Negotiating with demons
It's been yet another four months or so since I last wrote one of these things -- sorry if you're one of the few people out there who still reads these things. :/ I know I've drifted away with most of the people I've met on here; some of that is my fault, obviously, but some of that is definitely for the best (read this thread if you want to have some idea of what I'm talking about). As much as I'd like the attention, though, the main reason why I do these posts is for myself -- because if I don't write about what I've done, if I don't document all the things that have happened to me that got me to this point, I'll forget. And I really, really don't want to forget. So here goes:
••• I had to switch therapists. Thankfully, it wasn't because there was anything wrong with him or anything like that.
I go to a group practice for all my mental health stuff; before it had three psychiatrists, three psychiatric nurses, and three social workers, and they specialize in geriatric psychiatry as well as clinical trials for experimental medications. While I was at an appointment with my therapist in mid-August, he told me he had just found out he was being laid off, and that he was leaving at the end of the month. I thought I was going to have one more appointment with him -- until someone from the office called me earlier that week.
They were letting him go two days before the appointment. And no one saw fit to tell either him or me until then. Which, okay, isn't nearly the worst thing to happen, but the poor planning and timing really bothered me to no end. >_<;
Long story short, the practice is in some financial trouble, so they decided to raise funds by making one of the social workers quit and hiring more psychiatric workers because they charge more for their services. Never mind that no one in my family likes psychiatric nurses because they don't have the training or experience as MDs and can do therapy just as well as any social worker. And since my therapist was the oldest one of the three (and the one who was there the longest), he was let go. He'll still be practicing somewhere else, but it's a shame because we really got along after three years and I made some decent progress with his help. (He was the one that referred me to ASRC, and he sent us a condolence card when my dad's mom passed away last year.) :(
So in addition to seeing another therapist in the practice (the one I didn't see the first day I was there three years ago, who kept interrupting me at every possible opportunity), I've switched psychiatrists as well. The one I'd been "seeing" before was the practice's owner -- I put "seeing" in quotation marks because I only ever had one face-to-face appointment with him. His way of working could be summed up as, "Don't schedule a meeting with me unless you absolutely feel you need to." Correct me if I'm wrong, but here I thought a psychiatrist is supposed to see their patient at least once every few months for medicine management, even if the patient is a minor open-and-shut case. All the other shrinks I've seen have done that, so this left me a little peeved, but I went along with it because it was okay for what I needed at the time. Plus, my dad was not happy with him at all when it came to taking care of my grandmother (the one who died). He assumed she had full-blown dementia even though she had all her mental faculties except for her hearing voices, he wouldn't listen to my dad, and after a few appointments he practically threw his hands up and said there wasn't much more he could do. So yeah, he's a hack who's resting on his many accolades, and it doesn't surprise me he'd be responsible for the boneheaded decisions I mentioned above.
The psychiatrist I'm seeing now is newer and much younger; she's really the only other choice because the third psychiatrist is the owner's wife, and either she doesn't take new patients or only works in a research capacity. The good news is I like both her and the new therapist! It'll take a while for me to get used to both of them, of course, but it seems likely I won't have to go searching for someplace else to find help. ^_^;
••• An update to the BRS stuff I mentioned before: The work evaluation at the tea shop fell through. Essentially, the owner of the tea shop I was considering was supposed to move in to the new location in early July, but for some reason he didn't actually do it until mid-August. Then I had to wait until early September for both me and someone from the private job agency I use could have a face-to-face meeting with him. We were there for about forty minutes, but we only talked with him for half that time because he was too busy chatting up customers -- who came in after the place was supposed to have closed. The owner was nice enough and seemed interested, but I also got the impression he was really apprehensive about taking me on, even though it would have only been for two weeks and he wouldn't have to pay me. Not that I blame him -- it is a food service job, after all -- and he did give good reasons why I couldn't start ASAP, like how he needed time to see what days and times at the new location were the least busy, or how he needed to talk to his wife about it because she was also his business partner (which meant she should have been there interviewing us as well). But then he never got back in touch with any of us for the rest of the month. Ultimately, my contact at the job agency, my BRS counselor, and I all decided we spent way too much time trying to get this guy to cooperate, only to go absolutely nowhere. And since there aren't any other tea shops in the area we could consider, we all had another meeting last week to regroup and decide what else to do.
