Decided to do an entry today, but then I’ll probably stop writing and save it for the long trip down to Tampa on Friday. Had my first video meeting with my new therapist Helen yesterday and it went well. A little confusing meeting her at first because I thought I was going to be able to see her on my desktop like I could with my old doctor. Instead, I was only able to see her on my phone, but that’s fine.

She appears to be in her late 50s to early 60s. She has a good balance between listening and talking. So far I’ve mostly given her a basic timeline of my life events and described how I feel on and off these days. Initially, we’re going to meet once a week for 90 minutes. Meeting and scheduling appointments online makes it so much easier!

I woke up to find she wanted me to fill out a couple of forms on the portal. They’re similar to the ones Galileo has that assess your emotional state over the last two weeks and how much it impacts your day-to-day life.

Didn’t know that the body literally absorbs trauma! There’s a book she recommended called The Body Keeps the Score. I guess traumatic events literally get stored in our muscles, tissues, organs, and pretty much everything. She says she thinks she can help me and I hope she means it because I’d hate to think that I could really be permanently fucked up for life and having these spells on and off for as long as I live. I still think most of it is connected to menopause and medication but who knows for sure? There could be more causes than I realize. But the fact that these particular feelings started when both menopause and medication did makes me think it’s mostly connected to that. Trauma changes you, though, so it might have given me this permanent condition after all. I tell you, July 9th of 2014 was easily the scariest day of my life and I’ve had a lot of scary moments in life. I hate to think of what it must be like for those who have had lives much worse than mine! I’ve heard some pretty cringe-worthy horror stories.