Therapy

My therapist has a little shih tzu. Sometimes he wears little sweaters, festive ones for Halloween and Christmas. He's what my dad would call a "little yip yip dog," with a short poofy tail that stands straight up and an old man dog moustache that takes over most of his face. 

Like most reasonable humans, I imagine, I always try to get the dog to sit next to me on the couch and let me pet him while I'm sobbing to my therapist about whatever anxiety has taken me over at the moment—but he's never interested. After a few ear scritches he goes over to stare at his treats on the bookshelf and finally gives up and goes to sleep on the extra chair. 

I picked my therapist mostly because she had a dog listed as a team member on her website, actually. It seemed like just as good a reason as any. Choosing a therapist—choosing any doctor, really—might as well be a random stab in the dark.  Reviews, of which there are typically only 4 or 5, are usually only people complaining. Doctor profiles online tell you nothing. I don't really care where they went to school, or that what they love most is "getting to know their patients" or whatever filler garbage they're using. I want to know whether someone will actually listen to me when I'm trying to tell them there's a problem, whether they'll actually think about me and my problems outside of the 15 or 30 or 50 minutes I'm on their schedule. Whether they'll research new things to help me, whether they'll give me actual concrete ways to deal with issues, whether I'll actually feel better having talked to them or whether I'll feel like they're mentally going through their grocery list while I'm talking. I want to know, as in the case of my first OB, whether or not they'll come into the hospital even though they're off, because they know I'm losing my babies and they want me to have a familiar face. 

But none of that is on an online doctor profile. So I pick people based on their websites and whether or not they have a dog. So far it's only moderately successful. 

I started going to my therapist between my third and fourth pregnancy losses—between losing baby #4 and baby #5. I'm not sure she really believed me when I kept telling her things could go wrong, until one week when I told her I was pregnant, and then two weeks later I told her I wasn't anymore. People don't seem to understand that it's not just "going to work out" if I "stay positive." It's almost amusing to watch them process how unfair it is, how it doesn't fit with their worldview that somehow tells them there's a limit on how many shitty things someone has to go through. 

She's been trying to get me to live in the moment. Depression is about the past, she says, and anxiety is about the future. I'm supposed to concentrate on things like the warmth of water when I'm washing dishes, the feel of fabric, the sound of the breeze. It's a nice idea, and sure, I can do that, but what do I do when I wake up at 4am in a panic, my heart beating fast and my brain unable to stop racing? 

"Breathe," she says. "Make a mudra with your thumb and first two fingers to help deepen your breathing, and breathe out longer than you breathe in." 

Sure, sure. But what do you do when images of your dead babies, of doctors' faces, of your husband's face, of empty ultrasounds, of blood won't stop flashing through your head?

Breathe. Mindfulness. Say, "At this moment in time, as far as I know, everything is fine." 

But what if it isn't fine?

These are the endless circles I go through, until finally I resort to over-the-counter sleeping pills, which at least keep me from waking up in the middle of the night. In the day I can be mostly fine, or at least ignore it. 

"Do you really think you have anxiety problems?" my husband asked the other day. 

"Yes, and I'm pretty sure you do, too, and you just cover it in work." 

I will be glad when this period of my life is over. There used to be a time when I thought about other things, when I didn't feel like I had an exposed wound that wouldn't heal. 

Lately my sessions with my therapist have felt pointless. I talk about what's concerning me at the moment, and then, because I'm a teacher's pet, I end with what I know she'll say I should do. She nods and repeats it. I'm mostly therapizing myself. But knowing what you should do or how you should process something doesn't have anything to do with actually doing it. I need someone to call me on my bullshit and get me out of this miserable rut. 

"Maybe you need a new therapist," my friend says. We always consult each other after our respective therapy sessions, and she seems a lot happier with hers. 

"Yeah, but how do I break up with this one? And I'd have to go through the whole 'getting to know you' thing again, ugh." 

I don't even know what I want from her. To magically make it better, I suppose? That doesn't seem like a realistic expectation. 

When my therapist is 10 minutes late for our virtual meeting this week I consider just not texting her and pretending like it didn't happen, and never setting up another appointment. But she shows up eventually, with apologies, and we go through the motions. I don't know if I feel better at the end, or not. I don't know how any of this is supposed to work.