The Vine: October 1, 2009
Hi Sars,
I have a cat question. I’ve read through most of the Vine archives and haven’t found this one, so maybe it’s new. Here’s the deal: My husband and I have four cats. One of them is all aloof and princessy, doesn’t like to interact with the others, which is fine.
The other three are: Pip, a bratty teenaged kitten (not quite a year); Lucky, a big pushy old customer; Simone: a fat, cross-eyed earth mother type. Pip and Lucky and Simone all get along really well (Simone actually nursed Pip when we got him, even though she’d been spayed and he wasn’t her kitten — I know, crazy).
Anyway, the three musketeers generally groom each other and snuggle sleepily together and are all lovey-dovey, except when Pip the teenager decides he needs a playmate and tackles Lucky or Simone. (All three of them weigh about the same amount — Pip may still be the smallest.) Then there’s lots of thumping and rolling around and yelling from Lucky or Simone, whoever his current victim is.
My husband gets upset and tries to break up these fights, since it’s pretty obvious most of the time that Pip is the instigator and the other two just want to sleep and eat and groom. I say that since no one is getting bitten or scratched (the occasional scab, but keeping Pip’s claws trimmed seems to do the job), that it’s nothing to worry about and Pip is probably trying to claw his way to the top of the pecking order as he gets older. (Uh — sorry about the animal metaphor overload in that last part.)
I also think it’s pointless to try to stop them fighting, since Pip can and will do whatever the hell he wants when we’re not home. I’m also of the opinion that should Simone or Lucky actually get tired of playing with Pip, they would just sock him one or bite him for real and then he’d leave them alone. Can you weigh in?
The Dyson Animal is not as great as the Amazon reviews would have you believe
Dear Dyson,
I don’t think there’s any harm in trying to stop the fighting — keeping a squirt gun handy and spritzing Pip with it if he’s annoying the others, or whatever other technique works for you — but if neither of the other cats is overmatched, or sustaining any “real” injuries on a regular basis, I wouldn’t worry about it.Keep an eye on them, sure, and break up scuffles when you can, but is it something you have to ride herd on every second?No.
In my experience, the issue of their fighting when you’re not home often isn’t an issue at all.Based on reports from various friends and cat-sitters, my cats don’t fight if I’m not there to witness it — it’s a pecking-order issue — and if you don’t come home to battle scars, it’s probably not something you need to invest much time in preventing.
If one of them turns up with anything more than a scratch, or starts using the carpet as an anxiety toilet, start separating them and call your vet for behavioral advice, but for now, you can let them work things out on their own.
Completely minor grammar question that has been nagging the hell out of me for years.I don’t even know what to call it; I could try but it would sound stupid.
It’s “hold on to something,” not “hold onto something,” yes?Because the verb phrase is “hold on,” and because “onto” specifically means “on top of” (or so I’ve decided?).
Does that rule hold out for the similar verb phrases like “bump in to,” “butt in to,” “give in to,” et cetera?Because sometimes that shit looks wrong, I dunno.Then there’s the ones like, “I ran into the house,” where it is “into” because you are going directionally in, and it’s all very confusing for me.
What say ye, maven?
Pedantry for me!
Dear Ped,
The first definition of “onto” is “to a position on” (…sorry to state the obvious there), so, in the case of “hold on to” or “hold onto,” I’d say it’s a distinction without a difference.I wouldn’t correct it in a document I proofread, anyway.
I can’t say definitively whether that’s correct, but it probably holds true for the other compound prepositions you mention.The words have evolved, the same way “baseball” no longer has a hyphen in it (or, more recently, Sports Illustrated‘s rendering of outfield positions as all one word, a la “leftfield,” which I don’t like the look of but which, based on the word “outfield,” probably do make sense).
If the readers want to furnish citations to dispute this, they’re welcome to, but I don’t think there’s one rule to rule them all.You have to look at the particular verb phrase and decide for yourself if the integrity of the verb “to hold (on),” and the sense of that discrete phrase, is what you want to stress, versus using the compound preposition “onto” and the very slight shading in meaning that that might imply.
It isn’t the kind of thing people tend to take you out of the hiring queue for, though, so I wouldn’t overthink it too much.
Hi, Sars —
I really appreciate the advice that you and your readers give people on The Vine. I’ve wanted to take advantage of one of your recurring themes — “Get thee to therapy” — but the problem is I don’t know how to do so successfully.
I moved last summer after seeing Dr. A for over a year. I really liked Dr A — if she hadn’t been my doctor, I think we could have been good friends. But, to be honest, it was pretty easy to get her off topic, or avoid the things I didn’t really want to address. It was nice to talk to someone, but didn’t really help me get to the root of my problems.
When I moved, I wanted to find someone who would I could like, but more importantly, who wouldn’t let me avoid issues, who would make me address the complicated web of bad stuff that is my life, and hopefully find a way to not be the unhappy, overwhelmed person I am.
