my appointment with dr. barry, and no goodbye

so i saw dr. barry this morning. i left to go see her at 8:30. it was pouring rain so i left nitro at home. i had a bit of a wait because dr. barry doesnt come in until 9:30 because she gets her kids off to school first. she saw me at around 10 AM. i told her how anxious i was about saying goodbye to karen. then she said it wont be happening today…karen got called away to a meeting. she said you can wait until 11 AM until karen comes back if you want, or we can leave it until next week. i decided i’d wait until next week. i dont want to rush the goodbye. dr. barry encouraged me to internalise the positive things about our relationship and remember the good things about karen. she said its very positive the fact that I was able to forge a relationship with karen despite my attachment issues and trauma issues. she said i could have put boundaries up and distanced myself and not engaged fully with karen but i didnt do that. she praised me and said that i did a great job. we talked about therapy and eileen being on break. i was telling her how i find the space hard to deal with. i find when eileen isnt there it feels like there is this huge distance between us. i need to hear her voice or have some tangible way of connecting with her. otherwise the space just feels like this huge gaping hole. i think she got it. she seemed to understand. she asked me what resources i was using and we talked about my blog and twitter and my email support group. she said those were all good resources. we also talked about reaching out to friends and using grounding techniques that I’e learned. i told her that in therapy i’d worked with eileen and created a room that is like eileens office and eileen is internalised in there and when we need to we go in there and bring eileen in there with us. she thought that was a great idea. we talked about sleep and i told her i am not sleeping again. over the past few days i’ve gotten about 8 hours sleep in total. she said that wasnt good. she asked if i’d like to go back on a sleeping tablet for a week. at first i said no. then she said it might be a good idea just to get my sleep pattern regulated again. she said she could write me an emergency prescription for halcion. so i took that and will go back on it for 7 days. we talked about meds then. i was telling her how a couple of years ago i was on 40 mg of valium and she said that benzos are so addictive and she doesnt mind prescribing them short term but long term she said its not good prescribing practice to use them for patients. i agree. she said we may try lamictal again if my mood doesnt lift. but i’m already on depokate and keppra and lyrica so another anticonvulsant med might not work or might cause unnecessary side effects. she said we’d wait and see. i’ll see her next week and then the following week she’s on vacation because her kids are going back to school and so she’s taking the week off to be with them. i told her that i’d need to prepare for that. its crazy how i get so worked up and need to prepare for every vacation she takes. it makes me feel like i am abnormal. but i literally do need to prepare myself before she goes. its like i need to build myself up to it. she reminded me that its only a week and she’d be back before i know it. so i have another week now to ruminate about karen leaving and to get all anxious and worked up about the goodbye. i’m trying not to but its so hard. i showed dr. barry the card i’d maded for karen and she said it was very touching and she thought karen would love it. i hope she will.

Author: Carol anne

I am in my mid 40's. I'm blind and I have dissociative identity disorder, I also have complex PTSD. I blog about my life with these disorders. I live in Ireland. View all posts by Carol anne