The demoralizing reality of the common cold...

As hard as I tried to avoid it, I fell prey to a devilish cold that's been plaguing my loved ones and colleagues. All the hand washing in the world could not keep this little bastard away from nestling itself happily in the back of my now dry, scratchy, swollen throat. The worst thing about having a cold is the psychological havoc it wreaks. It completely breaks a man down, from the inside. Normally well-adjusted adults transform into whimpering lumps, mimicking their former child selves. I am easily the worst sick person. I lie on the couch and proclaim, "I'm sick!" repeatedly in what sounds like the voice of a 4 year old due to my congestion and defeated spirit. This must drive my husband crazy. He made me chicken soup. He's a saint.

Perhaps it's the lack of energy, the dependence on others, or the fact that you look like complete crap, no bones about it, having a cold is simply depressing. Ironically, clinical depression has been shown to weaken the immune system and lead to an increased vulnerability to getting colds. Well, what the hell is a person to do? Benjamin Franklin, 18th century smarty pants, documented his personal research on the common cold and concluded: "People often catch cold from one another when shut up together in small close rooms, coaches, etc. and when sitting near and conversing so as to breathe in each other's transpiration." Ew. His solution? Well, he suggested exercise, bathing, and moderation in food and drink consumption to avoid the common cold. But what about a cure? We've put men on the moon, cloned animals, and now we have both a black man and a women fighting for the oval office. Isn't it time we find a cure for the common cold??

This may seem like a petty and tired request, but colds are a great cost to the country. This poster from World War II highlights the cost of a cold back then:

As you may very well know, things have gotten mighty pricey since then. According to Wikipedia, my favorite website ever, the total economic cost of cold-related work loss exceeds $20 billion. Yes, you read that right...billion. You would think that the big pharmaceutical companies would be chomping at the bit to find a solution...it would be an absolute gold mine! It seems that a few companies are working on it but there doesn't appear to be much of a fire under their rears to get this going fast.

The next time you're laid up with a nasty bout of viral nasopharyngitis, you might think that research efforts towards a cure might not be too shabby. Perhaps this is just a manifestation of my cold-related regression to a time when I thought my mom could do anything...including curing the common cold. I think more research should be done on the therapeutic effects of chicken cutlets and ThunderCats. Ah, ah, ah, chooo!

Do you enjoy the smell of calories burning in the morning?

Since moving to Los Angeles--land of the beautiful and scantily clad-- from New York, I had expected to experience a physical metamorphosis into a svelte and athletic Angeleno. Why not? Everyone is so outdoorsy and health conscious, pounds of extraneous lard should just melt off me by merely breathing in the same smog as the minuscule wannabe starlet waiting for her soy latte ahead of me at the Coffee Bean. Alas, when moving from a city where I hoofed it up and down subway stairs and back and forth between the west and east sides of the island to a city where one drives everywhere, the healthy lifestyle change I longed for so passionately felt more like a pipe dream. Instead, I became less healthy as I packed on 15 pounds of "traffic muscle". I watched in horror as my backside expanded exponentially with the combination of driving and hours of sedentary work as a psychology graduate student. What the eff! Granted, LA is pretty diverse and I don't stand out as a total sloth but in my hip east side neighborhood, well, that’s another story. Let's just say that among the emaciated hipsters in their impossibly tight jeans, I am a lummox. A lumbering mass of a woman...but at least I still have my hourglass curves (thank goodness), which are just a little bigger than usual. As much as I tried to convince myself that this change didn't matter, it did. I was treated differently, at least I thought I was. Whenever I saw friends from NY, they always seemed shocked that I wasn't sharing my closet with Nicole Ricci. Nuts. "You're skin looks great!" Gee, thanks. My skin looks great stretched across the fat that pads my body. You're a sweetheart. Klonk (sound of my head hitting the table)!

