Ayn's Multiple World

Walking close to the edge again

Good morning. This is me. It’s Friday morning and it’s 8 am and we’re in the middle of a WONDERFUL day off! Woohoo!!! Mr. Chief is enjoying that also though he’s stated clearly he would like a little less clutter on my desk. Ack … Kitties!

We’d gotten up about 3 ½ hours ago, but we did what we shouldn’t have … followed our Sweetie Pie back into the bedroom when he was getting dressed. We know better. As soon as we curl up on his bed to watch we’re like overcome with sleepiness. We just want to cuddle-up under his blankets and let his pillows carry us to sleep. Well … after that it’s like we lost 3 hours of up time for sleep time. I hope that it proves that we make good use of all that time later during the day.

Officially, now we’re into our 4 day vacation. It’s SOO grand. We’ve got Charlotte Church and Josh Groben in the background, hugging our kitty in the foreground and trying to avoid that we should be taking our medicine in the middle minds of our head. Maybe in a few when we get tired of holding our kitty – though he’s been known to wait patiently on the table knowing we would return.

Whoops we unsettled him with a couple of long pets. He wanted to stretch out, but there wasn’t any room for it. BUT, there are advantages. Typing is so much faster without a big furball in the middle. I know medicine, right?

Ok, that is done, but there’s some little problem that we’re a little grumbly over. I appear to have left my cord for the iPod on my desk at work. I had brought it down to put on the Me stuff and didn’t have time for it. Damn … plus I left it on last night because it won’t turn on now. Damn, Damn. I don’t want to go for four days without it. I called and left a message for Rich … he had thought about going in to St. Rose, but might have changed his plans because I told him that we were closed for the day. I did have the information though that our checks were in … so if he were going that direction he might pick up both of them. I would just have to know he’s going in so I could call Sr. Theresa so she would know it’s ok to give it to him.

We’ll have to see now if he calls back … usually he’s pretty good with messages. We also took the time to order our medicine because we’ll be out of it by tonight. Maybe I will have to arrange a time out to pick up medicine, money, cord, AND go to the gym. I’m thinking about 3 pm would be a good time to hit the gym. That would leave me about 4-5 hours to write. Lordy … we don’t think that will be enough, but maybe by then we will have done as much as we had hoped to do. Rich didn’t realize we were off today so I don’t think he was planning to be around. I think he has a game actually. It would be kind of nice to actually go with him, but I don’t know if he’s budgeted a time to come home to pick us up. AND it might interfere with some of the other plans. I wouldn’t want to go if the iPod wasn’t charged up.

We’re also looking for when we are going to meet up with Maury … he has to work the next two days, but he might have been stopping by after work one of these days. We’re still looking to get his CDs so we have more of a musical choice. Really frustrated that I left that cord at work. Really didn’t want to go down there today on my first day off. It relays some kind of dependence. BUT, I do need that check as well. Hmm, let’s hope Rich makes the trip … the worst case scenario that I go to the gym early and that he comes home and wants to take me to the game with him. WOOHOO!! That would be the ideal way to spend the day off.

I can’t complain about yesterday though. Poor Rich … when he came home last night we met him in the kitchen … as is probably our signature style … we have to check him out to make sure all the parts are in good working order. That led to another foray in the bedroom. Shoot, I am really liking this gym idea. Seems to be making us feel pretty healthy. Hmm, we might have to plan time to get in early enough to charge batteries before going to the gym. Drat I forgot about that. Well … we’ll let the planning go for a bit until we hear back from Rich.

Hmm, there was something bad that happened yesterday. I seem to have gotten caught up in the earphone cord and I walked over one of the buds. There’s still sound coming out from it, but I damaged it from the level that was there. I was ok with listening to one … it seems better to listen in one ear while one ear is free to listen to people talking. I did that all day … actually for a couple of days. Sister hasn’t said anything yet, but I don’t know if she will. That might be coming.

I’ve irritated her over the last couple of days because I had been helping Sister Florine. Yesterday she told Sr. that I wasn’t going to be helping her anymore. I came back and said sometime to sister later, but pretty much it was a bitter idea for Sister.

