tons of anger that is misdirected at innocents who are perceived as rejecting the young person. Yes, I'm talking the sort of person who discloses that they are considering a massive Columbine-style retribution for perceived wrongs. Anger is meant for the parents? But ends up being directed at others. I have spoken to homicidal youth before, and according to my supervisors handled it quite well. But nothing prepared me for yesterday's counselling session.

Now, I'm not a psychologist (yet). I'm not qualified to make a diagnosis. But from what I can put together, this kid did NOT quite make the criteria for conduct disorder. Despite the behavioural qualifications being met (desire to harm, hisotry of harming others, setting cats on fire, poisoning a younger sibling with antifreeze, detailed plans to torture and kill individuals that had been followed in the middle of the night) --- this "kid" seemed to be missing a key problematic component.

Feeling.

You see, the main reason why we are terrified of psychopaths (an adult diagnosis of characteristics that blossom out of conduct disorder which is an under-18 diagnosis) is that they lack empathy.

"Typical" people, when sensing distress in others, pick up on their corporeal cues. They see distress in another person's face or voice and their little mirror-neurons fire like crazy. They percieve distress and experience EMPATHY -- a vicarious experiencing of that person's distress that manifests itself in physical cues such as quickened pulse, galvanic skin response, rapid breathing, and a mirroring of the other person's corporeal cues.

Empathy. Feeling. They FEEL the other person's distress, and then, they help, or at the very least STOP hurting them.

Psychopaths don't. Conduct disordered kids largely don't as well.

But this kid. Despite claiming not to feel guilt or remorse was writing to a crisis help line type service. They claimed to be scared that they would act on these impulses... were aware that they were really angry at abusive and neglectful parents.

They were seeking HELP.

Uh-huh.

Brutal for me. They were quite expicit that they were an accomplished con-artist. Extohled their own talents of charm and manipulation. I was freaked out. Was I being conned? I don't know. But I suspect that if they were seeking help, that they were feeling SOMETHING. Maybe not empathy exactly... but something. And I wanted to explore that. Because IF this kids was being genuine with me... my god... what a blessing this was. That they WANTED to get support. That there is hope to avoid future suffering for potential victims... but even moreso, to avoid future suffering for them as well.

Was my life just touched by a potential future psychopath on the brink? Did I give them even 1% possible hope for a life free from revenge and anger?

My god, I hope so.

I am so incredibly humbled by this experience. So incredibly tired. And yet, I can only imagine the hell that this child has been through and the intense suffering that is being defended against. If I believed in "God" I would pray. But I don't. So I will just put it out there. We never know when our judgement or lack thereof may be pivotal in someone's life. Yes, I know I am in the business of non-judgementalness. But wow, this was possibly the most humbling experience of my life since the school shooting call.

I'll tell you about that sometime. But for now. It's sleep. I've just finished my first draft of a developmental framework for self-efficacy and help-seeking on a national child helpline. A circle is complete and I must rest before the next one.

N***, wherever you are. Please know that I meant every word. I want you to be okay. Not becuase I don't want you to hurt anyone else. But because I think that YOU are worthy, loveable and deserving of care. I'm sorry you've been let down and I believe that you can get over this an lead a life not ruled by revenge and anger. I want that for you. I hope you want it too.

Deep breaths, okay? Let us both sleep well tonight.

Isn't It Weird?

2009-05-13T15:22:00.000-07:00

I haven't been this tired since I started my own theatre company in high-school, wrote and directed plays, put whole shows together, rented halls, and had a nightly audience. Right now, I would say that I am so tired...

"How tired are you?"

I am so tired that I could throw up into my own mouth and not have enough energy to spit it out.

And now that I've grossed you out, on to the post.

My computer died. I think I mentioned that little gadget is no more, shuffed off this mortal coil and gone to join the choir invisible. The hole she has left in my life, and the rocks that now live in my lower back, are immense. I'm back to using littleboy... my old laptop. My old, 7 1/2 lb plus cord laptop. If I were a mom, I'd be asking myself how on earth I ever pushed this thing out. Do you see? Can you tell how tired I am considering the "natural" birth of a laptop?

What I am trying to get to here is that I've successfully conquered two hurdles put in front of me since losing gadget. A major presentation and a ginormous stats assignment. Hee hee. I like calling them "STATSASS#." Statsass4 is out of the way... I don't know if my explanation of why error terms are different for different F tests in a mixed design ANOVA made any sense, but it's done. What I'm saying is it is DONE and we don't have to discuss it anymore! And I can't anyway, because the explanation was in a file on my stoopid newer old laptop.

I'm coping with the missing data, but moreso, I just miss gadget. She was too beautiful for this world... so light and bright blue... a 6 hour battery in such a small frame. She fit in my PURSE dammit! And now al I have is this lunking, bulky first born dragging me down and sending me to the chiropractor twice a week. I need a gym membership just so my laptop doesn't throw out my back from carrying it in my knapsack.

Sigh...

This isn't my best writing.

Did I mention how tired I was? Oh, right, the vomit joke. Sorry about that.

RIP Little Gadget

2009-05-09T21:17:00.000-07:00

My computer is dead. My poor sweet little acer aspire one is no more. She wouldn't turn on the other day. I used all my powers, then all my nerdly husband's powers, but we couldn't get a heartbeat. Gadget's guts contained many things... including the non-backed up copy of a paper that is due on Tuesday.

Well, it was backed up, but last week's version of it.

Also, all my emails, email addresses, countless files of school work, academic googogs, photos, a proposal... my entire life outside of the bedroom essentially. When it happened, an me facing a deadline (or seven), I panicked. I felt like Dr. McCoy when he and Kirk beamed aboard the Klingon ship to try to save General Kang. There I was, straddling the laptop version of a tiny little Klingon and the best hope for galactic peace in my lifetime... pounding on it's chest. The only thing missing was the globules of pepto-bismol pink blood and Christoper Plummer yelling at me. I kept pounding on it daying, "C'mon dammit, breathe!" But nothing.

"Dammit Jim, I'm a grad student, not a computer engineer."

So I called Nerds On Site. They sent a fifth-level half orc mage with a million experience and two charisma to my appartment. He wasn't pretty to look at but he knew his shit.

Gadget could either be sent to the manufacturer and returned in working order with an 80% chance of having all my files in tact OR we could crack open her still warm corpse and retrieve my data in time to hand in assignments.

"I'll get the sledgehammer."

Sigh... Here's the thing. I DO run backups. But they had been buggy for a couple of weeks and I was too busy to work out the kinks on my desktop. I learned the hard way. MAKE BACKUPS A PRIORITY PEOPLE.

Let's see, so that's $550 for the laptop, + $120 for the awesome 6 hour battery (which totally delivered, btw), another$280 for three hours of the nerd's time = $1050 + tax for me to have a laptop for 7 months.

I know that they won't do anything for me, and I will probably get laughed at, possibly before I hang up the phone. But I still might call acer and yell at them anyway. I need to mourn. But there is no time.

Gadget, you may be dead... but this desktop has essentially mind-melded with you. If I've learned anything from Star Trek is that rebooting the series is always possible. And your consciousness can live on indefinitely in the hard-drive/brain of another computer until Kristy Alley goes to rehab and the genesis project is released.

Say it with me: "KAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHNNNNNN!!!!"

Not Just A River In Egypt

2009-04-26T12:31:00.000-07:00

I TA. I don't know if my theoretical editor who doesn't actually exist would approve of me using TA as a verb. But there it is. I do a lot of TA duties, so in my opinion, I TA. And I TA hard for one really difficult prof.

Professor Happycat.

In these past few months, I have witnessed this prof commit the following offenses. Consider it a kind of professorial rap sheet.

Refer to students in their class as "really good looking"
Suggest that because they are "really good looking" that they shouldn't be trying to "manipulate the disabilities centre" with a bogus diagnosis.
Dispute said "bogus diagnosis" in spite of a written Attending Physician's Statement
Refer to another TA as being a really good example of someone with a high IQ but a really low emotional IQ because they attended a conference to present a paper instead of coming to their class. IN FRONT OF AN ENTIRE LECUTRE HALL.
Lose the entire set of the class' midterms.
Blame this loss on a TA from another course, claiming that this TA must have taken them out of my mail cubby-hole. NB. My cubby couldn't be farther from this person's cubby and I have never even met them in person.
Upon being confronted about lying... denied and denied and denied until it became apparent that there was proof and that students were starting to complain about their behaviour.
Ask a TA to keep their bad behaviour between the two of them.
Throw up their hands and say it doesn't matter because they are resigning anyway.

Do I believe that they will resign?

That's a negatory, little buddy. This cat may not have any claws to speak of, but that was no purr neither. That was a low growl and I know to stay out of the way of a cornered kitty, regarless of their tenure status.

I've learned a little bit about bullying since the "unpleasantness" at the Org. I recognize someone tying to play a subordinate who has caught them with their metaphorical pants down. But this is the thing I just don't get. If you've been caught. If someone comes to you and says, "I have proof, I have 6 witnesses all willing to testify..." WHY oh WHY does the person just keep denying that they did it? And how on EARTH do they not learn from experience???

