My ongoing therapy dilemma

[GaryQ]

I always liked that funny little :computer:

but never find a real use for him but in your current situation he fits perfectly

seems like theres a repeating pattern here having to do with when you have “homework” to prepare and send him that the negative thoughts set in quite intensely.

Hang in there, it’s not your first round with this fight and you won every time

 

[gooblax]

I always liked that funny little :computer:

but never find a real use for him but in your current situation he fits perfectly

I know right? I almost didn't use him which would have been such a wasted opportunity, so it's lucky that I saw him and got the chance to revise my smiley choice

seems like theres a repeating pattern here having to do with when you have “homework” to prepare and send him that the negative thoughts set in quite intensely.

Yeah. Trying to tell him stuff sets off a "don't tell him stuff" alert. At least it's still an order of magnitude better than 10yrs ago. I used to get so twisted up in the thoughts that I'd end up saying nothing. It's so hard though. At some point, telling him stuff is going to go so incredibly badly but I don't know how or when or what will push it over the edge, except it will be my fault for falling into the trap.

 

[David Baxter PhD]

Remember: These are just thoughts created by anxiety and internal OCD-like processes. They don't represent reality. They can be ignored.

 

[GaryQ]

Yeah. Trying to tell him stuff sets off a "don't tell him stuff" alert. At least it's still an order of magnitude better than 10yrs ago. I used to get so twisted up in the thoughts that I'd end up saying nothing. It's so hard though. At some point, telling him stuff is going to go so incredibly badly but I don't know how or when or what will push it over the edge, except it will be my fault for falling into the trap.

You really should read this part you wrote over and over. To realize it doesn't make any sense (don't take that the wrong way)
i know "the mind" creates its own little reality of what it wants us to believe is a fact but if it's an order of magnitude better than 10 years ago doesn't it seem obvious that it will get easier with time and practice not worse?

There is only one possible outcomes from practicing anything repeatedly: Progress. Only exception I'm aware of is singing when you're tone deaf... it'll always be horrible and torturous to others

Like playing an instrument you can be really horrible when you start and be technically still horrible after years of practice but it's always less horrible than it was. You get better at almost everything you put repetition and practice at. Can be anywhere from a bit to a whole lot better.

in other words your "at some point..." part doesn't fly with me (pun intended miss aircraft engineer)

You have made great progress which proves you are capable of improvement. So tell that thought to (you know what) off!

 

[gooblax]

It would be nice if the thoughts didn't represent reality, but I don't think anyone can be sure of that.
Having it become easier to talk to him might not actually be a good thing. My 'fear' (I guess that's what to call it) is that if I tell him stuff, at some point it's going to result in some painful consequences as it naturally should for being a wrong thing to be doing.
I'm still going to try to send the thing, because I already decided that I would, but it's so counter-intuitive.

 

[gooblax]

I was going to send the thing to my therapist tonight after a final proofread but got too busy doing this:

Entering all my water bills from the past 3 years into a spreadsheet to confirm the "this quarter" "same period last year" numbers on the bills in order to make sense of the high water usage this period with respect to the most obvious cause but is also an unknown variable: n_people-in-a-particular-unit. I don't keep track of when they've been living there, but sometimes there's like 6-8 people living in the one 2 bedroom unit. Without that it's hard to show anything useful with the data.

Of course it has $ signs in it, but luckily I could focus on the kL and dates instead.

It would be nice to ask the owner of that unit to do something about their tenants using so much water. In terms of appealing to the other unit owners to see if they want to pursue the matter, what do you think would be the most impactful way of presenting the data? (Assuming that they're normal people who are interested in the $ signs)

I think this is getting a bit busy:


Maybe remove the data table and just put on some total cost labels up the top (the point of which is for those who want to quickly look at their bills to make sure I'm not spouting garbage)...?



I started out with just the two lines for water usage & water usage charge (and considered hiding the kL line but keeping the axis and semi-fudging it because there are slight discrepancies shown below)... But then it gets rid of the overall bill cost which I think people will be more interested in seeing.


Any thoughts?

 

[David Baxter PhD]

I find the top one (the "too busy" one) to be the most informative.

 

[GaryQ]

Hard to tell especially on my cell phone I stick more to my bets than graphs in general but it’s usually just for me.

are you saying that you each own your own units but water bill is not individually metered? That sounds insane

 

[gooblax]

I find the top one (the "too busy" one) to be the most informative.

Thanks, that was my favourite before I started second guessing it for the intended audience so I might just go with it.

Hard to tell especially on my cell phone I stick more to my bets than graphs in general but it’s usually just for me.

Engineers are very attached to their diagrams

are you saying that you each own your own units but water bill is not individually metered? That sounds insane

Correct. Before a certain date it wasn't mandatory for builders to install individual water meters. So our bill is split evenly between all units. Two of the units are owner-occupied, the rest are rented. Under state legislation a tenant can't be charged for water usage if it's not individually metered. So the owners pay the bill, but those who have tenants can claim a tax deduction on the water bill.