She really hates for staff to be talking … She said that Margarita and Imelda could help her. But, both were gone this week and I know that Margarita has too much work just straightening up the beads to be packaged and sent out. She has about 4 days work in front of her. Hopefully, we’ve at least raised enough awareness in that Sr. will assure that Florine gets more help.

I also told Sr. the problems with Sr.s work. I told her she’s very slow and I told her that many of the beads come back not tied tightly or the counts are off. I told her I didn’t think she was counting all of them before she collected them at the end of the day. Sr. Theresa was cranky about the whole thing, but we’re not going to be able to do anything else about it. I’ll let things fall where they are as often happens when Sr. steps in. I brought it up a few times and sister just got more frustrated with me … we left on shaky terms. I can’t go there with her though … her minds made up and with good reason. I am really behind enough so that I shouldn’t be there. In that respect she’s right. It’s just that Sr. Florine needs help. It also affects me when I have to come in the morning and things aren’t caught up or the tables aren’t set-up for work.

The other big deal of the day is that Karla is officially coming back. Yesterday it flooded me what that all meant. Karla had felt like she was over-worked before and that the paper work was too much for her. And, now I have to plan for her. But, she said before that my stuff was too hard. I’m grateful to be getting out of the time being spent with the group, but it’s still taking time to set-up her plan … and I don’t know how much grief I’m going to get for being too complicated.

There was another part where I had to talk to Sr. Theresa. I let her make the decision of what to be doing with the goals. I said that either Karla would get all the goals in two days, or we could and should split it between Imelda having 3 goals on Monday and Karla having 3 goals on each of her two days. That’s what really makes the most sense. That’s the way that Sr. decided to go. 9 goals would have been a lot. I reminded sister that we’d had trouble with Karla before doing goals and paper work … she said that it was too much. So now I have to worry about her being able to do the goals that are set up for her. It was a big pain in the neck when I was working on it at the end of the day. I remembered as I started to work on things Karla refusing to work with me … she said things were too hard and she wasn’t smart enough to do what we’d asked her to do. I think that’s going to be a source of friction between us and the part of her being in the back.

I also asked Sr. if she was going to have the desk in the back – Candice’s old desk between Rich and us. Fortunately, she said that I don’t think she needs that much space. I had to agree. I really didn’t want her back there. I think though that she’s going to have enough time to do her planning on her own because Thursday she gets out of an hour for Town Hall and Friday she gets out an hour for the Thinking Group. The good part though is that she’s going to be doing Food Prep. That part was worrying me. I really didn’t do well with cooking. I dreaded it as much as tying up my entire day to be working on things.

Karla is also going to have to be writing progress notes. I don’t think she did well with that before either. But, as we said earlier, she has an hour at the end of her days. We’ll have to figure out who’s going to be marking the sheets on the two days that there are just the three clients. Rightfully, Karla should be taking that over too, but again we have to assess competency.

I think we’re seeing problems already … we were hasty in trying to get out of doing the group time to be accepting her, but the longer I studied the situation, the more fears I was feeling.

I talked to sister about it when we’d by chance met up in the art room – her locking up and me looking for a book. Sr. was defensive … she said well it’s been a while, maybe that she’s changed and that we have to give her the benefit of the doubt.

But, I have a dark foreboding sense that we’re just backing ourselves into a complicated corner. I also remember that she and Maria and Brandi were pretty tight. I’m not sure how much trouble she’s going to cause that way. I’ve got to let go of thinking of it to calm down.

I do know that she’s starting next week after the long vacation. Let’s move on ok?

Yesterday, there was a pretty big event going on. St. Rose had their client picnic. But, it was going to and did rain, so sister decided to have the event at the center instead of dragging everyone out to the park. That turned out to be a good idea, because after an hour of being outside the rain started to come down. I was dismissed from having to do all that. But, after it started to rain, the leadership group came back in and needed some supervision. I’d let them go on for a while, but then two of the girls started bickering with each other. It was set-up to be computer time so we let that go on in the background while we loosely chatted with everyone to see how they were doing.

One of the girls goes often to the casinos with her mother and uncle and friends. She turned out to win a big pot and wanted to talk about that … she got a small leather carrying case for her phone and a sparkly red cap, plus they stayed overnight and went to the spa where she got a full massage. I try hard to listen to things that are important to them … but, sometimes I don’t feel my heart is where it should be. It’s like a practice of listening more than really wanting to get involved in their lives.

