My ongoing therapy dilemma

[gooblax]

It's not about selfishness or doing the right thing.

He is a therapist. It is not your job to take care of him or protect him. It's up to him to look after himself.

Therapy is perhaps the only place anywhere that is totally about you. That is not being selfish. That's what therapy is for and what it's designed to be.

I get that theoretically but then it's like if it's simplified to just a transaction of money for selfishness then it's easy on his side to get fed up with the arrangement and end it. So it's not actually ok at all.

And with OCD, two common feelings are guilt and doubt. And so it's easy for the brain to feel the guilt and then stay stuck on a reason/rationale to feel guilty. Like how depressed people will rationalize their depression.

I guess that makes sense.

 

[Daniel E.]

I get that theoretically but...

"Yeah, but..." is a common theme in this thread.

 

[gooblax]

"Yeah, but..." is a common theme in this thread.

I could always use the Aussie "yeah nah" or "nah yeah" so you don't know which is which

 

[David Baxter PhD]

I love that "yeah nah" or "nah yeah"... I never know which one means what.

I love watching the Ozzieman videos and he uses both a lot. 🤣

 

[gooblax]

I think I primarily say "yeah nah" but my meaning could be either

 

[gooblax]

Maybe I'll just ask about reducing session frequency by another week, only because doing that will make me feel upset - which I deserve to feel due to my other feelings. I think this round of self-upsetting tonight is enhanced by hormone stuff.

 

[David Baxter PhD]

Maybe I'll just ask about reducing session frequency by another week, only because doing that will make me feel upset - which I deserve to feel due to my other feelings. I think this round of self-upsetting tonight is enhanced by hormone stuff.

I don't see the benefit of that at all.

 

[gooblax]

Leaving work soon to get home for my appointment, but I'm in a bit of a 'sabotage the session' mood.

 

[gooblax]

He spent most of the time talking about how to approach the clothes shopping problem so there wasn't much of a chance for me to sabotage it anyway.

I asked his thoughts on changing to 4 weeks instead of 3 but told him the reason I was thinking about it. After discussing "changing for the right reason" rather than a negative reason, I decided to stick with 3 weeks for now. He made the mistake of saying that he'd reply if I emailed to ask for help with the clothing thing, which set off a negative spiral given the track record of email difficulties. He apologised for saying it and not realising it was a trigger. And otherwise said all the right stuff in a 'support' sense although I wasn't absorbing much of it.

I did get some stuff out of the clothing discussion, including reiterating the idea that shop assistants don't really care what I'm buying and what I'm planning on doing with it after I've bought it.

 

[Daniel E.]

I did get some stuff out of the clothing discussion, including reiterating the idea that shop assistants don't really care what I'm buying and what I'm planning on doing with it after I've bought it.

Reminds me of the old show on British TV: "Are You Being Served?"

 

[gooblax]

Reminds me of the old show on British TV: "Are You Being Served?"

I only saw maybe 1 episode of that as a kid plus a couple of scenes here and there, but every time I hear about it I can't figure out whether the title is a play on words or if it's meant to be taken at face value. The amount of time I've spent thinking about that vastly exceeds the amount of time I've spent watching it. So I'd certainly welcome any input to put that line of enquiry to rest.

It's so hard dealing with my psych but at least he acknowledged the difficulty and how much better it's going now that we've both found ways to adjust and communicate differently. He was saying that he doesn't dread our sessions and that having me as a client isn't a negative for him so I don't need to make assumptions about that or quit or have fewer sessions for that reason. Moments after the session I had another thought about quitting for the exact same reasons as usual but I was able to put it aside. It's just difficult, even when it shouldn't be.

 

[Daniel E.]

I take the title of the show mostly at face value, i. e. "the title was supposed to be the greeting by a salesperson to a customer in a British store." But given the lack of quality of the customer service in the show, I would agree there is a double meaning in the title.

 

[gooblax]

I'm really nervous about shopping today. Last night I stayed up an extra 2-3 hours dreading it. I'm glad that I took the whole "emailing my psych" out of the question though, because I know when I get to the shops and start having to deal with the anxiety I would've been tempted to email him, then stress out about whether it's ok or not, and remember that his promises about replying are meaningless, etc. etc. and just make the situation worse. Hopefully I've had my little sook about that in advance and won't have to do it in the store.
It's about 30mins before I can leave to go there since they don't open until 10am.

