A little oasis.

I started seeing a new therapist this week.

I had actually seen my old therapist for 10 years and then one Friday three weeks ago I talked to her and she said the next week was her last week. Just like that. But for some reason I haven't grieved over that, although I think I might be mad (just trying to gauge what emotions I am having) at how lousy the County system is.

I'm getting out of the County system that I have been in for 15 years and going to use my private insurance that I now have after my marriage. It's taken their charging unbelievable amounts of money for services and being pushed out of the system to finally get me to do it. So maybe it was a good thing that she bailed on me.

So this new therapist experience is really amazing. I think I may have mentioned months ago how I was blown away by the waiting room alone (I saw her once then we had to get an insurance issue fixed, so seeing her this week was our second meeting). It's full of positive sayings, real chairs with pillows, a little waterfall, beautiful music playing and positivity oozing all over the place. So it's like walking into a little oasis off the street.

My new therapist seems very understanding of bipolar. She discussed that she feels that bipolar can be a difficult illness to treat and that for some mental disorders meds don't seem as important as they do for bipolar. That it's 60% importance of the meds, 40% talking/psychotherapy - which I agree with. As a person who has been doing this for twenty years (taking meds and do the talking therapy) I see that assessment and agree with it, for myself.

I seem to cry every time I see this woman. I think she is still trying to assess me, well I know she is, so she has to ask a lot of stirring up questions.

I cried this time having to do with why I relate to Patty Duke's 'A Brilliant Madness' so much when I was feeling my lowest (I couldn't do much more than breathe or surround myself with Pugs on the couch and then I picked up that book off my shelves and Could Not put it down. Read like 80 pages without thinking about it). I tried to tell the therapist that I cry thinking of the larger picture of bipolar, what a monster it is, then I stop crying as I tell her about the book, because someone understands so completely as they honestly recount their life going through it, leaving no detail unspared. I love Ms. Anna Michaels (Patty's real name) for it. Thank you, Anna.