I am more orientated to doing lessons than sitting around chatting. I get a little bored and restless with it.

Sister hinted strongly that we should be with the group with the lunch and celebration afterward. I tried my best to sit patiently with a couple of people who weren’t as socially accepted and had ended up with each other and no common ground.

I had squeezed in the lunch part though in the staff room with Margarita before sister caught up with us. So then we wandered around the room a bit saying hi to others before the main party event was to happen. There were two piñatas.

The piñatas were hard to watch. Because there were too many people too close for a piñata on the wall and for someone turned around with a bat and blindfolded to be swinging. Theresa did the majority of that, but sometimes she stood back when the person started swinging. She was protecting herself, but that left people in the crowd a little more vulnerable. It was for the most part though a very fun event for the group. They maintained their interest. The lower functioning clients went first and they did a great job of pounding the hell out of the candy-laden animals, and then the stronger guys had their turn, and last some of the staff took their turn. It took a whole lot for the piñatas to be broken open and then there were mad scrambles for the candy.

I didn’t like that part, because it was just the stronger more aggressive clients that were getting the best grabbing spots. And, then they were hard pressed to share any of their candy with the clients who were less able to fend for themselves.

Fortunately, Sr. had other things to be giving away. She had a couple large bags of candy, some power horns – for football, baseball, etc., and she had a very large box of small stuffed animals that were very nice. People were getting two to three animals. They had a great amount of fun with it. It was like Christmas in August. The groups went back to their rooms for the last half hour – 45 minutes. I stayed with them for a bit, but then I got side-tracked to the front where I’d gone to get a few numbers from Sr. Florine. She was with her friends that had helped to sponsor the party, but that’s about when we had run into Sr. Theresa.

She was sitting back in a chair looking exhausted. We sat and talked for a little about various things, but then she noticed that books were missing from a crate left by old staff that she was going to be going through. The clients were able to tell her that one aggressive client had taken it upon herself to distribute the books, which infuriated the sister. She reclaimed the books from wrong spots the client had put the books, and then she placed them in a corner bookshelf she’d brought in. It was an improvement from how the books were established before because now they were grouped by subject matter.

Like I said though … Sr. and I ran into our problems and so we figured the best place to go was back to our office. She reminded me one last time that we were to be working on the lesson plan, so we figured we might as well start that project.

One of the sessions – on social skills we had to hunt and hunt to retrieve old books. So, we made a plan for a listening skill. It was all put down on one sheet of paper. And there will be a page distributed to the clients for the project. It is only an hour exercise. Basically, I changed the names so that it was easier for the clients to identify with, but basically, Margarita was said to be given a new job at a place called Theresa’s-to-go. Her first job responsibility was to build a big Jake’s burger. The staff is to read through the instructions and skills we were looking for and then she was to read a short story of ingredients to go into the Jake burger, and the clients were to listen and then build their own burger on the pictured worksheet. I put down that they were to draw, and then hopefully label the pictures with ingredients.

I thought it was a simple enough exercise … and it was spelled out, but I think that Karla is going to complain because she has to read the paper. Most of it was the story itself which was 2/3’s the sheet and that was because I’d spaced out the ingredients so they’d be easy for her to list. We’ll see what happens on Thursday. Sister said though to stick to social skills as an extra project for her other than the goals. The time she will be working on the goals, the others will be working on the computer doing for one the fun stuff, and for two the sections on how their work went, what did they learn, and if there was anything they wanted to set for a new goal.

Hmm, my songs were done from the previous – I’ve listened to 27 and it’s now about 9:30 am. So, I turned on the Enya and similar artists’ channel. That should be nice and calming. I think we’re about ready to let go of the immediate day yesterday as far as work is concerned. There’s still plenty of stuff work wise to talk about, but we’ll have to drift back into it.

Hmm, haven’t thought of it for a while, but it might also be a good time to go into some of our project with editing our story.

We’ve not done that for quite a while. But, that’s a project for much later in the time span when we’re not so hot to be writing.

The next subject that I wanted to go into was the one with Dr. Marvin. It was our Dr. M. night. I think it was ok, but there were younger parts out that haven’t been out for a while. Primarily the one that hid in the closet. She was doing a pretty good job of hiding out in the room from her corner of the couch. I think we got there from a time spent talking about some of the stuff from the week previous.