 

[David Baxter PhD]

It won't be nearly as bad as you think...

 

[gooblax]

I made it as far as trying something on. Predictably that was a disaster because of my body shape. At least I made it out of the shop without having to talk to the assistant afterwards.

Would it be ridiculous to have a jacket that can never be done up? I feel like the whole thing is fucked. Like this wouldn't be any easier trying to get women's clothes that I like because I don't fucking like them. I tried a women's clothing shop, tried looking at the jackets there and I just don't like the styles so that won't be an improvement.

I can't just cancel on the party because it's like a wedding thing where she's spending money on the number of bookings so that would be a total shit move. But there's no way to get something that I'm going to not look like a freak wearing so that's probably more offensive to attend looking like I do.

 

[Daniel E.]

There has to be jackets/suits that are better fitting, e.g:

Does it matter if I can't button my suit jacket? It fits well in the arms and shoulders, I just happen to be too fat to fasten a button. If I had sized up it would've looked too big and sloppy. - Quora

Each brand has its own cut, so you might be able to find a suit that fits you well both in the shoulders and in the waist.

Or you can go custom. Nowadays there are a lot of online made-to-measure suit companies that will make a suit for you measurements at a price of a regular quality off-the-peg suit...

It is not worth purchasing if you can’t button it. Many suits today are cut slim. You will need to find a suit brand that features a wider cut in the body. Usually, they are referred to as traditional fit or classic fit or regular fit. These suits will fit you well in the shoulders while giving you more room in the waist. Seek out brands that are purchased by mature businessmen such as Brooks Brothers, Hart Schaffner & Marx, and Jos. A. Bank. They have experience fitting suits to a wide range of body types.

It's the same thing with the polo shirts I buy. Some are more flattering than others. I recently was lucky enough to get one online that fit well (while I am losing my pandemic weight gain). But it was just a shot in the dark since I liked the logo of the shirt (a dog logo).

 

[David Baxter PhD]

I made it as far as trying something on. Predictably that was a disaster because of my body shape. At least I made it out of the shop without having to talk to the assistant afterwards.

Would it be ridiculous to have a jacket that can never be done up? I feel like the whole thing is fucked. Like this wouldn't be any easier trying to get women's clothes that I like because I don't fucking like them. I tried a women's clothing shop, tried looking at the jackets there and I just don't like the styles so that won't be an improvement.

I can't just cancel on the party because it's like a wedding thing where she's spending money on the number of bookings so that would be a total shit move. But there's no way to get something that I'm going to not look like a freak wearing so that's probably more offensive to attend looking like I do.

See if the shop offers alterations. I always needed that with suits since my shirt and jacket sizes are larger than my pants size. There was no way a suit off the rack was going to fit me ever.

But a decent shop can do wonders to alter the fit for an individual.

 

[gooblax]

There's no time for me to get to a point where I'm going to be able to tolerate alterations in store.
Plus it's going to be weeks before I'll relax enough to be able to go into that first store again. I managed to try on pants at a different shop. Then just online ordered the pants and a jacket sized similarly to the one I tried on in the other store. Then I'll find an alterations store to get the pant and sleeve lengths fixed up. I'm sure there's nothing they can do for my stomach/waist/hip problem. It's going to be pathetic and look ridiculous but it's all I can do at this point.

Meanwhile we've got another covid outbreak as an offshoot of Sydney's one of alpha strain (not the delta that they have in Sydney) but they went to a hell of a lot of locations over the span of a week when they were infectious. So the shopping centre I went to today is probably going to become a retrospective exposure site.

 

[David Baxter PhD]

Well you made some significant decisions and significant progress on the suit front. Don't forget to recognize that accomplishment when you're feeling self-critical.

 

[gooblax]

I don't know that wasting money on something that I'm still going to feel ridiculous and self conscious wearing, and it's going to draw attention for how bad it looks not just to me but visibly to others as well, can count as a positive achievement. There's just no winning scenario.