Therapied Out

I can’t even begin to express how therapied out I am. I spent two hours in group last night and three hours today with the children. Listening and talking and talking and listening. I am so sick of my own feelings I want to never have to utter another breath about how I feel. Other than to say I feel tired.

The children and I met with their therapist today. She originally told me she wanted to just meet us. That to me means she wants to say hi and send us on our way. Apparently a therapist’s way of meeting with you is to have each child sit in her office for an hour and have a session. I am not objecting – it is just that I had no idea this was her intent. I sat in the waiting room while my son went in first. My daughter laid on the floor coloring and eating pez candy as I didn’t come prepared with much else for what I thought was a quick meet and greet.

She gave me six questionnaires to fill out, two for each of us. They were maddening. I had to circle the answers from 1 to 5 with the answers being Never, Sometimes, Often, Always and one other in between that I can’t even remember. I suppose to a therapist these questionnaires are helpful. They were not helpful for me.

One was about my family. Does your family support you? Always. Can you go to your family with your problems? Always. Do you find your family helpful with their suggestions? Sometimes. Is your family happy with you? I left that blank. How do I know? Drag them into therapy and ask them yourself! Do you wish you had a different family? I said Always. Who wouldn’t want to be related to someone else? No offense everyone, but if the band Foo Fighters wanted to be my family – I would trade in an instant!

Then there was the harder one – designed I guess to see if I am depressed. Do you feel sad? Do you feel lonely at night? Do you miss the person who died? Do you still love the person who died as much as the day they died? Do you avoid places that remind you of the person? Do you see hear the person’s voice in your head? Do you see the person standing in front of you? I should have just put a giant A for always across the entire page – it would have helped my wrist. Incidentally I did hear my husband’s voice as I was filling out the forms. He told me to grab the kids and run out! There were so many questions – all almost the same with a word changed here and there. Listen up therapist - I am joining a bereavement group with my children because my husband killed himself – these questions are ridiculous!

The questionnaires were pages and pages and pages that went on forever. I think I stopped reading after my son came out and my daughter went in and I couldn’t see anymore. I was getting delirious from lack of food and water and the chair was hurting my back. All I could focus on was what was going on in the other room. What were the children saying? Would they tell her they catch me sniffing my armpits? That I don’t wear a bra around the house? What family secrets were they disclosing? It was just too much for me.

The questions about the children were so generic I just didn’t know what to put. Does your child share toys? Do they eat too much or too little? Do they fight? Do they have trouble sleeping? Do they cry? Really? You want to know if they cry. I put Sometimes for almost everything! I have a four and six year old – they act like normal kids. Normal kids do all this stuff and more. The one question that threw me for a loop was: Does your child do anything strange? Strange for who? Me or the rest of the world? My children like Justin Bieber and I think it is strange. My daughter wears a bat man mask to dinner but I don’t think it is strange at all. What is strange is having me sit answering five hundred questions about my children. What is strange is that I don’t get a diploma in psychology when I am finished here!

By the time she brought me into her office – the kids were in the hallway doped up on pez candy and gum - and whatever else I fished out of my bag. She looked at me and said – do you have any questions for me? I just wanted to say – Doctor I have been here for three hours, can I go home now? But I didn’t. I told her I was fine and would ask her questions as they came up. She still wasn’t done with me. As the kids kept interrupting and sticking their heads in and I kept having to go out into the hall to shush them as other people were trying to have productive therapy. She looked at me and said – it must be like this all the time for you. They always need you and you are always doing things for them. Duh – I am the mom. Dead daddy or not. They would walk around him to ask me for something he was holding. Death or not I was and always will be the go to person.

I don’t mean to sound angry or bitter. I realize this is a great thing for the children and maybe even I will get something useful out of it. It has just been a long 24 hours. I can’t even think about therapy or feelings or questionnaires for a long time.

As we left and got on the train home we were all zonked. I asked the kids what the doctor asked. My son said – mom she asked me over sixty questions! I laughed and said I know exactly how you feel. They would not really tell me specifics – I didn’t push. I took them to the diner for chocolate chip pancakes for dinner. They deserved it!

So I did it. I took them to therapy and now in September we have to go back for ten more weeks of group. The therapist did sum up what the kids said to her. She told me my four year old was confused and my six year old was sad. She forgot to mention that I have carpel tunnel in my wrist from circling so many questionnaires!