Wow! We just got breaking news 5 minutes ago. Senator John McClain picks Alaska Governor Sarah Palin for his running mate. He’s really trying to get the votes of the women. I should probably turn on some CNN for the background to hear what’s being said. Yup, yup … front line stuff. I also have to listen to a couple of speeches today. I fell asleep early during Barack’s speech … not because he was dull, but because I’d made the mistake of listening to it from the view point of my nighttime chair and blankie. Knew that wasn’t going to work.

Wow. I guess I’ve been gone again. For quite a while. It’s now about 12:30 pm. Where the hell did we lose 3 hours? Well, besides when we went back to bed this morning. That was a loss. I know more about Sarah Palin than I heard before. We’re listening in the background/foreground to CNN. Part of that time though has been spent in going over emails and one in particular from Dr. Marvin. On the lighter side he sent me the connection to a site called, “Cute Overload.” Can I give you an idea?


Not that it’s a place for sexual pictures as much as it is a place for cute stuff. This one was under the heading of racks and kitties. I don’t think there can be one better expressed.

Hehehe we sent the picture on to Rich … *sigh*

On the more serious side … we got something else in the email that we’d forgotten to think about and it’s been the second week under that condition. Dr. Marvin is now saying that we’ve had another disorder not known previously or at least recognized out loud. He sent me a link for it … it’s called, “selective mutism.” I’ve never heard of it before, but after reading more about it I can see his point. It’s pretty clear. But, then if I were to accept it further I would have to then be placed under another disorder. I’m not yet having had thought that through, except for that of my reading and comparing – could that be me?

The link Dr. M. sent was through Wikipedia. It states that it is a rare psychological disorder in children, but can last through adulthood. It is about people who are fully capable of speech and understanding of language, but can fail to speak in certain social situations when it is expected of them. (Please realize I’m stealing this information pretty directly with just some paraphrasing.) It says that it presents from a range of reluctance to speak in certain situations to physical and social ‘frozen’ unresponsiveness.

My first thoughts on this is that it would explain some of my behaviors … a strong part partially because it’s tied to social anxiety disorder and even to the obsessive-compulsive problems. I have a hard time now thinking how so many things could be the matter with me. This disorder has been attempted to be attached to abuse and neglect, but they are saying that’s not necessarily correct, because it is more affected by an extreme anxiety to remain silent despite their will to speak.

The mutism is characterized by:

The consistent failure to speak in specific social situations despite speaking in others

The disturbance interferes with educational or occupational achievement or with social communication

The duration of the disturbance is at least 1 month

The failure to speak is not due to a lack of knowledge of, or comfort with, the spoken language required in a social situation

And the disturbance is not better accounted for by a communication disorder (e.g. stuttering) and does not occur exclusively during the course of a pervasive developmental disorder, schizophrenia, or other psychotic disorder.

Some of the traits are

A difficulty in maintaining eye contact

A reluctance to smile and a tendency to have a blank facial expression

Stiff, awkward body movments

Particular anxiety in situations where speech is normally expected

A tendency to worry about things more than other people, sometimes generalized anxiety disorder

A sensitivity to noise and crowsds or crowded situations

Difficulty with verbal and non-verbal expression

Frequent temper tantrums at home

Fear of using public restrooms

Compulsive traits, even obsessive-compulsive disorder

Clinging behavior

Most times when someone tells you you have a disorder … you can blow it off and say … well yah, right. But, when you’ve been with a doctor of psychiatry for 9 years and he says … you are being affected yet by selective mutism … then you have to say, hmm?! What are you saying.

My thoughts have been criss-crossing ever since. Like I remember so clearly not talking when I was young and how long it took in school and even through college and through my current work situation to be talking – the basic nature of what I have to withstand. It seemed like that too especially in the last couple of days with the music. I don’t think it’s because of the music, but maybe a reason for it. I’ve thought why am I suddenly listening to music, why did I have needs to make it available.

It’s become very important for us to have it playing in the background of one ear while we are dealing with our life in the other. It has been getting us through the workshop more easily and it got us through the social situation yesterday when sister exclaimed assertively that we should be in the multi-purpose room where the party was going on.