I’ve been to see four different people, and talked to three others on the phone. The ones I saw I stuck with for varying lengths of time — from four weeks to five months — but none of them were helpful. I didn’t want to just give up — I know it takes time to establish a rapport, explain the background of what I’m going through, establish trust — but when I consistently walked out feeling less hopeful, less wanting to go on, and wanting to engage in some of the troubling behaviors that led me to seek help in the first place — I wonder if this is really what I need.
Or am I just not finding the right person to talk with? Was the counselor who told me that there really isn’t anything that can help me right? Or the one who said I should get a hobby? (I love to knit, but it really isn’t enough to base a life on. Maybe I should try online poker?) Most of the time I feel like the hour would have been better spent with the cat — at least she makes feel loved and like there is some hope in my world when she sits in my arms purring.
I have a list of people I can see from my insurance company, but how do I know if they’re any good, or if they’ll just send me to the hobby shop again? I don’t really want to talk about this with the people I work with, and they’re pretty much the only people I know around here.
I guess what I’m hoping you and the Tomatolings can help me with — along with all the other people out there who might not know how to find help — is how do you find the right person to work with? How do you know when it is the right time give up on a counselor and move on to someone else? How do you know if you’re beyond help and might as well just give up? How do you hang on to hope when it seems like there is none? I know I need to get counseling, but for now I’m just…
Looking for help in all the wrong places
Dear Places,
If you do have insurance, your HMO should have a number you can call to get a more individualized recommendation.One size doesn’t fit all with therapy; not everyone benefits from a strict Freudian approach, or from a formal relationship with the therapist versus a casual one.
You can also browse around on WebMD or Healthline or a similar site to see what symptoms you have, and what people tend to think is the best type of therapy for those symptoms, whether you should think about pairing therapy with medication for a while, and so on.
It’s also possible that you’ve quit each of these therapists right when your resistance grew strongest.Resistance is a part of therapy, and your counselor should address it explicitly with you — and you with him, when you begin to feel like the therapeutic relationship isn’t working — and if that’s what’s going on, the problem isn’t the therapist.The problem is that the therapy is getting you close to something that you have historically repressed or avoided dealing with.That’s just part of it, staying the course when therapy feels boring or painful or you leave the sessions all puffy from crying — and some people have very strong resistance that takes longer than a few months to push past.
You didn’t say whether you brought this up in so many words to your therapists of the recent past, and I don’t want you to think I’m blaming you for the therapy not working; like I said, this is just part of it.Something in your subconscious doesn’t want it to work; that’s totally normal.But if you’ve tried a bunch of different doctors, a bunch of different types of therapy, and you find yourself wanting to quit after a certain period, and the only common element is…you, wanting to quit?You may just have to resolve to stick with the next one, and speak more forthrightly about the issues you have with the therapy itself as they come up.Not if you really don’t click with the therapist, obviously, but therapy is work and it does take time.
So, do some research; ask some questions about what kind of therapy would work best for your situation.Once you think you’ve got a good fit, remember that good counselors are supposed to recognize resistance and work with you to get past it — they can’t make you go to your sessions, but if you mention that you don’t want to come in, you feel it’s a waste of time, you just want to go get drunk afterwards (or whatever your triggered behavior is), they’re trained to refocus you on what’s going on underneath.
It’s frustrating to have to start all over with a new counselor, draw your family tree, blah blah; it’s frustrating to feel like you don’t connect with your mental-wellness professional, and some of it is like dating, where you have to go on a bunch of dates and thin the herd.But some of it is realizing that a part of your mind does not want this problem cleared up, and forging ahead anyway.
Tags: cats grammar health and beauty
If there’s an EAP at Looking’s place of employment, you might try there. I’ve found my recent therapists by making an appointment with the EAP counselor and getting a list of recommendations. They had a big book of ’em, and the book contained information (from the therapists themselves?) on what their approach was, etc.
So now I am howling at the visuals of “I ran in to the house” [I opened the door and zipped in at high speed] and “I ran into the house” [bouncing off the front door and getting a bloody nose in the bargain]. Oh, how I love my cartoon head.
@Looking – This is a quite helpful site where lots of therapists are registered and all have profiles telling you about them and how they work. Don’t know if it will help you find the right therapist for you, but it’s a good pool to look in.
@Looking – D’oh! Link: http://therapists.psychologytoday.com/rms/
Don’t have a helpful comment, but I, too, pictured someone running full tilt into a outside wall when I read “I ran into the house.”
Two therapy suggestions.
First, think back to the therapists you quit working with. Consider calling the one you lasted the longest with and asking, “Do you believe that my decision to terminate therapy with you was resistance or recognition that the therapy wasn’t working?”
Second, when you interview new possible therapists, there are two things that you really need to share: your experience with Dr. A where you could divert her from hard stuff, and your suspicion that you may have left previous (more recent than Dr. A) therapists as a form of resistance. Explore in the interview how the two of you might handle resistance effectively. There are a number of ways to do it, and if you have a plan ahead of time, it can (not always, but can) short-circuit the resistance and help you get through it.
