Catch Up Continued

So. So far, I've caught y'all up as far as... The 18th September, which was my last solo Relate session. Hmm. If I was at school, I'm sure someone should remark, "Could do better." ;)
Part of this is because I just haven't absorbed all the information myself yet, and part of it is because I either don't have the time, and/or just haven't put the effort in ;) Focussed rambling clearly requires more effort than my usual type ;)

The next day, my wife had a long and stressful day at work. But it didn't stop there, oh no. I decided to leap in and get telling her about my blog over and done with. She could understand why I had started it and its purpose and didn't mind that. She was a bit upset that I had a new community & friends to talk to that she didn't know about. She was most upset when I said that I couldn't really remember what it was I like about her anymore.

So, that was a fairly long day.

But the long days didn't end there, oh no (again). The next day (Wednesday) she had a doctor's appointment. Indirectly, this was as a result of her yearly check with regards to her throxin levels, however her basic attitude towards that was that "if there were anything wrong, they would tell her".
However, I had been telling her for some time that she should talk to the doctor about how she felt in general, and then the Relate lady strongly suggested this to at our first meeting.
At some point before this, after Mrs Monkfish had been wondering why she needed to talk to the doctor and what he could possibly do for her, and I had at some point snapped that she could have depression or something.
Just prior to her going to the doctor, I found out that she had been onto the NHS Direct site and looked up the symptoms of depression. Of the say ten symptoms, I think she said the only ones she didn't tick were something like "Suicidal tendencies", "Constipation", and "loss of appetite" (she had a chuckle over that one).
The doctor had a similar list of symptoms that she also ticked off one-by-one. She came out of the doctor's with a set of anti-depressants and an appointment for the next Wednesday.
The anti-depressants will take a few weeks to kick in, and have a "fun" looking list of side-effects as long as your arm. Touch wood, she seems to be ok so far, and has seemed a little cheerier recently. I'm not sure how much of that is due to a concerted effort from her, and how much is a result of the anti-depressants. I guess it's probably a bit of both.

She continued to feel stressed at work, but overall, not much happened until the following Monday (25th September) at her second solo Relate session (her first one had been during a cancellation spot on a weekday morning).
She spoke to RT about what the doctor had told her, and RT gave her a lot of helpful information - in fact, I think she was more helpful than the doctor! (She felt the doctor was sympathetic and understanding, but I don't get the feeling he really gave her much advice as to a long-term solution)

The bit that hit my wife most during this solo Relate session (my wife & I talked about it afterwards, in case you were wondering) was that RT asked her, "what do you think other people think of you?"
My wife couldn't really answer this, and said "Well. I don't know what other people think of me."
So RT then asked, "What do you think of yourself?"

Now, my wife knows that physically she doesn't have a high opinion of herself. She doesn't like her body, which is why she's always flip-flopping into/out of diets. I have said many times that I don't care what she looks like so long as she's happy.

But in answering this question, my wife suddenly realised that it wasn't just physically she didn't have anything positive to say about herself... She didn't have anything positive to say about herself, at all.
"And that," I pointed out afterwards, "is a symptom of depression, if ever I heard of one."
This realisation was somewhat upsetting to her, though (As I'm sure you can imagine).

I don't remember what my wife said that she said about her parents exactly. In summary though, her Mum is an optimist and her Dad is a pessimist. I wouldn't be surprised if he suffered from depression too, to be honest. Her Dad is fairly negative, and often puts both Mrs Monkfish and her mother down. I don't believe he really means to hurt them, it's just the way he is. You can see he misses "his little girl" being around, because sometimes for example, as we are leaving after having been there for a weekend (it's a 2.5-3hour drive), he will have to run away quickly.
Sometimes, even although he and they half-know he's joking about some stuff, I will tend to throw it back at him when he says stuff about other people. For example, if he says something about his weight, he might blame it on "these big dinners she keeps cooking me".
"Oh yes," I will say, "I'm sure it has nothing to do with the large pork pie, sandwich and packet of crisps you had in-between meals."
Oh dear, I appear to have just soaked my keyboard in a hearty dose of sarcasm, please bear with me while I mop up ;)
Psychologically, I can certainly see my wife will have inherited some issues from her Dad. I mean, one that I really can't understand is one I mentioned at the end of my last session to RT.
I mentioned it because I wasn't sure my wife would remember (in general, I have a better memory than her, particularly for conversations, although this was obviously no normal conversation), and also because I just wasn't sure she'd mention it.