(BTW, after I came home from the "interview" my mom reminded me that the time I went there with my family around four years ago, we were waiting forever to get our check because tons of people had come in all at once. We had to walk to the front counter to pay for our breakfast, and we could've simply walked out without anyone noticing. After everything that happened, this made me realize the owner wouldn't have been a good person to learn from anyway. :/ )
So now there's been a change of plans: Over the weekend my counselor had me fill out one of those career assessment tests to see what it is I'm exactly interested in (not that I don't have some idea, but this test should help organize my thoughts a little better and maybe show some other careers I wouldn't have thought of before); within the next few weeks I'll have an appointment with him to go over the results, and then another appointment with him and the person I work with from the job agency to start looking for a new work evaluation site. In the meantime, I'm supposed to start looking for other jobs and volunteer work so I can get some more experience, especially anything involving the environment because.....well, that was my major, after all. :P I just really hope this goes as smoothly as possible and that I don't have to be waiting too much longer.
••• Speaking of jobs, I went to a job fair a few weeks ago that catered specifically to people with disabilities. So in addition to people with autism, there were blind people, deaf people, people in wheelchairs, etc. with plenty of resumes they were willing to give out. Sadly, there weren't a lot of companies there to begin with (there were probably less than 20 in total, and the whole thing fit in a relatively small hotel ballroom), and about half of them were either construction/manufacturing jobs or minimum-wage jobs at places like Lowe's. Fortunately, there were quite a few places that looked really interesting, and I got to speak with their representatives, give them copies of my resumes, and take some job applications. As someone who's been, shall we say, a bit lax on the job-hunting front, this was definitely promising. XD
The worst part about it, though, was that most of the companies started packing up and leaving way before the job fair was scheduled to end. It was supposed to run from 1 to 4 PM, but lots of people left around 3:15-3:30 because it had mostly cleared out by then. I was in a long line for one of the companies, and during that time some of the people I really wanted to talk to left! Needless to say, this infuriated me. If you've made a commitment to stay until 4 -- especially if it's a job fair for people with disabilities, who could really use these jobs -- you stay until 4. If someone can't make it until 3:45, they should be able to walk in and talk to people without having to worry about the place being almost empty. And some of those who left early belonged to state agencies, which was ~~~hilarious~~~ since both the state and the federal government helped put this on. My BRS counselor (the one who recommended me to go) wasn't too happy about it when I told him. It'd be great if the next job fair I go to doesn't have this problem, but I'm not going to spend mental energy hoping for something that just won't happen. >B[
••• I decided to try out another social group for adults with autism a couple of weeks ago, this time at Yale's Child Study Center. Someone who started going to my support group at ASRC a few months ago apparently has lots of connections at Yale, and he was able to work with a psychiatrist there who specializes in autistic adults to get this group going, which is meant for autistic adults and CSC employees to socialize and get to know each other better. It only lasted about an hour, and after introductions much of that time was playing charades. Which, well.....it's charades, you know? ^_^; But I still managed to enjoy myself. Plus, it was way better organized than the ASRC one I was going to last year, and while some of the autistic adults had to have minders/caretakers with them, at least none of them threw a tantrum and started flipping tables. That was a good sign of things to come, I think. 8D
Unfortunately, it only meets once a month, and it's during rush hour in New Haven, which means the streets are packed. But I'll keep going to them, if only because my new therapist and I agreed I should go to quite a few more of these get-togethers before I judge them on their own merits. Plus, this group is on Meetup, and now that I've joined I've noticed other different kinds of social groups that look appealing. I should probably start joining and going to those as well, just to get myself out of the house more often.......James says as he keeps being a lazy butt and doesn't actually do it. XDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD
••• Onto better things, I finally got around to using Duolingo to brush up on my Italian! It's been at least six freakin' years since I was in any kind of Italian class, and with everything that's been going on the past couple of months I figure now is as good of a time as any to get back into learning languages, and Italian -- the one I started learning in middle school -- is a good place to start. It's amazing how much I've retained after all these years -- I tested out of the first 15 lessons and I'm already on Level 10 -- but I'm also surprised at how much I've forgotten, and how much I never really learned at all. But I try to do a little bit of practice each day (the gamification helps), and I really hope I get as good at it as I was back in college fairly soon.
