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I made the two phone calls. One was accepting new patients and one was not so it was easy to narrow down my choices. I made the appointment. I called my insurance company for the appropriate referral number. Then I waited. While I waited, I proceeded to freak out.
Upon meeting my therapist that first day, I was pleasantly surprised. I remember that she dressed intelligently but with her own flair and that she wore unique shoes. Shoes can tell a lot about a person, you know! I found her easy to talk to even though, at that point in my life, sharing my adoption story was still one of my hardest ventures. She nodded her head. She understood things that others had not. More over, she was able to tell me that I was not a failure at life but help me form a plan to get me to the point where I could feel like a success. She might be magic.
After a meeting with the psychologist as well, it was decided that I was also dealing with General Anxiety Disorder. When I told my Mother this, she did not seem surprised. It seems that over the years, I’ve always shown some issues with anxiety. Could someone have told me? In my mind, I thought I was reacting to certain situations in an age appropriate manner. For example, when my Mom took me to auditions for a church singing group when I was the awful age of thirteen, I pinched her arm the whole way there and almost made myself throw up. She recalls that particular event with great detail. For me, it is hazy. Other events turned out in similar fashion including the unplanned pregnancy. Part of me wishes I had known of my anxiety disorder so that I could have handled things in a better way but, past is past. Right?
I was put on medication to help me get through the craziness that is new Motherhood, postpartum hormonal fluctuations and some pretty nasty anxiety to boot. Once I hit an even keel, my therapist and I made some good progress. I had some issues with properly expressing anger. For example, I would let things go… go…. go… until I blew up. I had some issues with closure and letting go of certain things. I had some issues with assertiveness. Basically, I had some issues.
Yet she didn’t judge me. Even on days when I walked into her office, on the verge of tears from the doorway, explaining how such-and-such a thing had triggered a memory of the pregnancy with Munchkin and how I felt like such an awful failure… she let me talk. She would then talk in a rational, logical fashion. She did not ever tell me I was wrong. She just encouraged me to look at things from a different view.
She has experience with adoptive parents, adoptees and, gasp, birthparents. Her experience with open adoption is limited to only a few cases, however, she has done research on the subject. She attempts to analyze what I tell her and offer the appropriate feedback, be it a challenge or a word of encouragement. Challenges aren’t always easy, of course. It’s not always fun or simple to look inside and dig deeper for the reason behind a certain emotion. It is also not a box full of sunshine to admit the things that you’ve done wrong, especially to yourself. She’s helped me deal with the emotions that learning more about myself have brought up over time. I’m learning as we go. It’s interesting. And frightening!
I still feel like a failure. I am a perfections at heart. However, her homework assignments, insights, tips, advice and general goodwill have brought me peace of mind. Our next step together is the gradual weaning off of my medication so that Josh and I may begin to attempt conceiving again sometime in 2007. That will bring a whole new ball of anxiety into the picture (health issues, etc) and so we’ll be working on natural relaxation techniques.
I’m just lucky to have found her.
Tomorrow I’ll offer some tips to firstparents (but anyone could use them) for finding a decent therapist.
Illustration from images.com.