After a while, I had found a space toward the back next to Sr. Florine who was entertaining others, and around the lowest functioning clients and their staff Cathy. We said a few things to Sr. Florine when we first sat down, but otherwise we withdrew in the crowd. We were very aware and studying other staff who were taking more of a forefront position. Especially, Theresa, Holly and Maria. Those and another staff, Stephanie even got to the social outlet part that they were hitting the piñata. I mean really bruising it up bad. I was terrified of the thought that I might have to do that … and I was terrified of the situation as a whole of having to take responsibility for being a social presence other than my one-at-a-time movement toward some of the speaking groups.

Things are all now different in the multi-purpose room and we’ve been going over it for the last 24 hours. Sister has changed the tables and chairs to be more café than institutional – set’s of 13 – 4 people tables instead of six or so long tables for 8.

But, it takes a lot more room to have these tables scattered out on the floor. Everybody is looking in one direction or another and the backs of chairs are close to bumping up against each other and there aren’t as many clear aisles to sift through. The situation is horrifying me in the way those kinds of things do. It’s much unorganized. I have to prepare my mind for being able to speak in front of the group in it’s’ entirety like this. By this time exactly next week … we’ll have to give an African presentation where all the clients will be including the staff. I can do the staff alone and clients alone after summoning my courage. And, it’s the same with doing the staffings. I have to really climb outside myself to be taking public charge. And, in the same stance I’ve been marveling over the presidential debates about how people are able to remember and speak in front of others with such credible presence of mind.

But, it’s more than just a problem with public speaking. It’s a terror of being in the presence of others and knowing that I have to be putting myself out there. I know there is fear of criticism that is very strong. That’s why the full range of staff and clients and boss is so predominant. Shoot that whole thing for so many years of being terrified by sister Theresa none of it is normal … I mean I know she’s threatening in general, but it’s the fear of others and being found less than that I’m looking at now.

I don’t think that Sr. appreciates all my parts. Like the one’s yesterday who had worked next to Sr. Florine, or that were now responsible for program assignments for the leadership group. Everything that puts us on a stage or away from the privacy of our office is driving me up a wall. I think of the position of being only disabled as something that I would prefer to be living with other than meeting social pressures. I’m not saying that all our parts are like that, but I’m like that. I hate having to be away from the office and some days just walking down the hall can be too much. When Sister is fussing it makes it just that much worse.

Hmm, now I’m walking away from what I originally meant to talk about. That is the selective mutism. I have a hard time not thinking of since the time of 6 freezing in the bed so that I wasn’t able to leave it to go to school. My mother let me stay home by myself and it took hours and hours before I was able to move off my bed. There’s a lot in-between that I’ll have to go through … hopefully most with Dr. Marvin, but then there is the times in the hospital and out, or the 2-3 years with Dr. Woollcott not speaking to him and the walking into Dr. Marvin’s office every session turned away from him and glaring angrily off to the side. Almost every time we see him we have to convert over to a space where we can talk or bare to look at him. I think of all those years with our Lissa who has always refused to speak. I guess one of our way of handling some of our disabilities was to have formed parts that held up or “spoke” for those kinds of needs.

Right now we’re feeling challenged by these new thoughts to feel a bit flighty. I don’t know what the ramifications of it all are.

I know I have to go through each of the points and looking at it as a whole. You know I analyze and analyze things to pieces.

The first trait is the difficulty of making eye contact. That’s like our signature trait at Dr. M’s office. We rarely go through a session where at some part we have parts that are not able to look at him. This stupid thing has been going on ever since we’ve started therapy over 20 years ago. We’ve never been able to figure it out … and now all of a sudden we are given a disorder that normalizes this part of us. I think this one lays on the good side. It’s not good that there are so many times we cannot make eye contact, but at least there is an upcoming avenue to be dealing with it.

The reluctance to smile goes hand in hand with this other part, but is taken up again from the perspective of work. While I think we are smiling all the time, Sr. and the staff complain that I’m always looking over serious and broody. I’m trying not to play up to the traits to just agree with them, but I don’t know how else to respond when most of them are so strongly indentured to my life. The part of having a blank or stone expression is just as common. Because if we’re not looking at a person directly we are staring into some fixed spot trying not to relay our internal positions. I’m not going to let the other know that I know fear … We always need to be in control, because in general most situations where we find ourselves in these positions aren’t feeling as if they are being controlled. Often enough that generates itself from Dr. Marvin because he challenges our space.