••• I also have two concerts I'll be going to with K. this fall! I'll be seeing Thurston Moore on October 23rd and The Pains of Being Pure at Heart on November 18th, both at The Space in Hamden. I'm more looking forward to the November one as I'm more of a fan of that band (even though I still haven't listened to their latest album yet -- oops. ._., ); I suggested the other one to K. because she's a huge fan of Sonic Youth. I've dragged her to bands I like more than her before, so I figure she should have the chance to return the favor. XD
••• A bullet point list of some other things going on in my life right now:
••• So not only did The Legend of Korra manage to start and finish Book 3 since the last time I wrote here, but they've started Book 4 too. I'm still surprised at how fast everything's moving. In a way, though, I'm glad we didn't have to wait long for Book 4, because although Book 3 was positively excellent, I think I've grown a bit apathetic to it -- mostly in the sense that I no longer feel an urge to watch it right when it comes out. Over the past two years I've been exposed to so much extreme emotion regarding this show, most of it on Tumblr -- from fans who absolutely hated the first season and swore it off to those who think it's perfect, that Korra is a goddess, etc. -- that I've burned out on seeing people talk about it and it's colored my view of the show.
But no, if you're one of those fans who swore it off after Book 1? I have an important message for you right now:
YOU. ARE. WRONG.
And you need to watch the rest of it because it's seriously gotten so much better. Book 3 is well-paced and suspenseful, everyone (even the villains) are much more well-rounded, the backstory with Lin's sister and her family is interesting, no love triangles -- basically, everything those "fans" wanted this show to be and more. (The only real problem I have is that some of the character development, especially Korra's, fell a little flat to me; we don't actually see her or the others grow and change as people, they just sorta do because the plot calls for it. Honestly, though, that's more of a nitpick than anything else.)
This io9 article should convince you to pick it up (again), or maybe what I wrote after Book 2 ended. It's worth your time, trust me. ;-)
••• I kinda know this is old news as well, but yay for Community getting un-cancelled and getting that sixth season after all! Though it does look like it'll be without Shirley; it's always a bummer when one of the characters leaves the show, and especially her because she was great. :(
••• Last but not least, I kinda really want this shirt. Normally I don't care for fandom T-shirts, but this is such a cool minimalist design that I just have to make an exception. (BTW, I finally got to see How to Train Your Dragon 2. Just as good as the first one, if not better. ~_^; )
Originally posted at http://quadruplify.dreamwidth.org/140533.html || Comments on original post:
••• I had to switch therapists. Thankfully, it wasn't because there was anything wrong with him or anything like that.
I go to a group practice for all my mental health stuff; before it had three psychiatrists, three psychiatric nurses, and three social workers, and they specialize in geriatric psychiatry as well as clinical trials for experimental medications. While I was at an appointment with my therapist in mid-August, he told me he had just found out he was being laid off, and that he was leaving at the end of the month. I thought I was going to have one more appointment with him -- until someone from the office called me earlier that week.
They were letting him go two days before the appointment. And no one saw fit to tell either him or me until then. Which, okay, isn't nearly the worst thing to happen, but the poor planning and timing really bothered me to no end. >_<;
Long story short, the practice is in some financial trouble, so they decided to raise funds by making one of the social workers quit and hiring more psychiatric workers because they charge more for their services. Never mind that no one in my family likes psychiatric nurses because they don't have the training or experience as MDs and can do therapy just as well as any social worker. And since my therapist was the oldest one of the three (and the one who was there the longest), he was let go. He'll still be practicing somewhere else, but it's a shame because we really got along after three years and I made some decent progress with his help. (He was the one that referred me to ASRC, and he sent us a condolence card when my dad's mom passed away last year.) :(
So in addition to seeing another therapist in the practice (the one I didn't see the first day I was there three years ago, who kept interrupting me at every possible opportunity), I've switched psychiatrists as well. The one I'd been "seeing" before was the practice's owner -- I put "seeing" in quotation marks because I only ever had one face-to-face appointment with him. His way of working could be summed up as, "Don't schedule a meeting with me unless you absolutely feel you need to." Correct me if I'm wrong, but here I thought a psychiatrist is supposed to see their patient at least once every few months for medicine management, even if the patient is a minor open-and-shut case. All the other shrinks I've seen have done that, so this left me a little peeved, but I went along with it because it was okay for what I needed at the time. Plus, my dad was not happy with him at all when it came to taking care of my grandmother (the one who died). He assumed she had full-blown dementia even though she had all her mental faculties except for her hearing voices, he wouldn't listen to my dad, and after a few appointments he practically threw his hands up and said there wasn't much more he could do. So yeah, he's a hack who's resting on his many accolades, and it doesn't surprise me he'd be responsible for the boneheaded decisions I mentioned above.