As a former soccer player, I knew I could up my activity and do something about this predicament I've found myself in ...I had to make a change, stat! Like a sign from up above, I received an email about entering a contest to win a free 1-month bootcamp package...a bridal bootcamp, that is. Hmmm. Well, technically, I'm already married but we have yet to plan a reception back home (yes, it is happening a year after--it's 2008, get over it.) and I need to wear a dress for that, too (Grr). Why not? I enter. I wait. I don't win. I am sad. I eat a black-n-white cookie. Then I felt full and guilty--but it was a really good cookie. To my credit, I have very good culinary taste. Anyway, a few weeks and some sad attempts at establishing a running program later, I get another email. The offer was for three bootcamp sessions (just three days). I took a look at the website and got nervous. The women in the pictures were pretty fit already, all wearing snug workout clothes, and the trainer is a lumpy blond dude with a giant smile on his face--lumpy in a muscle kind of way (think Venice Beach body builder). Totally intimidated, I close the window. I think. What do I have to lose? It's just three days. Hmm. I open my email again, hit reply and say "Sign me up!". Oi. I quickly get a friendly reply from trainer and I'm scheduled for a consultation before the next session.

Now, there's bootcamp sessions offered twice a day, 6:30 am and pm. My schedule is totally horrid lately with seeing clients and teaching undergrads about the marvels of psychology 101. I'm forced to go to the morning session, which means I need to get there by 6am for the consultation. You should also know that the bootcamp takes place across town...way, way across town near Santa Monica. Ugh. I already feel like this is impossible but I convince myself that I can sleep in and stay chubby or I can do this and hopefully get to a healthy weight. I'm not an idiot. I don't expect to start wearing size zeros. I'd settle for an 8. My alarm buzzes at 5 am and I make my way across town, half asleep but kind of excited. Trainer, as I will refer to him, is very nice and extremely enthusiastic. He asks me a bunch of questions and get's me set up. I notice he has a funny accent. Turns out he's Jewish and from Texas. Yes, you read that right. The rest of the gals arrive and they're pretty friendly...friendly and thin. I use the thought stopping techniques I teach my clients and try to switch to positive supportive thoughts. I hum "Eye of the Tiger" to myself. We start with all of these jumpy things, jumping jacks, jumping from side to side, pretending to jump rope. We run laterally and then to a fence far down the field. I feel pretty good. Not first but definitely not last. We get back to the yoga mats we're instructed to bring and start doing some weight training kinds of stuff. Here, I notice I'm a total wienie. I have no upper body strength, whatsoever. We're doing pushups, planking (a push up position without the push up--so you just hold it there), side planking...the works. My arms, which appear formidable due to the heft of my upper "wings", shake uncontrollable under the weight of my body. Holy shit. "Eye of the Tiger" shifts to Radiohead's "Creep". I'm a loser. STOP! I'm strong. I can do this. UUuuugh.

Trainer screams, "I love the smell of calories burning in the morning!" as me makes us do sprints. I hate sprints. "Backpacks on and to the hill!" Huh? So at this point, I see all the girls putting a 10 pound medicine ball in the backpacks we get as part of bootcamp and swing them pack onto their backs as they take off to a hill I can't even see from where we're standing. I follow suite and huff and puff as this pack is bopping up and down my sweaty back. "You've got the eye of the tiger today!" Trainer says as I run/waddle by. I crack a grin but I'm thinking "eff you and your effing muscles." We get to "the hill" which is a steep drop behind the parking lot. The other girls are at the bottom and running in place. I make my way down and run in place and notice how my heart is pounding in my chest. "Okay, take off! I want three times up the hill! Go, go!" I take off with everyone else. My legs burn and I slow down fast. Holy effing shit! My heart is pounding as I reach the top. Okay, one down. As I head back down, my legs start to buckle. Yikes, I fly down the hill, pretty out of control and slam into the fence at the bottom. Totally embarrassed, I swing around and make my second ascent up the hill. Now, my run has become a steady power walk up and I start saying to myself, "I'm going to die. I'm going to die." That's not positive. STOP! I start saying, "No, I can do this. I can do this." But I can't. By the time I get to the top of the hill, the other girls finish their third time up and are running back to the mats. I follow behind them, remembering that Trainer said not to push it too much this first time. Back at the mats, I am panting and wheezing. I have never wheezed before in my life. This is nuts. Everyone is doing a high-knee run in place. I just stand there. Trainer smiles and tells me I'm doing great. Uh, yeah. No wonder these chicks are so fit.

The workout winds down, and by winding down I mean we do more sprints and "burpies". Burpies are jumping jacks followed by jumping up in the air, jumping down, kicking your legs out (like in a push up position), getting back up and doing it all over again, and again, and again. I think I did two. As we gather our things, the other girls warn me of the hell that's ahead of me. I'm thankful that they're nice...and they were totally right. I was sore for a week straight, in places I didn't think I had muscle.

I've stuck with the bootcamp for two months now. Is it working? Well, that depends on what you mean by working. I'm definitely more fit. My legs are more firm and sculpted. I've lost 3 pounds, maybe. I'm a little discouraged but I have to admit, I feel good and part of the weight I still have is muscle. Trainer is totally goofy and I realize how much of bootcamp is psychological. "Mind over body, ladies. Not body over mind!" he howls. He's right. I've started listening to the Rocky soundtrack in my car on the way to workouts. I'm running harder and faster. The one thing I'm trying to work on is eating better and that's a slow progression. As with any behavior modification program, I need to take steps. Now that the exercise is coming along, the eating will soon follow. As a really annoying bootcamper said to me the other day after I told her I do health psychology research, "Oh, this should be easy for you!" She's new. I hope she's really sore.

Ms. G Part II

Against my better judgment, I climb through the brush into the dark tunnel, of leaves and perhaps a furry woodland creature or two, after my client who is already 30 yards away. She is fast, almost too fast for someone suffering from whole body arthritis. I follow her voice to a clearing looking down upon a small creek. Theres a rock about the size of a child-size bean bag chair and my client motions for me to sit on the other half of the rock...patting it and smiling. The rock, you should know, is at the bottom of a steep slope and with one wrong step I would be taking not-so-elegant swan dive into this magical frickin creek. The rock, you should also know, has as much sitting surface a small decorative couch pillow--half of which, is now taken up by my petite client's ass. My ass, on the contrary, is not as petite. Needless to say, I make my way down to the rock and ever so gently balance my one cheek on the stone while using all of the muscles in my lower body to keep me from rolling off of it down to my watery demise in the creek.

We are now back to back, as there is limited room on the rock, and I'm holding the tape recorder up by my shoulder to catch what she's saying. She's been going on this whole time about the stress management techniques she's been using and how Clark dropped in this week to get his life together after AA. I have to admit, the forest was quite lovely. The air smelled clean and the light was soft as it broke through the leaves. We sat there for some time and talked. Things were fine until Ms. G mentioned seeing bobcats and mountain lions in the area. I shot up as if I sat on a tack, nearly tumbling into the water below. "You're kidding right?" I ask, nervously. "Nope. I most certainly am not, " she responds with a smirk on her face. "Oh, uh. I see. Um." This is all on tape, mind you. "Shall we start heading back?" I ask trying to hide my panic. I don't like not having control over my environment when working with clients. That's the luxury of having an office where clients come to you for sessions.

We headed back to the homestead, over the river and through the woods. Ms. G's husband and Clark were standing outside and waved at us. "We're just about to go shootin'" Clark yucks. Ms. G and I go inside, I go into the den where we have our sessions and she goes to the bathroom. As I'm sitting there, getting my things together, Ms. G's husband comes in, "Just getting my kit and things. I'll be out of your way before you know it." He's rummaging in a closet and swings around with what looks like a tackle box in one hand and a long, dark rifle in the other. I gasp. He has progressive Alzheimer's and he's holding a rifle about three feet away from me. He smiles and leaves the room. I, on the other hand, sat there frozen. I start to breathe when Ms. G comes back to the room and sits brightly next to me, under the bust of a stuffed deer with large, kind eyes. I'm still in a state of shock as we wrap up our bizarre session--bizarre to me, not Ms. G.

Ms. G Part I: Lost in the Forrest with Guns and Alzehimer's

Sometimes I like to make things active in a session. If a goal of the client is to get more walking into his or her routine, I suggest we have a walking session. Usually these are relatively quiet strolls around the block while discussing how things have been going. Recently, things got a little more exciting.

Let me introduce Ms. G, a petite, feisty, and quick witted woman as American as baked beans at a summer wienie roast. In her late 50's, Ms. G has been a caregiver for her husband for decades and has recently found herself in a rut. A creative, fun-loving, and energetic fireball, she's lost herself in the monotony of daily routines that are, for the sake of storytelling, about as exciting as watching the paint dry in her semi-renovated living room. She misses doing things for herself and would like to exercise more. So, I offer a walking session. Her eyes light up and she asks me if I'm up for a challenge. A little taken off guard, I say sure.

Something else that you should know is that I make house calls to Ms. G. Is this typical of a clinician? No, it's not. Is it typical of a psychologist in training trying to get as many diverse therapeutic experiences while racking up clinical hours to get into a competitive internship after her dissertation proposal? Yes. Actually, since I am currently in what we call the "Older Adult Track" my client load is primarily elderly folks who may be homebound. Ms. G does not fall into this category. I see her at her home simply because I misunderstood where she lived. She lives in a town that has the same name as a street that is 10 minutes away from where I live. Ms. G actually lives about 4 freeway trips north east of Los Feliz, a more rural-feeling, politically conservative, suburb with a down-home country feel.

I arrive to our session dressed to go for a walk. Ms. G greets me at the door in form-fitting slacks, a denim button down under a quilted vest, Easy Spirit walking shoes, and a long tree branch that I assume she uses as a walking stick (though I never understood the point of a walking stick as it seems to be just another thing to carry). I'm a little alarmed, to say the least. This little lady means business. "Are you ready to hike, my dear?" she asked me, beaming. "Uh, yes. I am, I think." She laughs and I follow her into her house, through the living, out the sliding glass doors to her back yard where hummingbirds are buzzing all around us. With the tiny birds zipping around my head and and the morning sun illuminating the plants in the yard with an almost aura-like glow, I have to admit, there was a magical quality to the place.

Ms. G marched to the back of the yard and climbed over a small wall through some brush and turned around extending her hand out to me. "Where are we going?" I asked. "Sherwood Forrest!" she replied. Like in the Robin Hood story? Hmm. I follow her over the wall and through the brush to an open field that felt like we reached the end of the earth. Nothing but rolling hills and uncultivated land as far as the eye could see. Two people were standing there; Ms. G's husband and Clark, their new friend. Ms. G's husband could easily be the sweetest man I've ever met. He's also somewhat petite, shrunken with age, and due to his progressing Alzheimer's his communications are always short and innocent sounding. Clark, on the other hand, is large and lumbering, and reminds me of Lenny from Of Mice and Men. His big red face lights up when we're introduced and I make sure my wedding ring is visible by rubbing my face with my left hand. Ms. G's husband and Clark were discussing going shooting, with rifles somewhere. They both wish us luck on our "hike" and I get nervous. What the hell have I gotten myself into?

Before I know it, Ms. G is racing up an uphill path into the wilderness. I have to jog behind her to catch up. She's huffing and puffing away up the hill and we reach a larger path, or dirt road, that we follow up hill for 10 minutes or so. I have my tape recorder in hand and try to get her to focus on how she's handling the stress of caregiving and what she's been doing to take care of herself. I'm out of breath, sadly, and I worry that this walk is way more involved than I would have hoped. But we press on while Ms. G discusses her new list making strategies, taking bubble baths, and how it's nice to have Charlie around to distract her husband. She stops in front of a small opening in some bushes and proceeds to climb through it, disappearing into a dark abyss of leaves and and dry branches. I stood there dumbfounded. Does she expect me to climb down this rabbit hole of a passage with her to God knows where? Yes, she does. She expects me to follow her into the woods because of the apparent intimacy that the therapeutic relationship elicits in clients. She trusts me so why shouldn't I trust her. The only thing is, I'm not supposed to trust her--she just doesn't know this. Most clients don't.

To be continued...

Ms. P and the Mental Giants

I've been seeing Ms. P for several months now. She is one of my most challenging clients and, therefore, my favorite of the bunch. She is wonderful in the way a love-blind new mother thinks her objectively ugly baby is the most beautiful creature to grace the human race with its presence. Yes, Ms. P is fantastic in a psychology case study sort of way. She is quite old (90s), spry, and very bright. She also doesn't care for people in similar ways as Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) in There Will Be Blood. She's got a competition in her, she doesn't want to see anyone else succeed, and she hates most people. Yet, as is typical borderline fare, she is deathly afraid of being alone (think Margot of Margot at the Wedding). Despite her unfortunate character flaws, she is a whopper of a storyteller.

Ms. P came to me for her mood--she was depressed, according to the form I received. If you ask her, she isn't depressed, she's just smarter than everyone else, which makes her sad. I always chuckle at these statements which, in turn, fuel her fire. "Let me tell you about X and Y...well these two mental giants think they've got me figured out but the only thing they've figured out is to come in from the rain!" she says of the only family members willing to check in on her from time to time--by phone, of course. Ms. P has the comedic timing of a Catskills stand-up act. "These days, no one has to work. In my day, if you didn't like your boss raising his voice to you then he'd tell you to find a boss who won't!" She is always so grateful for my commitment to working with her but makes sure I know that if she didn't like me, I wouldn't be there. She hates NYers, but I'm different. She's also pretty racist. It's some good times, our sessions, that's for sure.

We set small goals, like her getting her hair done by the next time I see her. I ask about how she feels after it's done since she looks dramatically different--younger and more energetic. "So now people say that I look nice before they try to screw me, am I right? Dear, it's the same shit different day, pardon my French. You know how important manners are to me." It is really difficult to get her to do anything quasi-therapeutic. "Honey, at my age, how am I supposed to change?" In some ways, she's right. What can I expect of this? Personality disorders are hard to work with in young clients. She's lived the majority of her life this way, isolated herself, and now wishes she wasn't alone. How can I undo this damage? Well, I'll be coming back to Ms. P, often, so stay tuned. Last week she admitted to seeing a little progress. I did a tiny victory dance in my mind. I'm sure she sensed it because she quickly added, "Don't get too excited." At least she was smirking.

"They say that time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself."--A. Warhol

I originally wanted to start a blog to have a place to talk about my experiences in practicing clinical psychology. It's a lonely existence, the life of a psychologist. You have days filled with social encounters that usually involve deep, intellectually challenging conversations with people in some pretty peculiar circumstances, and you are bound to absolute secrecy. I find it rather paradoxical, however, because here we are telling everyone to share their feelings, get things out, work through thoughts and emotions, and I'm supposed to keep mum once the 50 minute hour is up. If I see a client in public, I'm not even supposed to acknowledge him or her. With some clients, I've spent years working on developing social skills only to abandon them completely at 10 to. Well, enough is enough. I need a way to process my feelings about the people I spend most of my days with. You don't know who I am so there's sure as hell no way you'll know who I'm talking about. Of course, names will be changed and I have ways of protecting the identities of every client. So there. Let's get ready to rumble...(I've just always wanted to say that!)

4 is a girl: Synesthesia and me

Last night over dinner with my hubby and a friend, somehow we got onto the topic of my kooky way of thinking where I see numbers and letters as having genders and even personalities. Ever since I can remember the numbers 1, 4, 7, and 8 were distinctly female numbers, where 2, 3, 5, 6, 9, and 0 were, well, boys. There's really no reason for my assigning the genders this way--it was all based on a feeling I associated with each. Our friend asked, "What about double digit numbers, like 27?" Clearly, that's a couple. A male and female. They could be friends, team members, or life partners for all I know--but they are together. The gender thing really only applies to single digits so when using longer strings of digits it just becomes a group of individuals. Like 130 is a girl with two boys. I have a fondness for some numbers, usually the ones with more girls in them. I prefer 48 to 45. It's just nicer. My funny way of thinking also applies to letters. Each letter, to me, has not only a gender but a personality, too.

I always thought that this was just a quirk I have from being a painfully shy child with a wild imagination or maybe the elementary school educational system really brainwashed me into thinking that "The Letter People" exist outside of my workbooks. But to be honest, the personalities I think go with each letter are different from the cartoonish representations of The Letter People from first grade. Well, as it turns out, I am not alone. About 1 in 23 people have some form of synesthesia, which refers to a neurological phenomena where the stimulation of one sensory or cognitive path automatically triggers the sensory or cognitive experiences along another path. There are different types of synesthesias, like when someone sees colors for musical sounds. My form of synesthesia is called ordinal linguistic personification. Sometimes, I'll assign my clients letters associated with their personalities--it makes for the ultimate protection of privacy in my case notes. One particularly difficult case is definitely a P--unpredictable, dependent, lack of boundaries, dramatic, and essentially borderline (think Margot from Margot at the Wedding). Ps have always been tricky characters to me. They're pretty bright but very arrogant, annoying, and downright prickly. Sadly, I don't see the personalities of letters when reading or looking at words, just in individual letters. It's too bad because it would make my course reading and clinical cases so much more festive.