By the same token we’ve got those parts like the ones exhibiting themselves last night who cower in the corner of the couch with our hand stiffly over and above our eyes sheltering them. Also includes the parts we’ve always known have been paralyzing to us. These are the parts that freeze up and cannot move to save their life. The anxiety parts of us are so predominant that is silly to go there as is the parts where we over think. How can you explain 5 years of this blog where we think and think and think. Worrying obsessively over one thing or another – just as we are doing now. Everything seems to be an emergency and something threatening to block us from a known form of life. How many times have we felt challenged to go any further than our computer. How much of our social world do we hide from. Even today … the fear of leaving the computer even though we know we want to go to the gym and/or pick up our check along with our iPod cord is overwhelming to us. The word anxiety explains it all.

Hmm, looking that up now too. “Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) is an anxiety disorder that is characterized by excessive, uncontrollable and often irrational worry about everyday things, which is disproportionate to the actual source of worry. The excessive worry often interferes with daily functioning, as individuals suffering GAD typically catastrophise, anticipate disaster, and are overly concerned about everyday matters such as health issues, money, family problems, friend problems and work difficulties. These symptoms must be consistent and on-going, persisting at least 6 months, for a formal diagnosis of GAD to be introduced. The person finds it difficult to control the worry. The anxiety and worry are associated with three or more of the following six symptoms with at least some symptoms present for more days than not for the past 6 months. Restlessness of feeling keyed up or on edge, being easily fatigued, irritability muscle tension, difficulty falling or staying asleep, or restless unsatisfying sleep, difficulty concentrating or the mind going blank.

Social phobia (DSM-IV 300.23), also known as social anxiety disorder[1] (DSM-IV 300.23) is a diagnosis within psychiatry and other mental health professions referring to excessive social anxiety(anxiety in social situations) [2] causing abnormally considerable distress and impaired ability to function in at least some areas of daily life. The diagnosis can be of a specific disorder (when only some particular situations are feared) or a generalizeddisorder. Generalized social anxiety disorder typically involves a persistent, intense, and chronic fear of being judged by others and of potentially being embarrassed or humiliated by one's own actions. These fears can be triggered by perceived or actual scrutiny by others. While the fear of social interaction may be recognized by the person as excessive or unreasonable, considerable difficulty can be encountered overcoming it. Approximately 13.3 percent of the general population may meet criteria for social anxiety disorder at some point in their lifetime, according to the highest survey estimate, with the male to female ratio being 1:1.5.[

Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) is an anxiety disorder that is characterized by excessive, uncontrollable and often irrational worry about everyday things, which is disproportionate to the actual source of worry. This excessive worry often interferes with daily functioning, as individuals suffering GAD typically catastrophise, anticipate disaster, and are overly concerned about everyday matters such ashealth issues, money, family problems, friend problems or work difficulties.[1] They often exhibit a variety of physical symptoms, including fatigue, headaches, nausea, muscle tension, muscle aches, difficulty swallowing, trembling, twitching,irritability, sweating, insomnia, and hot flashes. These symptoms must be consistent and on-going, persisting at least 6 months, for a formal diagnosis of GAD to be introduced. [1] Approximately 6.8 million American adults experience GAD, which affects about twice as many women as men.[2]

Anxiety disorder is a blanket term covering several different forms of abnormal, pathological anxieties,fears, and phobias.
In clinical usage, "fear", "anxiety" and "phobia" have distinct meanings, though the words are often used interchangeably in casual discourse to describe ubiquitous emotions. Clinically, a phobia is defined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th edition (DSM-IV-TR) as a "persistent or irrational fear." Clinically, fear is defined as an emotional and physiological response to a recognized external threat. Anxiety is an unpleasant emotional state, the sources of which are less readily identified. Distinguishing among different anxiety disorders is important, since accurate diagnosis is more likely to result in effective treatment and a better prognosis. Surveys have shown as many as 30% of Americans may be affected by anxiety disorders.[1]

posted by Ann Marie @ 8/30/2008 10:50:00 AM Comments: 0