The psychiatrist I'm seeing now is newer and much younger; she's really the only other choice because the third psychiatrist is the owner's wife, and either she doesn't take new patients or only works in a research capacity. The good news is I like both her and the new therapist! It'll take a while for me to get used to both of them, of course, but it seems likely I won't have to go searching for someplace else to find help. ^_^;
••• An update to the BRS stuff I mentioned before: The work evaluation at the tea shop fell through. Essentially, the owner of the tea shop I was considering was supposed to move in to the new location in early July, but for some reason he didn't actually do it until mid-August. Then I had to wait until early September for both me and someone from the private job agency I use could have a face-to-face meeting with him. We were there for about forty minutes, but we only talked with him for half that time because he was too busy chatting up customers -- who came in after the place was supposed to have closed. The owner was nice enough and seemed interested, but I also got the impression he was really apprehensive about taking me on, even though it would have only been for two weeks and he wouldn't have to pay me. Not that I blame him -- it is a food service job, after all -- and he did give good reasons why I couldn't start ASAP, like how he needed time to see what days and times at the new location were the least busy, or how he needed to talk to his wife about it because she was also his business partner (which meant she should have been there interviewing us as well). But then he never got back in touch with any of us for the rest of the month. Ultimately, my contact at the job agency, my BRS counselor, and I all decided we spent way too much time trying to get this guy to cooperate, only to go absolutely nowhere. And since there aren't any other tea shops in the area we could consider, we all had another meeting last week to regroup and decide what else to do.
(BTW, after I came home from the "interview" my mom reminded me that the time I went there with my family around four years ago, we were waiting forever to get our check because tons of people had come in all at once. We had to walk to the front counter to pay for our breakfast, and we could've simply walked out without anyone noticing. After everything that happened, this made me realize the owner wouldn't have been a good person to learn from anyway. :/ )
So now there's been a change of plans: Over the weekend my counselor had me fill out one of those career assessment tests to see what it is I'm exactly interested in (not that I don't have some idea, but this test should help organize my thoughts a little better and maybe show some other careers I wouldn't have thought of before); within the next few weeks I'll have an appointment with him to go over the results, and then another appointment with him and the person I work with from the job agency to start looking for a new work evaluation site. In the meantime, I'm supposed to start looking for other jobs and volunteer work so I can get some more experience, especially anything involving the environment because.....well, that was my major, after all. :P I just really hope this goes as smoothly as possible and that I don't have to be waiting too much longer.
••• Speaking of jobs, I went to a job fair a few weeks ago that catered specifically to people with disabilities. So in addition to people with autism, there were blind people, deaf people, people in wheelchairs, etc. with plenty of resumes they were willing to give out. Sadly, there weren't a lot of companies there to begin with (there were probably less than 20 in total, and the whole thing fit in a relatively small hotel ballroom), and about half of them were either construction/manufacturing jobs or minimum-wage jobs at places like Lowe's. Fortunately, there were quite a few places that looked really interesting, and I got to speak with their representatives, give them copies of my resumes, and take some job applications. As someone who's been, shall we say, a bit lax on the job-hunting front, this was definitely promising. XD
The worst part about it, though, was that most of the companies started packing up and leaving way before the job fair was scheduled to end. It was supposed to run from 1 to 4 PM, but lots of people left around 3:15-3:30 because it had mostly cleared out by then. I was in a long line for one of the companies, and during that time some of the people I really wanted to talk to left! Needless to say, this infuriated me. If you've made a commitment to stay until 4 -- especially if it's a job fair for people with disabilities, who could really use these jobs -- you stay until 4. If someone can't make it until 3:45, they should be able to walk in and talk to people without having to worry about the place being almost empty. And some of those who left early belonged to state agencies, which was ~~~hilarious~~~ since both the state and the federal government helped put this on. My BRS counselor (the one who recommended me to go) wasn't too happy about it when I told him. It'd be great if the next job fair I go to doesn't have this problem, but I'm not going to spend mental energy hoping for something that just won't happen. >B[
••• I decided to try out another social group for adults with autism a couple of weeks ago, this time at Yale's Child Study Center. Someone who started going to my support group at ASRC a few months ago apparently has lots of connections at Yale, and he was able to work with a psychiatrist there who specializes in autistic adults to get this group going, which is meant for autistic adults and CSC employees to socialize and get to know each other better. It only lasted about an hour, and after introductions much of that time was playing charades. Which, well.....it's charades, you know? ^_^; But I still managed to enjoy myself. Plus, it was way better organized than the ASRC one I was going to last year, and while some of the autistic adults had to have minders/caretakers with them, at least none of them threw a tantrum and started flipping tables. That was a good sign of things to come, I think. 8D
Unfortunately, it only meets once a month, and it's during rush hour in New Haven, which means the streets are packed. But I'll keep going to them, if only because my new therapist and I agreed I should go to quite a few more of these get-togethers before I judge them on their own merits. Plus, this group is on Meetup, and now that I've joined I've noticed other different kinds of social groups that look appealing. I should probably start joining and going to those as well, just to get myself out of the house more often.......James says as he keeps being a lazy butt and doesn't actually do it. XDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD
••• Onto better things, I finally got around to using Duolingo to brush up on my Italian! It's been at least six freakin' years since I was in any kind of Italian class, and with everything that's been going on the past couple of months I figure now is as good of a time as any to get back into learning languages, and Italian -- the one I started learning in middle school -- is a good place to start. It's amazing how much I've retained after all these years -- I tested out of the first 15 lessons and I'm already on Level 10 -- but I'm also surprised at how much I've forgotten, and how much I never really learned at all. But I try to do a little bit of practice each day (the gamification helps), and I really hope I get as good at it as I was back in college fairly soon.