Some years ago, while my wife's parents were still "over here", her Dad was walking my wife back to the car (I wasn't there), when he told her, "years ago, [before my wife was either born, or was at least younger than two years] you know your mum had an affair with so-and-so."

Now, I can't imagine what would possess someone to say that for any reason in that manner. It's something my wife has never talked to her mum (or dad) about since then, and she didn't really have anything to say at the time. Her opinion is that he was just in a bad mood and wanted to lash out, and that it wasn't even true.
I personally cannot even comprehend someone saying something like that for reasons so petty.
I said to RT that I almost wondered if it was true. With her mum being an optimist, and her dad being a pessimist, I can obviously see a reflection of us there. I wonder... Could you keep going easier, if it was based on guilt as well as love?

This was apparently something my wife didn't mention. She said she thought of it at some point, but because she believes her Dad only said it to hurt her, she didn't think it relevant. She said that in general, she answered RT's questions. I think that's a subtle point when being "truthful", and I imagine it's what is meant by "the whole truth". You can truthfully answer someone's questions, but that doesn't mean you are giving them "the whole truth".

So anyway. That was (yet another) long day. But did it end there? Ohhh no ;)

Two days later (Wednesday), my wife was still feeling stressed by work when she went for her doctor's appointment. She talked about some longer-term solutions to the depression (i.e. talking to someone) with the doctor, and she intends at some point (i.e. when we have Internet access back again) to look up psychologists/therapists/whoever it is that you speak to about such things in our area.
She also told the doctor how stressed she had been feeling at work. This is mostly because there's a major project that she's supposed to be managing, but she keeps on not managing. She wanted the "Manager" title in her current position, but she's decided she doesn't actually want or like the responsibility. The doctor gave her some anti-anxiety pills (there were often times she was feeling stressed and tearful about it all), and he asked whether she had much holiday available. She said that she did not (ooh, that was cunning, she's got like most of it still available!), and he signed her off work for two weeks. So, she went in for the rest of that day, and used two days of holiday as well. So she had that Thursday & Friday off, all of last week, and now she'll still be off all of this week.
All that time and no ADSL! What a tragedy of circumstances!

lol, as an aside, I had to laugh on Saturday. My wife had asked me to speak to our neighbour to see whether we could latch onto his wireless connection. She asked me to ask him because I know him marginally better, because when our neighbours moved in, I set up our Internet connection so that they could use it wirelessly for a few weeks until they got theirs installed.
So I was probably going to speak to him about this on the Saturday... When all of a sudden, he was at the door... "Alright there mate, I was wondering, would you mind if I used your wireless connection again? See my mate's got this new Dell PC, and it needs all the WindowsUpdates, but we cancelled our Internet connection a few weeks ago due to the move, so don't have it at the moment, but thought it might be easier to do using ADSL. So would you mind if we used yours again?"
"Ah," I said, "I don't mind in theory, but there is ooone smallll proooblem..." ;)
(He broke up with his partner a little while back, so is now in the process of selling the house to move back in with his parents for a while, as it's a bit expensive to keep going on his own).

Right then. Overall, I think I've put in a lot of information there, and I think I'll leave it there for now (so that's left umm 12 days ago, taking us up to 27th September).

Sorry for standard rambling in-between, but there was a lot to get out there and it was difficult to concentrate on the main bits ;) (You know how it is, you start saying one thing, then you remember something else, then all of a sudden another bit hits you, etc. etc.)

Thanks for reading. Now, go rest your eyes for a bit ;)