Seriously. There is a handful of students who heard you refer to another student by first and last name, mention a serious mental health diagnosis, and then say point-blank that they should not be accomodated in spite of a physician's note. And your response is that all the "beautiful people" are "ganging up on you?"

Tip #1, Buddy, seriously. STOP doing the harassing things that you are already accused of doing IF you want people to beleive that you never did them.

DEE-NI-AL. Even my cats know to bat their eyes, slick down their whiskers and look extra-cute when I catch sitting in next to a pile of poo on top of the coffee table. Or run.

The only thing that my naturally psychoanalytic little frontal lobe can come up with is that this prof WANTS to get fired. Who knows? Maybe they have a partner who is pressuring them to stay at a job they really hate? Maybe they can't pay the bills without the Sacajeweahs this gig brings in? But this is one prof who has been reusing the same exam and midterm since 2002 despite the class average consistently falling below 50%. This is not the behaviour of someone who wants to keep their job.

So how do you TA for someone like that?

You keep detailed notes and a sense of humour like a stoned teenager.

You do YOUR work. Which includes reporting inappropriate behaviour. You don't do THEIR work. And you attempt to professionally call them on blatent dumbassedness that will make your life harder if it goes unchecked.

And you insist that another TA that you have never met and whose last name couldn't be further from yours in the alphabetical listing of cubby holes did not root through your cubby and find an envelope with the same professor's name on it and take it without asking.

Oh, and drink. You should probably drink some alcohol...

The Interpretation of Grad Student Dreams

2009-04-18T07:50:00.000-07:00

[Exterior. Morning. Psyche waits with her packpack by the side of the road. It's raining.]

[A car pulls up beside Psyche and she gets in, glad to be out of the rain.]

[Interior car. Psyche looks across at the wise and gentle face of her thesis supervisor, framed by granny glasses and soft white hair done up in a bun.]

Psyche: Good morning Dr. Supervisor! Thanks so much for picking me...

[Close up. Dr. Supervisor's hair falls out of the bun and loosens into a nest of maggoty snakes. Fires comes out of her eyesockets and melts part of her face and she turns towards Psyche.]

[The sound of the car doors locking can be heard with a thunderous echo.]

Dr. Supervisor: How dare you. I've had enough of your words and behaviour you stupid BITCH! Who do you think you are to say something like that about me to a prospective student?! I'm going to KI--

Psyche: (Calmly, without missing a beat.) It was no dare. I have every right to my opinion and to speak what I believe is the truth. We have a confidential process for prospective students to ask questions for a reason. I was polite and professional but honest. Why are you pumping the poor thing for confidential information anyway?

... and then I woke up.

... and alsmost peed my bed.

I'm having anxiety dreams about power stuggles, that's for sure. It doesn't take a narcissistic man with a cigar to tell you that the power dymanic in academic relationships is making me a *teensy* bit antsy these days. Hey, at least in the dream I was able to stand up for myself. In the goings on the led up to the dream (which is in no way a refection of literal reality), I was led to tears by something that could have been easily resolved with a few words months prior. Sigh... I would love to tell you about it all. But I am still slightly cognizant of the fact that no matter how anonymous one tries to be on the Internet, there is also a chance of having one's cover blown. If you know me, feel free to email and I'll go over it, but I've probably already made your ears bleed about it.

Yeah, it really amazes me how people in such authority, who actually STUDY things like authority and relationships and developmental processes and therapy, can be so totally blind to their own power dynamics. Or rather, perhaps, are VERY aware of them and play dumb. There should be a prep course in grad school entitled "How to deal with the bizzare and at times harrassingly illegal things that some prof is going to put you through in the next 7-10 years of your life: A primer on getting shit done while keeping the person you know as you alive." Maybe I'll propose one someday while I'm applying for tenure.

Okay okay okay... basically... there is a prof that I work with who makes VERY inappropriate comments during class, before class and after class. Things like, "Oh, Psyche, a student is going to approach you with a note from the disabilities centre regarding the midterm. Yeah, Mr. Firstname Lastname, you'll recognize him, he's REALLY GOOD LOOKING tall guy, really smart. He doesn't need to be accomodated for his MENTAL HEALTH ISSUE I'M SURE HE'D LIKE TO KEEP PRIVATE. He can write the exam with everyone else, so don't accomodate him. That's what these *disabilities* people do. They're just kids working in that office, they have no idea, and he's just manipulating them to get extra time." Yeah, this prof says stuff like that in full earshot of other students. Also, if a student comes in late, he stops the lecture and says that this is an excellent example of a person with a high IQ but "very low emotional intelligence." Oy. Don't even get me started on the inappropriate comments he made in class about Isreal and Hamas. If I were to write them down, your brain would cry.

I have another prof who teaches a course for which there is a dire necessity to use powerpoint/projector, blackboard... He mumbles, talks fast and we can't see a bloody thing on the very complicated and ephemeral slides (he's a bit clicker happy), so taking notes without a printout is impossible. You would have to have the arm of The Flash, the eyes of Superman, a pen from the BatBelt, and Stephen Hawking's brian in a jar to do so successfully. He posts the slides for us on his course website. Trouble is... he changes the bloody things an hour before the class. Sometimes minutes before the class he adds whole sections and topics, charts and diagrams, designs a whole new system! When we ask him to slow down because we are lost, he says, "What's the matter? You HAVE the slides!" We say, "not these ones."

A power struggle ensues over us wanting him to update the slides the night before so we can't print them out OR slow the f*ck down so that we can take notes. He is stubborn to Obsessive-compuslive standards. He can't slow down cause there isn't time (doensn't matter if we don't learn anything) and refuses to update on the night before because he has "time pressures."

Uh, dude? You've taught this class, like FIVE times already. This is the first time ANY of us have taken it. Pull yourself together, man!

Keep in mind, I'm just giving you the highlights, okay?

The Strike Is Long Over, And Yet...

2009-04-04T07:16:00.000-07:00

OMG... this semester is just turning my into a foulmouthed lout, the type of which would make a horney sailor played by Eddie Murphy blush. I've always been a bit of a swearer, but it wasn't until recently that I realized just how much I swear.
Basically, I live in an appartment and my bedroom and living room windows overlook the entrance to the building. The very BUSY and LOUD entrance to my building. Since I have moved to this neighbourhood, I have had to leave the comfort of my toasty beddy-bye on about 5 occaissions in order to go downstairs and ask someone doing a Night At The Roxbury impression to turn the base in their car stereo down at 2 AM.

ON A WEEKNIGHT.

I don't get out of the bed on a weekend. Too scary. Wanna know why? Because when you do that, you see that the person in question is doing something like masturbating while waiting for their date, or is just openly drinking in the car and then you have to take the liscence plate and call the police and avoid the pointy racial/sexist epithets being hurled at you. Epithets if you're lucky.

When we put in the air conditioner, this problem will by and large disappear and I will sleep once more. But, with the coming spring weather, a new loudmouth problem has emerged: 7 and 8 year olds who use the F-word more than a faultering Yuk Yuks MC.

At first I thought, who is the effeminate and verbally abusive dad yelling at children as a they come off of the school bus? But upon further inspection, I realized that there was no dad out there. No dad, no mom, no auntie Sveta or uncle Uri. But there was a horde of unsupervised urchins on the front lawn and patio, cursing the sh*t out of one another. I heard variations on the F-bomb that George Carlin hadn't even thought of. Through the mirale of hyphenation, these kids proved to me that there are now 47 words you can't say on television. Although, apparently, it is okay to scream them at the top of their lungs into my home office during business hours.

Jeeeeeezz.

Yeah, so this has been going on EVERY school day from the time the bus arrives, around 3:30, until the sun goes down - weather permitting. And we're less than one block to a giant park. AND there is a sign in the front of the building prohibiting children from playing on the patio. (But it's not in Russian, so...?) So, one day, I go out onto the balcony and say something like, "Hey guys! Do you think you could watch the language? I don't have a problem with you playin out here, be as loud as you like. But I'm getting tired of hearing the F-word every three seconds." And they stop. And just stare at me up on the 4th floor. Like I am some sort of abomination. Like a cat that grew wings and started whistling atonally. Or a baby who started projectile vomiting the host in mass. About 20 seconds go by. No one moves. No one speaks. I'm thinking, shouldn't they be cussing me out? "Guys? Do you think you could stop yelling swear words out here? I'd appreciate it." They don't say yes or no. One kid (the leader?) does a head bobble that I need a bunch of trained behaviourist observers with high inter-rater reliablity to tell me if it is a nod or a shake. They go back to playing. I go back inside.

I JUST sit down.... "F**************************CK SAM!!! YOU'RE SUCH A F*************CKING FAT *SS!"

Clearly I need to find out who the mothers are of these little Artful Dodgers and find a way to appeal to, and failing that, punish her for this. Why? Well, upon consulting the draft that I was working on, I found that it had a few f*cks and fat-*sses in it -- you know like when someone is talking while you write and you end up writing down snippets of what they said in your output?

Note to self: proof read EVERYTHING written between 3:30 and sundown TWICE.

The Endless Review Process

2009-03-24T17:43:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the humiliating world of academic writing, Psyche. Being ahead of the curve is not always so great. As a result of being on the publishing track for your Honours Thesis, you don't know any of the 'unspoken rules' of academic publishing, including: dealing with order of authorship, reporting effect sizes and confidence intervals according to APA guidelines, or dealing with a work study student who may have corrupted your entire data file.