••• I also have two concerts I'll be going to with K. this fall! I'll be seeing Thurston Moore on October 23rd and The Pains of Being Pure at Heart on November 18th, both at The Space in Hamden. I'm more looking forward to the November one as I'm more of a fan of that band (even though I still haven't listened to their latest album yet -- oops. ._., ); I suggested the other one to K. because she's a huge fan of Sonic Youth. I've dragged her to bands I like more than her before, so I figure she should have the chance to return the favor. XD
••• A bullet point list of some other things going on in my life right now:
- Work is still going fairly well; right now I'm working on updating the listings in their resource guide, which means e-mailing and calling people to see if their information is still up-to-date (or if they're still in business), adding new people, etc. Again, it's tedious work, but I've strangely grown to like doing it as well. Plus, I've gotten a lot better at cold-calling people. :P
- My parents are spending a lot of time making improvements to the house. The roof has already been redone, my dad has almost finished repainting the den, and soon we're going to have our windows and shutters replaced and the hallway and our bedrooms repainted, and we're supposed to get a new sofa and carpet in the den on top of it. I just hope that the upstairs bathroom -- which has gone unfinished for twenty-six freaking years -- gets worked on too. >_>;
- My psoriasis is still mostly under control, but I had to stop the soriatane again because the pain in my knees came back. :/
- I found out a few months ago that one of my aunts has stage IV bone cancer; she had survived breast cancer a number of years ago, but now it looks like it came back. I haven't heard anything new about that since July, though, so I'll assume no news is good news. Still, even though I'm not close to this particular aunt -- and my parents and sister don't like her all that much anyway -- it's not a good thing to hear about, and I hope she's doing okay regardless.
- In better news, my cousin had a baby a few days ago! So now I have another.....second cousin? First cousin once removed? IDK, I'll have to look that up. ^_^;
••• So not only did The Legend of Korra manage to start and finish Book 3 since the last time I wrote here, but they've started Book 4 too. I'm still surprised at how fast everything's moving. In a way, though, I'm glad we didn't have to wait long for Book 4, because although Book 3 was positively excellent, I think I've grown a bit apathetic to it -- mostly in the sense that I no longer feel an urge to watch it right when it comes out. Over the past two years I've been exposed to so much extreme emotion regarding this show, most of it on Tumblr -- from fans who absolutely hated the first season and swore it off to those who think it's perfect, that Korra is a goddess, etc. -- that I've burned out on seeing people talk about it and it's colored my view of the show.
But no, if you're one of those fans who swore it off after Book 1? I have an important message for you right now:
YOU. ARE. WRONG.
And you need to watch the rest of it because it's seriously gotten so much better. Book 3 is well-paced and suspenseful, everyone (even the villains) are much more well-rounded, the backstory with Lin's sister and her family is interesting, no love triangles -- basically, everything those "fans" wanted this show to be and more. (The only real problem I have is that some of the character development, especially Korra's, fell a little flat to me; we don't actually see her or the others grow and change as people, they just sorta do because the plot calls for it. Honestly, though, that's more of a nitpick than anything else.)
This io9 article should convince you to pick it up (again), or maybe what I wrote after Book 2 ended. It's worth your time, trust me. ;-)
••• I kinda know this is old news as well, but yay for Community getting un-cancelled and getting that sixth season after all! Though it does look like it'll be without Shirley; it's always a bummer when one of the characters leaves the show, and especially her because she was great. :(
••• Last but not least, I kinda really want this shirt. Normally I don't care for fandom T-shirts, but this is such a cool minimalist design that I just have to make an exception. (BTW, I finally got to see How to Train Your Dragon 2. Just as good as the first one, if not better. ~_^; )
Originally posted at http://quadruplify.dreamwidth.org/140533.html || Comments on original post: