Mantra for therapy: "Did not get eaten."

Pretty sure Lewis and Clark made it back and did not get eaten by anything.

The Simpsons' take on history isn't accurate? t gasp

I have a pill prescribed. I hope it's enough.

What is it/what dose?

Don't know yet. I guess I could have asked. I just said that I hoped it was potent, and she said it worked for most people. Which is what the MRI person said about the big machine.

Lewis and larke made it back ok, but one or the other of them had a shady-as-heck death afterwards.

Not completely relevant.

But it's all I have at the moment.

My therapist called my well-worn anxiety track the "Robin Death Spiral." She advised me to learn to recognize it and then do what I had to to to get sucked into it YET AGAIN. It took a long time, and anti-anxiety drugs helped a lot, but learning that I did not have to go down that path was huge.

The Lexapro got the anxiety to not be so manic so I could hold it still and examine it. Such a relief.

My inner yelling voice was always screaming because if I did or didn't do something then the consequences would break me.

And then some of those things started happening and I didn't break.

Bit also my therapist talks about inner parent and I need child and being an adult. The other break through was when I stopped seeing the inner critic as some kind of monster and I saw it as just another part of me and it stopped being such an adversary

Bit also my therapist talks about inner parent

My therapist, over the course of EMDR therapy to help me redirect old neural pathways, talked a lot about my learning to be the adult my inner, very skeptical and over-responsible child needed. Or as she put it, "You're the Head Witch. Remember that".

(She also told me that while taking advice from a stuffed bunny was kind of crazy, he's never given me *wrong* advice, so I should keep listening to him.)

learning to be the adult my inner, very skeptical and over-responsible child needed.

That's where I'm stuck. My therapist and I have been talking about this a lot (though my child is over-responsible and pant-shitting terrified of the responsibility because she's pretty sure it's going to lead to us living in a cardboard box under an overpass) (she's also SUPER resentful and angry about the responsibility, so it's a fun bundle of volatile emotions), and I cannot get to a point where I learn to be the adult that 12-year-old Steph needs. (Partly because I deeply resent having to be responsible for anyone else, which apparently includes myself.) (Ugh. This is why I'm still in therapy.)

(though my child is over-responsible and pant-shitting terrified of the responsibility because she's pretty sure it's going to lead to us living in a cardboard box under an overpass) (she's also SUPER resentful and angry about the responsibility, so it's a fun bundle of volatile emotions)

My sister? There was a whole lot of "What did she need to hear? What would you do if you were the adult in that situation?" which was hard, because getting to where I could admit that Mom loved me, but was profoundly messed up and not a very emotionally present parent felt like constant betrayal.

In conclusion: therapy is fucking hard, and anyone putting themselves through it gets pink and black sparkly stars from me.