Oh, or the delicate emotions involved in CO-authoring.

I want to be clear. I did the bulk of the work on this paper to get it ready for publication, but there is NO way I would have been able to get it in shape or respond to the demand for revisions without help from three other people: a PhD in my lab, my supervisor, and another person who attached to my lab who guided my rewrite of the lit review. I certainly could not have got it done on time. The other side of the coin though, is that I also would not have suffered from sheer blinding panic where some invisible enemy puts my lungs in a giant vice grip and squeezes for an entire week.

Basically, I got the paper accepted to a journal with major revisions and had two weeks to get things done. Having never done this before, I assumed that a two week deadline was a HARD two week deadline. My supervisor was away on vacay... I had NO idea how to deal with some of the reviewer comments... mind boggling... Sure enough... I panically (wrd?) sent out assertive emails that didn't go over too well with the powers that be... stepped on some toes... you know, all the graceless stuff we tend to do without realizing it while stressed out.

I'm so thankful that there is another person in my lab that I could go to when the stats hit the fan and basically be guided through the delicate emotional rats' nest I had got myself into. You know who you are!!! THANK YOU!

So anyway, this brings me to my point. It AMAZES me how many people in this field really need help negotiating relationships. I've always been pretty good with people being direct with me. "Hey Psyche, I don't like what you just did!" "Okay, let's sit down and talk about it." No problem. When I do start to see problems is when people try to avoid problems/conflict, or try to sugar coat it or tip toe around it. Too many questions are left in my mind. Having already worked as a therapist for 5 years, I have something of an idea of how to word things carefully, how to say what I mean, how to use "I" statements and not accuse. Even so, many people can feel threatened by an assertive communiction style, even when worded "perfectly." There is a lot of sensitivity in this field, apparently.

It gets me thinking about how we are all really defending against something most of the time. Like we are all walking around in transference. It amazes me how many people in psychology don't seem AWARE, not just of their transference - but the fact that they are capable of EXPERIENCING TRANSFERENCE.

It's also interesting that there seems to be a bit of an attitude in this program that one should not be in therapy. Like you have PROBLEM if you go to counselling. It really surprised me. I couldn't imagine not being in therapy and being a therapist. I can't imagine becoming a therapist without having been in therapy. How does one do a good job if they've never experienced it from the other side? How can one deal with one's countertransference without a safe and experienced person in the biz to debrief it with? That's not stuff you want to bring home to your partner or family.

I know it's not like this at every school. But it seems to be the case here. Maybe due to the non-psychodynamic outlook. Psychodynamic theory seems to be quite focused on this kind of experiential learning and support. I really like that style. So it will be interesting. I don't have any kind of practicum or anything this year, and when I do, it will be first with assessments, so not counselling of any kind. Still I wonder what kind of opportunities I will find for that kind of therapy experience? Perhaps I'm lucky that I've already worked at the ORG for so long and had some experience and even freedom to experiment with certain therapeutic techniques (narrative, writing, solution-focused etc...)

I'm also very excited that I am finally getting paid for my TAship this month. It's all going to go on the credit card, but still...

Going Back And Forth

2009-03-12T11:24:00.000-07:00

The coincidence that I am TAing for an $Eduational $Psych class while being educated in the same department is not lost on me. I now need to complain about the professor that I hated, then loved, now hate again.

This dude can NOT read an email. Lordy no.

I write to him asking for instructions for how to get a print job done for my students' information sheet. I wait. No answer. I email again saying that I am leaving for work and will not have access to the Internet so he will have to send the print job to his secretary on his own because he has not approved what I have written.

An hour later he writes back to say not to worry, it is on his secretary's computer now.

An hour after that, he writes back to say that I should send it to his secretary.

What part of "I don't have Internet access" or "You need to send this yourself" don't you understand?

Also last night, I have a telephone convo with the other TA who is very upset with how rude this prof was to her because she has another class right before his and can't come to his office a half hour early to pick up his teaching materials. I've already had to let go of my coveted friday morning therapy appointment for this guy. Not liking his 'tude.

But he was so awesomely nice in person... could he just be the worlds worst emailer?

I hope so. Because the other option is largely taken with douchebaggery.

Making A Case For "Retards"

2009-03-06T13:52:00.000-08:00

The Almighty has finally smiled upon me as I realize that the Prof for my TAing course is pretty keen, laid back, funny and not interested in me doing a ton of work for him. Jesus, Allah, Budda, I love you all. It went really well today and I think I am going to enjoy working and performing with this prof, Professor Happycat, since his last name is the same as my, constantly purring feline's.

Today he made reference to "Seymour Butts," "Hitlerism," used the phrase, "Freud's little fascist, Jung," and made a case for retards.

Huh?

Well, we are all familiar with the colloquialization of the word "retard" to that of an insult. It is, or at least was not, politically correct to use this term by the time I finished high-school. You know, just like the terms "fag," and "faggot." It's not okay to use these words as an insult or put-down to someone. I talk about this with kids who bully all of the time at the org. I mean, how would they like it if suddenly everyone started to use their name as the new slang insult? "Oh, my god, he's such a DAVID!" Or, "Stop Douging my fries, get your own!" Or even, "Did you see how short her skirt was? What a Yoshi!" You get the point. And sometimes the kid who bullies does too.

So sure enough, when the prof of EDUCATIONAL PSYCH started talking about how we don't want people who are retarded in the military, a few people gave the knee-jerk-i'm-in-university-so-i-know-better disgusted face. And the prof was awesome. "C'mon, don't give me that. It's a diagnostic term in the DSM people, look it up. I'm not insulting the military, I just don't want it full of retarded people."

Bless him.

It's weird for me. I have never felt comfortable with using the terms "fag" or "dyke" or using the phrase, "that's so gay." Probably because I did once with a girlfriend and got tsked within an inch of my life. But I've always been fine with "that's so retarded."

A double standard? Why do I feel comfortable with something that is clearly inappropriate??

[I want to be clear here, I'm questioning WHY I FEEL okay with something that I know is not polite or respectful behaviour. The following does not EXCUSE my habit... I'm trying to understand it first so that I can proceed accordingly.]

I don't know... I mean, homosexuality has not been in the DSM since the second edition? I *think* the third was released in 1980 (but don't quote me on that, and hey, screw you, you're on a computer -- you can look it up as easy as I can and I'm mid-thought right now). So that's like, almost 30 years. Many homosexuals have "reclaimed" these words and under certain circumstances it is fine to say them, provided you know the people you are with and feel confident that THEY are not offended by them. I mean, clearly it's not dinnertime with your new thesis advisor language, but hopefully you understand what I mean. And still, when theonion.com put on their list of top ten resume verbs: "faggoted-up" - I went beet-red and coughed like a polite englishman. But I can say "retarded" till the cows come home, and don't feel any shame or guilt. And that, knowing several retarded children and their parents. Why is that? What is going on with me that I feel bad with one and not the other?

So... back in the classroom now... Prof. Happycat is going on and on and on about all these different tests for retardation and schools and the military and special funding and that we'd better get used to saying the word retarded in his class and that it really means late, a late learner, someone who is literaly delayed in their learning. He turns to mek I'm attempting to synchronize the video/projector/slides/camera/volume all layed out like the lighting board for a Pink Floyd concert, and says, "Oh, are you having trouble?" And I naturally reply, "Yeah, I'm a little retarded."

And I've won them over.

Interesting...

Next week, we're looking at the WISC IV. Looking forward to it and DYING for him to ask me my IQ. Here's a hint: I belonged to Mensa. Here's another: I could qualify for the Triple 9 Society. Huh, and despite that, I couldn't work the freakin' VCR. Just goes to show, intelligence isn't everything.

Maybe that's it. Maybe it is everything in the case for "retards." Maybe the issue is that retardation is so the opposite of me that I'm afraid of it. Maybe I'm afraid that this can happen... using the word colloquially is a way of distancing myself from the whole idea and my discomfort of it. A defense mechanism? It makes sense in terms of what we know about kids who bully... a reaction formation of sorts. I could go into all kinds of psychological reasons why I feel stupid and inadequate sometimes... I could talk about being called stupid as a kid... I can even discuss the fact that despite being identified as gifted, I had horrible social problems as a child and was ostricized (sp?) in a similar way that children who are actually clinically retarded might be by those who are developing typically.

I'm writing this because after the first draft of this post, a friend challenged me on this and I think I have a responsibility to go beyond the first draft of my thoughts. What really does lie behind this for me and why the difference in feeling for me behind these two words? It's not like my life hasn't been touched by both conditions. What does one do when they know intellectually that their behaviour is not appropriate but they are, for some reason, missing the manifest physical cues that tell them so? Or is there something else going on, in that maybe I don't want to take a hard look at this issue because it is really very threatening to me?

And is it safe to talk about anywhere other than the therapy room? (Jeez, I hope so...)

After having meditated on this for a few hours, one thing does stand out to me. I realize that my child-bearing years have peaked and I'm now on a downward slope. I know I would like to have a child but am not sure if it is in the cards. When I think about my friends who have children and see the wide variety of experiences that they have between them, I do feel afraid. I have seen many instances where my friends have had to rethink, reevaluate, and after a long period of mourning, redefine what their parenting experience will be like -- because they have a child or children with special needs. And while I have lots of these children in my life (both personally and professionally), they are not MY CHILD. I know that parents, whether they intend to or not, inadvertantly have "personal hopes" for what their child will "be like." Good parents work through them and try their best not to put their dreams onto their children. It's hard... it can be a challenge for parents to even become aware of when and how they are doing this. So much of it has to be brought into consciousness before the mamoth task of changing parental behaviour can even begin. I've worked with children and teens on this issue, I've worked with parents on this issue - in the counselling environment.

But it has never even approached being personal, until recently. I have never had to stare this particular challenge in the face. And honestly, really absolutely honestly? I don't know that I would have the fortitude, the strength, the resiliance that I have seen an encouraged in others - clients and friends. And I think, that as I approach possible baby-making decisions, THAT scares the bejeezus out of me.

Psyche

For Tomorrow We TA

2009-03-05T19:38:00.001-08:00

I already am having TA issues, and the class hasn't even met yet. My prof wants me to come early to help him carry his instruments to the classroom. Normal request, but I have my therapy appointment down town right before this class. I can make it... I have an hour from end of therapy til class starts... but figured I would be a few minutes graced with leeway.

Not so apparently.

I'm not about to tell him that the reason I can't come early is for therapy. My prized friday morning therapy time slot. But what other excuse can I make that will pacify him?

Oh, and he already has me buying bristol board for him. I have a feeling I am about to become an executive assistant type of TA. We shall see?

Oh, and his surname is one of my cats' names. Too funny.

Yeah, but already irked. I never took this course ($educational $psych) in undergrad so I don't even know what to expect really. He will apparently have a textbook waiting for me. Time to earn my money, boys and girls!

I suppose I should also mention the killer stats exam I had on Wednesday? Now, I LOVE math, I even love stats. I get sexually excited about the visual display of quantitative information. And yet, this prof has managed to suck the love of $univariate $stats from me almost completely. The exam was scheduled for 3 hours. No one finished it. Most of us concurred that 5 or 6 hours would have been more suitable. BRUTAL. Killer. In the middle of it he wildly digressed about backgammon and parchesi - assuming that we would all know how to play so that we could compute the probabilities of winning in certain circumstances. Tell me again, how is that related to statistics for the behavioural sciences????

We needed group therapy and several pints before any of us could form coherent sentences.

The problem is that he is a nice, kind, nerdy and pleasant man... and I'm certain a talented reseracher. It's just that, like many profs, he SUCKS as a teacher, but moreso. This is beyond sucking. This is major Hooverism. I worked for half an hour on a question (oh, the exam was worth 170 marks and he did half marks) when I noticed that he had not reported the data in cumulative percentages (as was indicated in the question itself). At that point I seriously wondered what would happen if I just started crying, sobbing and got up and left the room.

Would he even get the idea? I doubted it and held back the hypothetical tears. Fantasies of traumatizing the man still linger. Maybe another day... maybe another day.

I still have to write two more assignments, another exam and a minor paper for Professor Oblivious.

Wish me luck.
How dare ANYONE threaten my love of numbers???

Feminist Full Rollers

2009-02-28T07:31:00.001-08:00

Going bowling today. Ten pin bowling. To raise money for the City's Rape Crisis Centre. I have never been ten pin bowling before... and last week my four-year-old nephew whooped me at 5 pin.

I'm going with a feminist graduate group that I'm just getting to know. It's a bit weird, not because I don't know if I'm a feminist or not - I definitely am... but from what I can piece together from the web group and the emails, it can be a bit... uh... intensely combative. And that's something I don't enjoy.

So we'll see how it goes...

I guess the thing I might be struggling with most about grad school is actually not the school part.

The Tuts Leading The Tuttees

2009-02-07T14:23:00.000-08:00

I'm tutoring a young lady in statistics. This has many complications, considering that I love math and have always done well in stats myself, but am currently struggling in my own graduate stats course due to professorial incompetence in teaching.

So, I'm going back to the basics. Old text, looking up how to actually run all the analyses and the building blocks of Z distributions and sampling distributions of the mean. I want to do right by the poor girl and would hte myself if I were to lead her astray.

She also paid me to look over a research design assignment for her. Yay! $$$$$$$$$

I like tutoring and so far her feedback has been that I am very helpful and encouraging and a "real positive influence in [her] life right now.] Awwwwwwww... pretty sweet huh? It's like school and counselling at summer camp all rolled into one!!

Okay, back to the books.

Psyche

Schblool

2009-01-29T15:31:00.000-08:00

Heading back to classes next week.

I don't know how to feel...

Relief... anger... worry... relief... whoops I already said that.

I'll check in later. But right now, I think I need an impromptu therapy session.

Back To Blurk Blegislation

2009-01-25T12:08:00.000-08:00

Back to work legislation looms over us this weekend and I'm not sure how I feel about it. I wonder this afternoon, sitting at blurk at the org... back at work after a week's worth of flu. The Legislature is meeting today... I assume that the NDP will fight it, not wanting to set a dangerous precident for employers to just ignore unions and the bargaining process.

But I also just want to go back to school -- omg... this lethargy has seeped into my muscles and bones and I fear wht little discipline I had has been sweat out in nervousness, anticipation and flu-fever. I want my schedule back. I want to sit and discuss things with like-minded intellectuals. I want to WORK.

Oh, I also want to get paid.

So, as I sit at the brink, I'm not sure how to feel. I guess I'll just keep checking the message boards and news and wait for the various powers-that-be to sort it out. I guess what I dislike most about all of this is not having ANY power to affect it. The waiting is the hardest part.

I have been making better use of my time this week. Yes, the week that I was most sick! I've finished the first edit of my "Biology of Psychopathy" paper, I've completed the preliminary draft of my biology take-home test, and I've made considerable headway on the environmental scan. Oh, and I got to do a peer-review for a journal. That was trippy. I don't believe that as a first year Masters student that I am a "peer" of an established research professor. But due to the amount of times this author referenced themselves, that's what I assume the author of the paper I reviewed is. How do you tell the Emporer about their "new clothes?" Ungh... an exercise in tact to comment that while the paper is excellently written and the analyses flawless, that I just don't think that this article will be of great interest to your readers... Thank goodness the peer-review process is confidential.

Yikes! And who knows how brutal they'll be with MY modest little paper?

Blurk, blesearch and blickness... stay tuned for more.

Time Keeps On Slippin'

2009-01-21T11:54:00.000-08:00

And so the strike lingers on. Like a party guest that doesn't see you putting your pajamas on as a signal that they should go home, it just keeps on keepin' on. A mediator, one of the best I'm told, has been dispatched to the scene. The media keep on sensationalizing what is really astonishingly boring and childish.

But it's okay.

There is a silver lining after all.

That is that I've been repeated hit in the back of the head with one shovel of a headcold and taking considerable time to recover. Today marks my first full day out of bed since Sunday. I'm only on the couch... but it's not my bed so I'm excited. Hork Honk hork honk honk...

I'm sharing the couch with my wonderful partner who is "working" from home today. He's getting a lot of reading done... and by reading, I suppose I mean he's turned on the closed captioning on some MST3K reruns. I am attempting to get some work done on a referencing project, but my prof's admin assistant isn't responding to my requests for some word documents. Oh, well. Watcha gonna do?

The lesson of this stike for me is this: don't fret over that which you have no control over. So I'm not fretting. I'm deliberating deciding to have faith that everything is going to work out okay. It's necessary because - well, I was sick this week and I missed the deadline to pick up shifts at the org. I take it as a sign... if I had taken the shifts and then we went back to school, I'd be in a tight spot having to work and be in class at the same time. So please, please... let the negotiator work his or her magic.

In psych news:

I get to peer review a journal article submitted for publication. It's my first time doing this. And it's intimidating. It's also a bit of a conflict of interest seeing as I have also submitted to this publication and there is a competition for the publication spots. They have all the people who submitted evaluating each others' papers. Isn't that a bit weird? I mean... I want to be chosen over the person I'm evaluating (who I can tell is a prof because they site themselves as "Author" several times), so I'm inclined to give them a bad peer review. But then I'm only a first year's masters student -- uh, this paper is a bit beyond my purvue to criticize in an in depth manner.

Fortunately, I'm not a hose-beast and will do my honest best.

Now if only the union and admin would do the same thing.

Lazy Days Of Winter

2009-01-11T13:15:00.000-08:00

There is really no end in sight for this strike. The two sides have been bargaining, which is more than they did in December, but things really aren't getting anywhere. The administration is attemping to force a ratification vote... but get this... not until Jan 19/20. That is 8/9 days away. 8/9 days that could be spent BARGAINING. I do not anticipate going back to school anytime soon.

On top of that, my wonderful employer, the ORG, has messed up the casual shift list. I applied for 7 shifts and got 4. That's a problem because the shifts that I was denied were given to relief workers. That's not supposed to happen. First of all, I have seniority. Second of all, I have status over them as a part-timer. It's supposed to go PT, FT, then any remaining shifts to the relief pool.

This took weeks to sort out, and now I'm being denied the shifts because they've already been given out. Old feelings of being fucked up the ass by an incompetent management team dance in my head. It's not as nice as sugarplum visions, believe me.

I'm also just experiencing that pressure of having much less money than the very little money I'm used to having. Please, let this strike end soon. I'm hungry for education. I'm lazy and directionless. I apparently will just waste my time if left to my own devices.

And then that got me thinking... You know, I wasn't always like this. I used to relish having nothing to do so that I could spend time and energy on the million of alt. projects I had on the go. I would write, I would create, I would study what interested me. These days, I sleep and sit around feeling insecure for various reasons. But here I am with over two months of strike under my belt, most of which I have not been picketing for, and what do I have to show for it? Am I more relaxed? Caught up on my work? My reading? Do I have a cleaner appartment? Better relationships with my friends, family or partner? Have I exercised more?

Nope.

I've read one book.

I've baked a lot.

I've helped put my chiropractor's kid through university.

But I haven't really DONE anything with my time.

Which begs the question: What would I LIKE to do with this time?

I have time and I have things that I wish I had time to do. But do I do them? Nuh-uh.

Apathy.

Dude...

Apathy...

I haven't even done things that I need to get done. Why am I telling you this? I don't expect you, or anyone to rescue me. But maybe that is what I WANT? Maybe? Is it possible that although I REALIZE that is not going to happen, I still HOPE for it? And to a point that I allow myself to sabotage my goals?

I suppose it is...

How Can?

2008-12-21T17:38:00.000-08:00

How can someone who is a therapist/counsellor still explore the possibility of being a performer? Okay okay, and not like an opera singer or anything that wouldn't involve a ton of ethical problems... but something more like a standup comedian?

Discuss. I need your pointers.

I think I want to actually give it a try, but I don't want it to bite me on the ass.

The Clinical Hour Seems To Be Getting Shorter

2008-12-19T13:54:00.000-08:00

That was the joke I made today at my own therapist's office when I arrived with only ten minutes left in our session. There is a mild snowstorm where I live that seems to have incapacitated most of the transit. Nevertheless, I arrived with homemade cookies to share. I have always wanted to be able to sit down with my therapist and just "chat" with him about whatnot. Of course, it didn't happen, but he seemed to apprecite the cookies.

Cramming your last therapy session before the two week holiday break into ten minutes is a trifle disappointing, so say the least. Perhaps a new theoretical school will emerge? "Speed Ego," "Rapid Transference," and "Quickbitch Session" are all terms that come to mind.

I've been told by many practising therapists/psychologists/psychiatrists/analysists that they learned more from their own therapy than they did from their university education or from any professional school they attended. Hmm... being at the beginning of my graduate career and on strike at that, I can only guess if this will hold true for me as well. I suspect that it will. It is the same kind of long-term, experiential learning that one gets in an acrobatics class. Learning by emotional doing. We can talk about a cartwheel all day, but you can't actually DO one until, well, you DO one.

I guess it is the very basics of genuinely needing to have an idea of what this process is like for the client/patient. The whole process is about coming to an empathic understanding of what their experience is like for them. How can you do that without having an idea of what it is like to be in therapy for yourself? It truly amazing me when I meet people in this field who think that therapy is "not for them." What does that say to the client?

Okay, no more coherent thought today. Back to blurk.

It's Today And Still No End In Sight

2008-12-14T13:33:00.000-08:00

I admit that I've not been writing so much because I've been under the assumption that all of my posts must be high calibre writing to impress. But a good friend of mine kindly got some sense into me and I've dropped that ridiculous notion. Write because you enjoy writing. Blog because you want your friends to know what you're up to. Ignore jerks who criticize you and don't have the deceny to even tell you who they are.

Well done and well spoken. I hereby cast of the shackles of my oppressor!

Here's my news.

There is no end in sight for this strike. If things are not resolved by tomorrow, then we will not be going back to class until at least the new year. So more forced vacation. But it's okay. I'm relaxing in to it. I've also heard back from C*** that they are going to make good on my strike pay... so huzzah! I need to plug it into the debt hole, of course, but huzzah nonetheless.

I'm trying to work a bit more during the strike at the old org. Sigh... it's okay because I'm not full time here and have a very relaxed attitude towards everything. But I still don't LOVE it. I guess I need more absence to make my heart grow fonder. But I could use the money, so we'll see what happens. Oh, and for those of you who know me well, I'll be on that TV show I used to be on a lot this Monday from about 3:30 - 6:30 again. Talking about holiday stress with the youngin's! That's something I am looking forward too. Oh, and I'm picking up a new rolling pin from a freecycler right afterwards. What a time to be alive!

I guess I don't have a ton to do, but I still feel busy. I finally have a research project doing an environmental scan for a networks centre of excellence, and I'm prepping a manuscript for publication. Also super exciting. Since it's mostly my work. If I got published at this early stage of my career I would just be over the moon. I'm not holding my breath, but I am hopeful.

Other than that, I suppose I should actually do my assignments that would be due if the strike gets called off. And just get ready for holiday insanity. My sweetheart and I are going to barricade ourselves in with a bunch of MST3Ks and food and enjoy.

Despite not having anything to do, I'm really looking forward to having someone to do all that nothing with. I've been very lonely since school started, and moreso since the strike came on. And yet, I find myself so busy all the time. So here's to a season of creature comforts and delightful creatures to enjoy them with.

Psyche.

Step Right Up, Win A C*** Doll!

2008-12-02T20:58:00.000-08:00

It's been a while, again and obviously. This is largely due to the large-scale disruption at my university. Classes have all but stopped, and there is much, MUCH confusion. For my part, it has to do with the union and the ongoing question of my membership.

When we were instructed to vote on the strike mandate, I dutifully went to the polling booth. I was not on the list, but assured by a union rep that my grad student ID was valid, given a ballot, and cast my vote. Weeks later, at a general membership meeting, I was still not on the voting list. A union rep examined my ID and my paystub and assured me that I was a union member. Again I was allowed into a meeting and voted.

I picketed. Not only that, but I stepped up as the picket captain for my department (yeah, the only volunteer and I'd only been there for two months at the time). I did strike duties for 3+ weeks. My stike pay never came... I called to inquire...

Apparently, I'm not a member.

Now, understand, when there was originally the problem with my name not being on the list, the union told me that the only way they know if I'm a member or not is if the administration tells them so. I talk to the admin... oh, yeah, you're a member.

I call payroll yesterday, I'm not a member.

I call the union today, I am not a member.

I get an email from the union today, I am not a member.

Member or not... I'm inconvienienced greatly... very frustrated... and upset that I may have been walking around with a picket sign and getting up for a 7am shift or earlier.

Welcome to grad school, Psyche.

Sigh... I will accept your pity now. Especially if it comes in the form of taking me out for a coffee etc...

Psyche.

Nothing Witty Or Special. Just An Update

2008-11-12T09:24:00.000-08:00

Things have been a bit stressful lately. My dad announced a return of his cancer, I'm on strike at university, I still have to keep up with coursework as well as take on strike duties. Currently, I'm quite sick with a sore throat and feverish... We just finished the charity's fundraiser. I'm exhausted and filled with anxiety - about my immeidate future, my finances, and physical safety on the strike line.

And I've really been having to sit with my ambivelence about this strike, about particpating in a strike that has the potential to be violent, and just the whole idea of challenging the self.

On my very first day out there as a picket captain, I witnesses someone drive through the line, almost hitting some people, others get out of cars and scream and swear at picketers, and someone get out of his car and cock his fist at a lady on the line. If it hadn't been for the quick phone cameraing of some witnesses, things could have escalated pretty quickly to physical violence. I hear tales on the listserves everyday of this escalation. Someone has already been hit by a car, many have been on the receiving end of verbal threats of violence. Yesterday someone threatened to bring a gun the next time they were held up by a picket line.

I'm astonished and horrified.

I guess I don't understand how someone can get upset enough as to threaten, or engage in, physical violence with another human being. How does a person get this entitled? How do they equate being held up for 20-40 mins by people exercising their civil liberties with a reason to punch? This is especially difficult for me who believes that there just aren't that many reasons other than self-defense to punch EVER. How does a slight (or even major) inconvienience get a person so quickly to the point of hurting someone else?

I guess I've been sitting (in fear) with this for the past week or so. Naturally, I start thinking about the inability to empathize, a narcissistic belief that one is more important than everyone else or "special" in some way. And in the particular neighbourhood of my school, there is a reputation/history of this kind of behaviour.

There is also a general feeling of what I will call "outrageous entitlement." Please see:
http://www.nationalpost.com/todays_paper/story.html?id=948718 The Post isn't my fav paper but I thought the numbers quoted in this article were interesting and speak to a larger phenom of students expecting the world to give them something for nothing and not knowing how 1. to be good citizens and 2. be able to see beyond how any situation affects them and them only.

I guess what I'm saying is that it worries and alarms me that our society is growing young people so individually focused. It's quite the counterpoint to hearing Barack Obama talk about helping each other. And it just makes me sad. And afraid.

So, in eloquently, that's where I'm at.

Antisocial traits are notoriously difficult to therapize out of someone. In order for their to be any sort of positive movement, society has to act as the conscience for people who aren't able to engage empathically. Actual consequences that are meaningful to the antisocial have to be implemented. Huh... don't expect that considering the police "support" I've witnessed on the lines either. It took the police just under an hour to respond to the woman who was hit by the car. In a major metropolitan city... it took just under an HOUR. Way to remain neutral, huh?

When it comes down to it, I'm sick... so I'm off this week. But I worry, as the evenings get darker sooner and this thing runs on longer, for the safety of people out there. And for the possible trauma this will induce. I don't like seeing violence triumph, but I can't put myself in a place where I'm going to have to engage in it. I don't know what the answer is right now.

Psyche.

Solidarity Forever... solidarity... for.. e... ve..rr...

2008-11-05T15:33:00.000-08:00

So, I'm sitting in the GMM that is going to determine if I have to go on strike at University. I'm already the ONLY psychology grad student who is even at this meeting, and the only student who signed up to be a picket captain.

Oy.

As the only psych student here, I'm agog at the mob mentality going on here. Although I shouldn't be surprised. While I'm not afraid of striking... I know I can de-escalate with picketline crosses with the best of them, I'm more concerned about strikers getting all fanatical on the line and causing trouble. THAT I'm not so keen on.

I can't believe that people in this room who are polisci students, who are supposed to understand about non-oppression, are being so boisterous and trying to call the vote without letting us hear th presentations on the vote proposistions. I mean, there are ESL people here - we need to HEAR and UNDERSTAND before we jump in.

We need to slow down. We need to breathe... calmly discuss these issues. Not just start mindlessly applauding everything.

Binding arbitration?
Union says no way. Why? Because our CA is already so good, arbitration according to sector standards would bring us back. Okay, so maybe we're being a *bit* greedy? I don't know. I understand we are a leading local, but...

I'm torn.

My CNS is telling me it doesn't want to be here. I've got the fight or flight response huge (along with a knotted colon and a stomach full of vomiting butterflies...)

I'm also just so frustrated with how poorly communication happens (if it happens) in this local. I'm definitely going to need the little white pills (HA) if this happens. And the mood on the floor tells me it's strike time.

Anyone who wants to join me on the line, or bring me a coffee, or a puppy to play with, is most welcome.

Pray it doesn't last long.

Psyche

Le Sigh...

2008-10-09T09:47:00.000-07:00

I approve of making things into learning opportunities, even if those things unsolicted and rudely worded comments from strangers. I don't profess to know everything... and sometimes I even make glaring errors. Fancy that! I'm a human being! Whenever someone acts that way towards me, I try to seperate out the crude bullying aspects from whatever message I might be able to take away from the encounter.

My takeaway message: double check your facts, even if the prof said them. The prof might be wrong, I might have misheard or misinterpretted. Especially with Bowie on the mind, right? Good message. And I'm never above being corrected or learning something from someone who has more knowledge, wisdom or experience than me.

But I don't think that anyone deserves to be verbally abused or bullied. Ever. I might not know all there is to know about brain imaging. I might not ever know! But I sure do know a heck of a lot about bullying, abuse, misuse of power in relationships, language in relationships and general power dynamics (on and off the web). So, dear reader, I hope you will indulge me while I wax on a bit about the topic, which I learned about from one of the world's leading researchers in this field.

There are a few interesting things going on when someone attempts to take the piss out of you on the Internet. This is a way of acting out aggression that most likely (but not always) can't be safely expressed within the aggressor's day to day life. Typically, this is an individual that feels a lack of power or control in their own life and attempts to make themselves feel better by attempting to take power or control in someone else's life. Usually the person who is victimized has less social power (for example, they are new to blogger, have less knowledge about the topic being discussed, are more of a newbie on the Internet in general). The person who bullies gets momentary satisfaction from making someone else feel bad (or at least imagining that the other person feels bad - on the web it's an assumption because one doesn't see the immediate reaction). But the problem is that bullying another person does not address the root cause of the person who bullies self-esteem problems, and so, the person who bullies must continue to seek this reinforcement over and over again. And so there is a cycle where they seek validation that they are smart, or powerful, or capable of control over SOMETHING. It is the cycle of abuse and it continues (usually) until there is an intervention of sorts.

The other interesting thing happens when a person choses to make their comments anonymously. That's a very interesting and ultimately weak way of asserting perceived control. It's very safe... the aggressor remains unknown and protected from any personal investment. By not revealing anything about their own humanity, it is easier for them to treat the person they victimize as a non-human. What's more, when using the Internet to bully, the person who bullies does not have to see any of the human reaction on the receiving end. They miss any chance to develop the empathy necessary for social interaction. They commit the aggression and don't have to deal with any consequences.

Consider if you will, the kid on the playground who (for whatever reason) punches another kid. They see them cry, get hurt, other people around get angry. There are social consequences and the kid who did the punching gets to see first hand what the kid who got punched is going through. Hopefully certain mirror neurons fire, and the kid who punched gets to imagine deeply what it is like to be punched. Social learning... social consequences... social interaction. This is the same with social bullying... when the person aggressing can actually recognize what the consequences of their behaviour is on another person, imagine what it is like to be treated that way themselves, realize they don't want to be treated that way... well, then barring developmental difficulties, the kid learns to play nice and handle disagreements in a more pro-social way.

Internet bullying. Sigh... a huge problem among children and teens. I guess I'm surprised to see it coming from someone who is (in my opinion) cool enough to know so much about and be so passionately interested in medical science. Someone, who I imagine, I would probably really like to talk to and learn from. I mean, wow! What an incredible resource.

But, alas, I don't even know who the person is, their age, or even what country they live in. They haven't even provided me with a way to contact them privately. That leaves me with little choice other than to ignore them completely, or to write this post publicly. And since I believe in creating opportunities for learning, I chose the public venue.

So, I want to be clear. I will not tolerate rude language or flames on my blog. That includes swearing at me, calling me names, or making unkind inferences about my level of inteligence. Of course I will delete any comments like that.

But I also want to be clear about this. Whoever you are. I'm not a threat. I'm not a mean person. You don't have any need to take out whatever is bothering you on me. If I get some facts wrong, even horribly wrong on my innocent little blog, it doesn't actually harm you in any way. And you have a choice about how you can react. You can chose to use your power, knowledge, expertise and wisdom for good. You can share politely and even make a friend. Who knows, play your cards right and I could end up being a huge fan of whoever you are. Or you can react in a way that makes it very difficult for me to feel positively about you and what you represent (really cool science stuff). If you've got power, you've got responsibility for how you use it in the world. You can make the world (and my blog) a better place, or you can leave it alone. Those are your choices.

I really hope you make the nice one, because honestly, you sound like a pretty cool person.

Take care.

Measured In Bowies.. I Mean Teslas

2008-10-08T07:23:00.000-07:00

"The tesla (symbol T) is the SI derived unit of magnetic field B (which is also known as "magnetic flux density" and "magnetic induction"). The tesla is equal to one weber per square meter and was defined in 1960[1] in honor of inventor, scientist and electrical engineer Nikola Tesla."

And it's the unit of measurement of strength of an MRI and fMRI. (Although someone recently told me that I have this wrong... apparently there are two different kinds of tesla measurements, and I need to do a bit more research on this. But since I'm not going to be a medical doctor... and this is more out of a general interest for me, I'll leave it at that for now...)

Magnetoencephalography is an imaging technique used to measure the magnetic fields in the brain. And it is really, bloody cool. Imagine wearing a giant helmet full of something called "SQUIDs" (superconducting quantum interference devices), which are basically super-sensitive devices that are sensitive to picking up magnetic fields and someone cancelling out the earth's magnetic pull. The helmet never actually touches your head but kind of hovers between 6 and 12 inches away.

Okay, I totally cop to the fact that as my prof was explaining this stuff to my class, I was imagining I was Magneto. That I was Ian McKellen playing Magneto. And of course, it got me thinking to how we associate famous figures from history and science with the celebrity that played them in somesuch. Someone mentioned teslas, and next thing I knew, I was hippocampus deep in the Thin White Duke. A happy place to be, by all accounts.

It's no secret that nerds and geeks of all walks have long since held up Nikolai Tesla as the epitome of awesomeness. He was a synesthyte!!! He was working on a death ray, people. And honest to god mf DEATH RAY... I don't approve of necessarily using death rays, but I mean COME ON!!! That is mf cool!!! So who else could play this man (in The Prestige - a fair to middlin' movie) stepping into camera shot out of an electrical storm but David Bowie? No one, that's who... When that giant glass eye looked "at" me from the giant screen, I belived he could see my voice as it said "cool as f*ck."

So, my brain is totally in it's happy place when my prof mentions that most MEGs are calibrated(?) to 1.5 teslas, and that there is some controversy about whether or not it is safe for children to be in an MEG of 2 or 3 teslas (the higher the teslas, the sharper the image... not so important for clinicians, but of much use to researchers - I mean think about it... if you can get a kid with ADHD and autism to sit still for 45 minutes, you want a crystal clear image of that brain...) And apparently back in the early 40s, they discovered that leaving someone in an MEG too long (say 4 hours) results in 3rd degree burns. These burns are internal, because essentially, an MEG is like microwaving yourself a bit. It shakes up all the H++ in your oxegen molecules and affects their polarity. Do it for too long and those bonds start to break, creating heat inside the body. Apparently, an hour or two at 1.5 teslas is safe... but we're not quite sure what would happen if we cranked up that sucker to say 3 or 4 Ts (yes, it's lowercase when you spell it out, but uppercase when you use the short form because it's someone's name) and put their poodle in it to dry it out after a rainstorm.

Which confirms scientifically, in the silly little part of my mighty brain, that Ziggy Stardust is smolderingly hot. As if we needed further proof.

Packed in Like Animals

2008-10-02T06:02:00.000-07:00

I had the particularly sweet experience the other day of taking transit back and forth TWICE to my school. Now, most people would agree with me that under normal circumstances, that would be a bitter experience akin to having a mouthful of lemon rinds and razorblades. But, it was Rosh Hashanah, and classes were cancelled, so the buses were like little moblie ghost towns. I had not only no waiting time, but also my choice of seats. I don't think I've sat on a bus on the way to or from school yet this year. But I got to park my posterior on all four trips!

In was on these relaxing, room-to-breathe trips that I was able to give some thought to how commuting affects us in a multicultural city.

We've long known from animal studies that a lack of space decreases an animal's ability to socialize in a positive way. Doesn't matter if they are mice, rats, cats, dogs, tarantulas, or monkeys. If you stick too many animals in the same habitat, they get on each other's nerves, become more territorial than they were previously, fight more, and attack each other under circumstances which would not be considered provoking if they had more personal space. Okay, you see what I'm saying? Pack in animals too tight and they will tear each other to shreds.

As I basked in my abundant personal space, I got to thinking about the state of affairs on this bus route during rush hours. I have counted over 70 people on a bus, after having waited for 4 or 5 buses to go by before I could cram myself on one. Because the bus is an express route to the school, most people have a backpack, large purse, or one of those little laptop wheely-suitcases. That's a lot of luggage. Most people don't figure out how to handle their luggage in a crowded space, meaning that it's par for the course to get smacked in the face with a backpack someone refuses to take off, or squared by a wildly gesturing waterbottle. People have their mp3 players turned up to 11. First year arts students are having loud, pretentious discussions about how they just discovered Sartre. Graduate students arle having loud, pretentious discussions about how they hate Sartre. Someone is chewing their gum with their mouth open and EVERYONE is taking on the cellphones.

People become pretty freakin territorial over their allotted space. You see all kinds of weird territorial, animalistic things going on in that bus. The driver stops short. Someone uses the momentum to give someone else a little shove. Elbows get jammed, dirty looks get shot, invectives get muttered...

I haven't actually SEEN any punchings. But I've certainly been witness to more than a few altercations and a wide smattering of racial epiteths.

It's curious. I wonder if being crammed in too tight makes us more racist? Or at least more likely to engage is racist thinking or speech? Why is it that when we perceive a slight (because hey, this is YOUR bus, and that's YOUR seat - you OWN it and that insert-racial-slur-here ought to know that) we start picking apart everything that is different between that person and ourselves? I mean, why do we have to qualify what kind of asshole they are? Why can't they just be a generic asshole for not waiting in an orderly line the way we were taught to in our good and decent community where we were brought up? And keep in mind, that community of origin thing seems to hold regardless of what communit it is or how divergent it is from what is expected due to one's skin colour, clothes, or gender.

Or maybe I should be pleased and proud of my academic bretheren for keeping themselves together as well as they have been? The fact that I've been commuting to this school for 6 years already and have never seen anything come to blows might speak well for our difference from the animals. We might bear our teeth, but I've never seen blood. But still, I'm left wondering... where does all this extra tension go since we're not discharging it on the bus? Since we're all just sort of teetering under this passive-aggressive or completely repressed aggression? Humans are animals too, and it's pretty natural that we want to lash out when someone hurts us, perceived slight or real.

Which brings me to my final point. I may not have seen too many overt confrontations. But I've seen a lot of evidence of anxiety and panic attacks on these buses. Oh, and grumpy drivers, I've seen that too. Could it be that unlike some caged animals, we are internalizing our aggression and it's bubbling to the surface as a sort of polite, almost Victorian fainting spell? Do we have our figurative corsets on too tight? Would it do some of us some good to tell someone else off?

Sigh... I could go on forever about this.

So what do I want from you, dear reader? How about you dare to be honest with me? I promise not to give you away. Have you found yourself uttering (in your mind or out loud) an inappropriate comment based on race, ethnicity, gender, age or priveledge when in a too-crowded space? How did you justify it at the time? Did you feel guilty about it afterwards? And are you afraid, like me, that once you get old and senile, that you'll start saying this stuff out loud and the workers in the nursing home will start giving you the smackdown?

And were they right on Avenue Q? Is everyone a little bit racist? And should we all try to acknowledge and deal with it more openly?

Practical Phrenology As Psychological Counselling In The 19th Century

2008-09-14T15:25:00.000-07:00

"Practical" phrenology? What was there a clinical vs. applied phrenological war going on? Heh, heh. Ah, phrenology... dismissed as quakery not as long ago as you'd think.

My history of psychology course focuses on the mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries, and so we get to see how parapscychology has run parallel to and plagued scientific psychology from this time. It's hard to believe that once-upon-a-time, people who called themselves psychologists were actively engaged in the pursuit of helping people contact dead relatives and helping them find suitable jobs and spouses based on skull bumps or facial features alone.

Scientific psychologists have had a really rough go of it, it seems. Getting people to take you seriously as a science is rather difficult when your colleagues are making a case that we can see your future by consulting some chicken bones.

One might think that society is wise to this snake oil solicited by the pop parapsychologists of today. But is that really true? If you think that the general public is too smart to be taken in by such blatent BS, you might want to consider:

Psychology Today - a popular magazine that reports on issues of general interest in psychology. You could say that this magazine is an ambassador for the science to the general population. It's articles are mostly superficial takes on a few recent or classic studies, thinned out with a lot of opinion pieces. It is written mostly by journalists as opposed to psychologists, but cites reputable sources. Check out the back section of the magazine however, to find countless ads for instant weight loss and, yup, PSYCHICS. Sigh... Foks, just because it has the same root word, doesn't mean it's a science.

Also consider, if you will, how many people you know who believe, and I mean genuinely BELIEVE in astrology, palm reading (not too far off from measuring one's skull), or some version of ghosts/angels.

I'm afraid I won't be forming a terribly cogent thought about all of this this week. I don'dt have any huge reveal for you all here. Just that I thought this was interesting. And as I spend my week delving into the socio-historical context of phrenology, I'm interested in considering its modern-day equivelents.

And, I'm mindful, though many of these "sciences" were proven utter hocus-pocus... there is one that wasn't: hypnosis. Something that has actually been proven effective as a magical answer to pain and other problems. Who knows? If we can genuinely split our pain channels so that a person can have an appendix removed with no anesthetic other than a talented hypnotherpist... well, who knows? Maybe there are clues to personality, fate and free will, compatibility, and even the spirit hidden in the folds of our skin, or between our toes. Maybe we are more likely to find them in the folds of the cortex? The only thing I know for sure is that we don't know enough to know yet.

Exciting times ahead.

It Begins...

2008-09-09T21:08:00.000-07:00

I have recently seen a tremendously fun piece of musical theatre based on Sam Raimi's Evil Dead and Evil Dead 2: Dead By Dawn. The musical was aptly named, "Evil Dead: The Musical," and it was bloody awesome. This made me want to go back and watch the orignial movies + the third in the trillogy, Army of Darkness.

I forgot just how awesome these films are. And I've been meditating on them a lot as I begin my first week of grad school.

I was at a sort of meet-and-greet workshop dealie at the university last week to meet all the key players in the department. It was run by our Psychology Graduate Student Association (PGSA), and I arrived just in time. Normally, I am quite social at these things but I was just in time to sit down and look up for the first speaker.

She was annorexic. I'm not talking like any kind of ooooh, she's a bit skinny kind of thing. I'm talking SCARY, like I was worried that she would fall over behind the podium. Like, she needed a belt for her extra-small spandex and I could see the outline of her skull, despite severally swollen glands. I was rivited. I knew, I mean I KNOW that all of us in the helping professions are drawn here becuase of our own demons. We're all trying to help ourselves and those of us who are successful go on to help others. I knew and know that I will encounter people who are not well in grad school. I guess I just didn't expect to see it right out the gate.

I felt awful, because I knew I was staring, and yet, I couldn't look away. I tried to just look like I was paying rapt attention. I hope that's how it seemed. But honestly, I can't even remember the woman's name let alone anything she talked about. Thank heavens for the handouts.

I starting looking around the room as other key players were introduced. I started to notice that this woman's was not the only obviously emaciated body in the room. There were several people there who looked like they were too frail to be anywhere but in bed, preferably hooked up to an IV drip. I got a little panicky.

I've always been pretty open about my eating disorder (thankfully in remission for some time now) - heck, I've spoken out about EDs on television several times and have made no bones about mentioning my own struggles. I figure that if I can recover, anyone can, and I want to offer that hope to anyone who might have been watching. But I started to get a bit twitchy in this room... realizing that I would be working with some people who are obviously in crisis and wondering how that would affect the work, and moreso, how it would affect me. For example, would I relapse? Be tempted to? Be sucked into the bizzare competition to make oneself the least healthy martyr in the department? The most strict and perfect student?