The fact that one owner is OK with having 7 people living in their unit (the same number as is living in all the other units combined, even though they're family guests of the 2 people on the lease they stay for months at a time) means that we don't have a leg to stand on.
That owner doesn't care because they can just charge a higher rent if they want. So as a collective the other owners will need to agree that it's bullshit paying double the usage charges just because of her tenants. And apparently I'm the one who needs to convince them.


Edit: I only just managed to save my spreadsheet last night before my computer's auto shutdown... then spent half an hour in bed on my phone fixing the homework to send to my therapist. Sent it this morning before I could change my mind or delay further.

 

[GaryQ]

That sounds complicated and reading my quoted text “my bets” somehow “numbers” got auto corrected without me seeing that get by:facepalm:

so you had to use currency symbols (I couldn’t see too small on my phon) that must have been painful for you

 

[gooblax]

That sounds complicated and reading my quoted text “my bets” somehow “numbers” got auto corrected without me seeing that get by:facepalm:

Haha I was wondering about that but the message came through translation unscathed. But yeah, I much prefer visuals.

so you had to use currency symbols (I couldn’t see too small on my phon) that must have been painful for you

It was indeed, although not quite as bad as I thought it would be. I wanted to just do water consumption but I doubt many of them are climate change activists so probably care less about that than the money. It's frustrating though to know that no matter how I might choose to conserve water, the other 5 units can do whatever (including loads and loads of laundry which one might need to do with 7 people plus a baby for over a month in the one unit) so the result is invisible on the bill in $ or in Litres/day.

 

[GaryQ]

I looked at it on the PC (TV) and if not already distrbibuted I'd adjust it slightly to convert from engineer to layman

Keep the bar charts! Simply empahsize the height of each bar as dollars out of their pocket. Most people need it REALLY SIMPLIFIED. Consumption is like chinese to the common folks... money lost is a different story!

But the graphs are cool

You should learn WPF XAML, I could use someone to HELP with user interface design. I'm great (well so so) at programming but suck royally at design even basic layouts and anything graphical.

 

[gooblax]

So far I've only sent it to the body corporate manager. Not sure if she shared it with the others yet. She has to request their permission to pass on their email addresses to me, so that we can communicate directly to decide what we want to do and whether to approach the owner of the offending unit. And then I would be communicating to the offending owner on behalf of myself and the others.

Thanks for the feedback

On a similar note it took me ages to figure out how to make an XSLT to convert some XML data into a usable format and I promptly forgot what I was doing afterwards I had a quick look to see what WPF XAML was and it reminded me of how frustrated I became trying to get it working, but also how much more motivated I was to do that rather than the work I'm doing now. It probably helped that I was learning stuff.

Trying to get back on thread topic, I found out what time tomorrow's session would be (wasn't sure due to daylight savings since he's interstate). I'm ok with what I sent to him but I dunno if I want to talk about stuff. But that's tomorrow so no point thinking about it now.

 

[gooblax]

The session went ok. We covered a topic that I needed to cover at some point, but it just seems like there's so much to cover so I was disappointed that we didn't get to anything else. It's hard because I can't help but invest so much emotionally into it, wanting to talk to him but then it's only an hour every 3-4 weeks.

Somehow we ended up not setting the next session date either - "I'll leave it with you" So much for thinking we'd sorted that out from the discussion last time, and for my written thing confirming why I thought it was helpful to pre-decide at each session.
Of course now I'm back to wondering if I should just give up and am extra upset about that part.

Edit: I think I'll try and get up the nerve to talk to someone from the EAP service, find out how many sessions they offer and even if it's only like 3 sessions I could see if I can work on the workplace motivation stuff with them. Maybe that will help me forget about my therapist for the rest of the year.

Edit2: I'm also miserable today because I almost made it through the whole week without getting properly annoyed at something from work... And then failed first thing this morning cause of an email.

 

[gooblax]

I give up with this **** hey. Soon as the bill comes in for the session I might cancel my email account so I can't give in to any temptation. If I'm going to be weak needy pathetic and dependent then at least I won't be involving him in it anymore

 

[David Baxter PhD]

I give up with this **** hey. Soon as the bill comes in for the session I might cancel my email account so I can't give in to any temptation. If I'm going to be weak needy pathetic and dependent then at least I won't be involving him in it anymore

How will that help you, @gooblax?

 

[Daniel E.]

but it just seems like there's so much to cover so I was disappointed that we didn't get to anything else. It's hard because I can't help but invest so much emotionally into it, wanting to talk to him but then it's only an hour every 3-4 weeks.

Personally, I would consider that frequency to be more along the lines of maintenance therapy.

 

[David Baxter PhD]

Personally, I would consider that frequency to be more along the lines of maintenance therapy.

I agree. When you are actively working on issues, weekly is more effective, or every 2 weeks if you can't manage weekly.

 

[gooblax]

How will that help you, @gooblax?

It should help me to not contact him again cause it will be one small obstacle in the way. So maybe I will be able to eventually let go of these stupid feelings about him as a therapist, and me getting help etc because it won't even be in the table as an option anymore.

 

[David Baxter PhD]