Do you take insurance or is this a cash only transaction?

Yesterday, despite my taking the time to write out what had been on my mind, I had a bad day.  Anxiety combined with stress and insomnia worked their special magic on my system.  Fortunately, I have a fairly good support system these days that I can turn to, with few words and say--things suck right at the moment.  I know they will get better, but it is just getting through the feeling of raw electricity running through my body for no apparent reason.  The last two therapists I've been through would have said there was a reason... this could be part of the reason traditional therapy didn't work for me.  Well, that or my comparison of the profession to prostitution (a comparison my many therapist friends love, I'm sure)--which I actually wrote an entire book chapter on.  It's safe for you to assume that was the tail end of therapy for me.

Therapy requires you sit in a room for an hour talking.  I don't talk about how I feel... it's challenge enough for me to write about it without the guise of characters, excessive sarcasm and the brilliant banner of fiction.  My preference is to work through whatever is going on in my head on some piece of gym equipment or trail.  But after over 4 hours in the last three days and more than 20 miles on an elliptical, bike and treadmill all I'm left with is are some slightly tired muscles.

What this week boils down to for me is the fear of getting sick again.  I trust the medical profession as much as I trust the mental health profession--perhaps even less sometimes. It has failed me on more than one occasion leaving me to find my own diagnosis and subsequent therapies.  I don't know what other people do; live with feeling horrible, I suppose.  That's something I refused to accept despite being told that was the bottom line.  And now here I am, three months into finally feeling un-zombie like--no longer plagued by fatigue and pain, able to actually workout more than 30 minutes a day AND still do other things after work.  Insomnia, while inconvenient and a drag, doesn't render me on caffeine binges and barely able to move.

But, now I've discovered a fear... something new for me; fear isn't something I've allowed in my life (with the exception of spiders, of course). Fear that suddenly things will all turn around again on me; fear that I won't have the wherewithal to fight it both physically and mentally; fear I'll somehow screw it up--whatever "it" is.  Like everything else, I will eventually work my way through this... but like I tell all my friends who come to me for sane, direct and practical advice "It's a process. Deal with it."