Starting treatment

First, a donation from one Daniel Sterman, who gives us how the undead sweeten their coffee.

Today I saw my regular therapist. It felt good to go back to my regular therapist, calming in a sense, to be back in therapy with someone that's known me (on and off) for six years, and has been with me shortly after I moved to Israel. I feel comfortable with her, and it made me realize how uncomfortable I was with my therapist at Maon Yerushalayim. The psychotherapist must create an environment of calmness and comfort, which I didn't feel I had with my therapist at Maon Yerushalayim but I do feel with my regular therapist. So it's good to return to her. I didn't bullshit her either (she knows how to call me on it anyway), I told her that since I left the program things haven't been 100%, or maybe even 50% functioning, but I know that I'm on a path to get better. I'm going to be seeing her regularly, probably weekly, maybe every other week.

I also started with my therapist from Nativ that will be doing cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) with me. He seems to be a guy that I can work with. Our first session I ran through my patient history with him, which is always a harrowing process since I feel like I'm repeating myself a thousand times over. I wish I could just print off a complete history and give it to health care professionals as required reading. Anyhoo, the CBT part of the session was to talk about what exactly CBT is and how it works, and we started on an exercise to identify various common cognitive distortions, such as assuming that I know what someone else is thinking, catastrophizing (this is the most disastrous thing ever), labelling (I'm such a failure), overgeneralization (this always happens to me), etc etc ad nauseum. All things that I do. I'm supposed to keep a diary of these various thought distortions over the next week, then I'll bring it in to him and we'll work on it.

Tomorrow I'm working a catering with Holy Bagel. Working is a good thing for me, it keeps my mind off of the depression and everything surrounding it. It's a therapy in and of itself, in the sense that I get to do something that I'm good at and feel good about it. I want to work more often, not only for the therapy, but also so that I can feel somewhat like I contribute to our family's financial stability.

As a last point, while I do somewhat miss Facebook, I don't regret the decision at all to quit. I've had so much more free time because I'm not constantly checking my news feed. I've been actually talking and meeting with friends, instead of chatting and saying we'll meet up. And I'm actually getting on the floor to play with the girls instead of sitting in my computer chair, scrolling down the screen, and intervening only when they're whining. Good deal, I say. Had I the self-restraint to naturally do that, perhaps I'd still be on Facebook, but I don't, so I'm not. And I'm fine with that.