Roll the window down, this cool night air is curious
I went to therapy today. As usual, i was worried about it and scared and thought it was pointless and generally didn't want to go. But i did.
In a way, i'm glad i did. It was a bit different today. Strange. I didn't like it very much, but it did feel like it was more...i don't know...relevant...than any session i've had any time recently.
She wanted to ask me some questions. As in, an actual written questionnaire, from some book she had. This straight away appealed to me - i like questionnaires. Ok, so i had to answer these questions verbally, which isn't anywhere near as good as when i get to fill in a questionnaire by ticking boxes or circling the most relevant answer or whatever (i do like those), but still. I like questionnaires. Something to do with structure, perhaps.
One thing i didn't like, however, is that she kept the title at the top of the page covered. I didn't like that at all. It's bad enough when she's asking me questions out of her own head and i'm not sure where she's going, but i did not like answering an actual questionnaire without knowing what it was about at all. Especially these sort of questions.
They were difficult questions, i found. Very difficult. Each one was structured "Some people find that...(when doing this this happens)...How often do you find this?" and then i had to choose ten, twenty, thirty etc percent. But it was difficult. So firstly, there was the struggle in terms of, how often in relation to what? All time? As in, how big a percentage of a twenty four hour day? Or how big a percentage of the times when i'm doing whatever the activity suggested is do i have that experience? It was difficult. A couple of times i even asked her, but she wasn't very helpful. And the second difficulty was that the questions were a little vague in their wording at times.
The questions were about things like remembering things vividly, forgetting things, feeling detached from things, "getting lost" in films/tv, daydreaming, drastic changes in mood/personality...dissociation stuff. Only, it wasn't until she said at the end that she thought i might have some sort of dissociation thing going on that that occurred to me. All i could think up until that point was that these questions sounded very serious compared to all the usual mindfulness/putting words to thoughts/noticing negative feelings waffle she's usually on about.
So yeah. Dissociation. Not something i've actually thought about, oddly. Hence the not recognising the symptoms in the questions. I haven't really looked into it itself. I only recognise the term because it's a word that tends to crop up on other symptoms lists/descriptions of things. I'm a bit...i don't know really. I guess it's odd to have her actually refer to an actual...thing in relation to me. She just doesn't use actual terms. I don't think she's ever even used the term "depression" in reference to me. And it's especially weird to hear a term that i just wasn't expecting. Like i said, i've never thought about it.
So, symptoms i have covered. My next task is to find out how it relates to other things.