Marlene

i met with the psychiatric nurse today, Marlene. She conveniently came over to my house while Gemma went out grocery shopping with my mom. 

Upon arrival, she told me about herself, what she is qualified to do and who she works for, etc. She is a psych nurse who deals only with maternal mental health. 

She asked about my pregnancies, my work, my relationships with jesse and my mom, my level of physical activity, etc. While i won't bore you with details, i will tell you this. 

what a waste of time. i never was a personal believer in counseling. the only other time i have been counseled was during premarital counseling with the pastor who married us. that was an awful experience because the pastor couldn't relate to me at all (even though the pastor was a woman) and often took jesse's side. Marlene is no different - not that she took jesse's side, but she couldn't relate to me at all. Often, she asked me "is that cultural?" or kind of ridiculed my belief system about families, etc. 

in the end, she gave me a couple of strategies that i'm supposed to put in place for when i have an angry outburst. one is to give myself a time out and to walk each and everyday for at least 20 minutes, no matter what my mood. the second is that i need to ask jesse and my mom for any clues as to when i'm about to blow and get them to say a word of some sort to let me know that i need to go give myself a time out... ??? i mentioned to her numerous times that there is no hint of the sh** that's about to hit the fan - i go from 0 to 100 with nothing in between. 

in the end, i felt it was a complete waste of my time and i think talking to her made me more aggravated for the day. unfortunately she wants me to put these practices into place and see her again next week. it's hard to say no when i guess i haven't tried anything she suggested, but i don't think i want to keep seeing her. 

but only 8.5 weeks to go. i'm optimistic that i can make it. LOL.