So much of eating disorders is caught up in perfectionism... no wonder they are in the psych department in numbers.

As I watched this woman introduce speaker after speaker, I got the image of a skeleton stuck in my head. In particular, in Evil Dead 2, when Linda's dismembered corpse comes together again and begins dancing. When Ash cuts her head off and she gets the chainsaw stuck in her spine trying to attack him. I saw that image superimposed over the speaker and saw myself fighting her.

Yeah, enjoy that one, Dr. Freud. You don't have to hit me over the head with a chainsaw.

Dismemberment.

In Evil Dead (both versions), Ash's hand becomes possessed by Candarian (sp?) deamons and he has to cut it off to save himself from it. In the musical, this is particularly campy and delightful as the stage blood sprays out of his wrist and directly into his mouth as he sings. And the actor does a brilliantly choreographed routine of his hand attacking him that the Marx Bros would be proud of.

He cuts it off. A part of him that was integral in his life so that he can survive. And indeed, his brain manages to rewire itself not just so that it survives the pain and loss, but so that it accomodates to the reworked appendage. Eventually, Ash manages to make the chainsaw an extension of his stump... as much a part of his arm as a fiddle is to Ashley MacIssac. And he kicks the asses of every Candarian deamon within arm's length. Heh...

And so it begins. I'm entering the old abandoned cabin in the woods, so to speak. I'm opening up the Necronomicon Ex Mortis and seeing what deamons will come forward looking for MY soul. But I'm not willing to give up more than a hand. One thing I have that Ash didn't, that maybe the PGSA rep didn't, is advanced notice. I've fought deamons before, and I know what they look like. They will be here, no doubt, and I hope I will be ready for them... to study them instead of being the subject of THEIR weird experiment.

"It's time to finally take a stand,
Fight with my stump, and my good hand.
Stop talking trash and kick some deamon ass..."

Time Keeps On Slippin...

2008-08-17T16:10:00.000-07:00

Hello blogsketeers! Guess what? This is my first day on my new shift. That means I no longer work full time for the org! And guess what else? It's delightful!

My last day was uneventful. There was no supervisor around but there was still a very plain, only slightly playful feel to the shift. Walking out at the end of the day was definitely anti-climactic. However, I was off to meet a few co-workers for a celebratory drink or two, so I was in good spirits. Especially since I was meeting two workers that I don't often get a chance to hang out with. It was really interesting, because I have definitely been closed here at work for almost two years. Circumstances were such that I just didn't have the emotional resiliance to face any possible confrontations or rejection in that place. So I played things very close to the chest. As a result, I was not at all close with anyone on my shift. No where near the way I was when working nights and felt like my team-mates were my best friends at overnight camp.

And then, there we were, enjoying martinis and chatting quite informally. People opened up a bit, I did too. The next thing I knew we were having a very sincere and heartfelt discussion around relationships with our parents, self-confidence, and the quality of our sex lives. This wasn't the sort of snappy light sex and the city banter. I felt very honoured to be let in on some personal details about some incredible women with whom I've shared the counselling floor. And I was delighted to feel like I was also being accepted, with all my outrageous quirks and stuffy opinions.

It felt...

Well, it felt like what I had been longing for work to feel like for over two years. It felt good. It felt safe and fun. I felt like I belonged. And that's something I hadn't felt at the org for a VERY long time, if ever.

It was nice. I forgot it could be like that. It was a very nice way to end my full time stay there.

And today is day one of my part time life at the org. A 6 hour shift is nothing. Pah! I'm just wondering how things will continue to change for me here, and hoping that the happiness I feel, the lighter feeling of things-are-okay will continue, as I look forward to a 7 year goal that I have chosen. Yeah, I'm feeling tired, but optimistic.

And looking forward to shameless lethargy for the coming week. Any more suggestions on how to recharge are welcome welcome welcome. Bring em on!

Tanning My Own Hide

2008-08-04T15:18:00.000-07:00

It's no secret that in order to be an emotionally healthy therapist, one needs to develop the ability for "professional distance." Basically, you have to get a thick skin, otherwise your natural ability to empathize is going to put you at grave risk for developing vicarious trauma. To a certain extent, vicarious trauma is expected. It's an occupational hazard. We all expect it, that and compassion fatigue (a similar but separate problem). But you are never truly prepared for it. And rarely do you even realize what it is until a colleague points it out. Some people who are incredibly self-aware pick up on the fact that they are "not themselves."

Imagine being a body builder and going in to the gym one day to realize that you are actually able to lift less and less than you could before. Baffling... after all, doesn't practise make something easier?

Apparently not when it involves empathy.

I'm not sure if we have empathy stores that dwindle and need to be replenished. Maybe empathy has a reciprocity matrix and the amount of abuse we tolerate from clients takes it's toll on us? Like, "Why can't someone be here for me the way I'm here for THEM? Ungrateful little so and sos..." In some cases where therapy is just not successful, it could be that there is an element of learned helplessness at play. Or maybe the mirror neurons just habituate so much that nothing can make them fire anymore?

I don't know exactly.

But I do know what vicarious trauma (and first hand trauma, for that matter) and compassion fatigue FEEL like. I know that as I enter the end stretch at the old org here, that I'm pretty damn short in the empathy department. And very thankful for my background in performance. I know that I can adhere to the old adage that "The Show Must Go On." I can put aside my discomfort, sadness, fatigue, even rage-filled hatred for the benefit of a client. As long as I know the end is in site.

And it is.

But.

This is not something I particularly care to carry forward with me as I approach the heavy workload of grad skule. Psyche must heal herself before the next challenge starts. I've got to build up some hit points after that last orc attack!

So here is my question, for anyone reading:

What rejuvenates you? What can you suggest that might rejuvenate Psyche?

Let's hear your suggestions, from the divinely inspired to the poorly-thought-out schemes. I eagerly await your descriptions of "self-care."

Studier's Remorse?

2008-08-03T11:05:00.000-07:00

There is a concept in psychology called Buyer's Remorse. I think most people are familiar with the idea. Basically, you want something really badly, you purchase it, and then you regret your decision. You discover that the anticipation of getting what you want is actually more pleasurable than actually getting it. Like Oscar Wilde said, "There are only two tragedies in life: Not getting what you want and getting it."

So...

I'm not sure I picked the right school. Yup, I haven't even started classes yet, and I'm already wondering if I made the "right" choice. I know, I know... there is no way to know if it was "right" until after I actually experience it. AND the whole concept of a "right" decision is fundamentally flawed to begin with. But still, I have-a the buyer's remorse.

The school I've chosen, and that I will be attending in September is large. LARGE. It is also very prestigious and my thesis advisor is a very famous and well-connected and well thought of and has money at her disposal. The other school is small, the psych program is new, there is no specific person there that I really want to work with BUT the courses are amazing, they get you into clinical work in the first semester (the other school offers no clinical experience until the PhD level), the clinic is amazing, a really small and intimate environment where you get TONS of attention.

I haven't taken any classes yet, but I'm already having trouble registering for classes. How can this be? I only really have three, and they are all MA1 courses that I have had approved by the department, registration opened at 9am, I registered at 10:30am... how could the course that I was already approved for be FULL??? Seriously??? Okay, so no big deal... I can move my stats class to another section, oh, but the only other section that doesn't conflict with another course is during my own therapy session. And so it goes. At the other school, you register, all the MA1s are in it together, you bond and go!

I'm not sure that there will be as much bonding as competing at this school. Was the choice to have this particular thesis advisor and all her contacts, etc, worth giving up a school with an ethos that actually fit my personality? What is more powerful? The place or the person?

We shall see.

I know that there were more criteria that influenced my decision: proximity to friends and support systems, keeping my part-time job, money, partner, partner's job. I just have a nervous feeling about this. Hopefully, my two weeks off before school starts will help me to relax and see the opportunity, not the problem.

More later.

The Tree Metaphor

2008-07-28T10:42:00.000-07:00

A psychology prof once described the process of developing a disorder as a sapling that encounters resistance while growing. If the little seedling's trajectory meets with a material that it can't grow through (for example, a brick wall), it will grow around it. The tree may not grow straight up, but it will still grow. It might grow in a strange shape, or perhaps there will be a dearth of leaves on certain brances, or it's trunk may be crooked. But still it will grow, having compensated it's straight-up trajectory in order to still find the sunlight.

In this way, normative development may be interrupted in a child who encounters stress growing up - especially one who may have a genetic predisposition that makes them vulnerable to some stress. The seed will still grow, but if there is something vulnerable about it and/or it encounters adversity, the result is the development of some coping mechanism which MAY end up being maladaptive in the long-run.

So, little acorns, I've been sitting in the earth for the past six years working through the undergraduate degree part-time. It's finished, and with the grand results from my thesis, the graduation and the Certificate of Excellence from the CPA, this little seedling has finally pushed through the earth and can feel the sun on her face.

Classes start in just over a month. I will be weighing in regularly about the rigours of grad skule life, psychology topics, and how everything seems to remind me of Arkham Asylum. Stay tuned.