This is My Head, Shrinking

I went to therapy tonight for the first time in over a year (boo to increased co-pays, but yay to my old therapist now on my new insurance!). So I have scrawled notes about "humility=vulnerability=why a negative?" and "SPLITTING" (underlined twice) and "judgment--know you're right," all of which will provide ample navel-gazing fodder for future posts (she said, optimistically, as all three of her readers raised eyebrows with a collective "yeah, right"). But I left therapy, came home for a quick sandwich with my boys, and then went to see a friend's play. It's now quite late, and in the interest of my own sleep and getting this post up before midnight (and thus counting it for today), I'm tabling these Big Important Thoughts for a Favorite Funny Story:

When in Chicago, when I first started to understand what was happening to me as panic attacks, an actual thing that I could learn about and manage, I loved therapy. I loved my therapist. I didn't love the anxiety, but I was learning to live with it. All was going swimmingly for some time, and then one day I got slammed by a big wave of panic. The circumstances allude me now, but I remember calling my dear wise friend C and complaining about how I thought I had it under control and would I always be like this and and and...

I finally sighed, "I just don't want to be crazy anymore."

She, in her dearness and wisdom, told me, "Listen: crazy people don't think they're crazy."

I found that very reassuring: the notion that the very analysis of my wacky brain probably meant that it was actually a pretty functional organ. A few weeks later, my friend J and I were walking together and discussing our mutual histories of anxiety and panic. I relayed my frustration with the recent weeks and told him about my conversation with C.

Me: So she said, "crazy people don't think they're crazy."

J: No, crazy people think they're Napoleon.


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I must be tired. In my comments on my last post, I went to type the word "phrase" and what came out was "frace."

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P.S. Confidential to Elly: Can I have an extension? (Get it? Fake nails...extensions? What, am I reaching? Ha! I kill me.) In the meantime, I saved you a Google search.