As an aside, I want to tell you a little story. I was doing therapy with a terrific therapist and a friend of mine decided it was doing me so much good that she would star therapy, too. So she found herself a very good therapist, got a referral to a psychiatrist to get some anti-depressants, and really enjoyed the first six weeks or so of therapy. Then the MD let the therapist know that in his opinion, the meds were stabilized, and the therapist said to my friend, “Okay, good news, Dr. B has let me know your meds are stable, so now we can start the real work.”
I kid you not: two weeks later, my friend had given up her job (and as it happened, the career that went with it), broken her lease (at a huge expense to herself as she had to pay six months rent on a place she had moved out of), rehomed three cats, and moved 1500 miles to a city where she knew no one. From then on, whenever I hit resistance in my own therapy, that spectacular example reminded me that resistance is part of the process and helped me stick it out.
@Looking: I could be way off base, but what sticks out to me about your letter is that you seem to be looking your therapy sessions as a way to make you happy, or feel hopeful, or whatever in the short-term. That’s the long-term goal of therapy, but the early sessions are difficult. If there’s an issue you’ve been repressing or dealing with for years on end, there’s no magic hour that will make you okay. You don’t suddenly achieve closure on a difficult passage of your life. It can be a long, drawn-out, tedious process.
If you don’t feel comfortable with a therapist, that’s one thing. But it sounds to me like your expectations are a bit high. The time frame on therapy is never as short as we want it to be, and it’s often a lifelong thing.
Looking For Help, allow me to share a powerful adage with you: “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Then give up. No use in making a damned fool of yourself.”
I was you. Then I stopped trying to convince myself that I was resisting, that I wasn’t giving it enough time to develop a rapport, that the next therapist would be the one, etc. After giving it the ol’ college try and then some, I stopped going to therapy. It was a good decision.
Occam’s Razor dictates that if going to therapy makes you feel hopeless and drives you to unhealthy behaviors, it’s not helping you. Enough of this “resistance” song and dance — therapy’s just not that into you. Or vice versa.
Put your time and energy into trying other methods of healing — self-help books, journalling, meds, yoga, support groups, communing with nature, etc. You’re absolutely not beyond help but therapy isn’t the “help” for you. You can start to build confidence right now by being true to your own feelings…feelings that therapy is not working for you.
Dyson and her husband are sweet to watch over their cats like that, but it’s really not necessary. Cats fight, and I think a big reason why is that they LIKE fighting. My two will stand in the center of the living room and weave back and forth like cobras, then pounce and roll around the room, screaming and leaving tufts of fur. Then they’re fine.
My husband and I never find fur-tufts when we get back to the house after work, and if just one of us is home they’ll spend the whole time sleeping or begging for food. But when we’re both home then one or the other will pick a fight and it’s off to the races. Dominance? Showing off? Being insane and annoying and loud and hard to understand (in other words, being cats)? Take your pick.
Leftfield? LEFTFIELD?! I’m sorry, I can’t get behind that.
“my cats don’t fight if I’m not there to witness it”
Ah! Quantum mechanics popping up in real (macro) life. Sweet. =)
Dyson, there’s definitely a difference between your usual cat fights and cat fights that you need to be worried about. We have five, and a few of them decided to dog pile (cat pile?) one, Emily, out of the blue. We tried to ignore it, then we tried to intervene, and when it got to the point where we had bloody trips to the vet, a useless declawing of the instigator that made him bite instead and led to more bloody trips to the vet, and finally the one cat ripping a hole in our box springs and living in there, coming out only to sneak some food and water and to crap on the bed, we realized that they couldn’t live in harmony and locked Emily in our bedroom. She lived in isolation for about five years in two different places. We recently moved into a very large house, and we tried reintroducing them. Everyone staked out a territory, but the big, dumb, orange cat still hunted her down and beat the crap out of her. We now have part of the upstairs blocked off with a baby gate (…which the big, dumb, orange cat can’t figure out how to jump over…). The other cats will have occasional scuffles with her, but they aren’t that frequent and end quickly–they fight when they cross paths, whereas the orange cat would stalk her through the house just to attack her.
Point is: A serious cat fight is like porn. You’ll know it when you see it.
@Dyson – my cats fight from time to time, too, and I always assumed that the big, dominant male (Tux) was the instigator (since, you know, he’d be sitting on top of Bauer, the female, pounding the snot out of her). Then one day we happened to witness quiet, innocent Bauer pad up to the chair where Tux was peacefully sleeping, stand up on her back paws, and unleash the kung-fu paws of fury on him – whapwhapwhapwhappow! He proceeded to chase her into the living room, hold her down, and pound the snot out of her.
Ever since that day, we don’t yell at him for chasing her around the house. I think she kind of enjoys it.
@Dyson:
What Sars says. At my house, the Three Bad Barn Cats will constantly annoy each other, scuffle, chase, etc. They’re littermates together since birth, and this is their version of WWF or Monster Trucks or…you get the idea. Nothing drawing blood, just a lot of noise and flying fur. Enter the cranky old Mr. Duzy Batz. If one of the younger ones tries anything with him, he gives: a snarl; a growl; a snap of the jaw; a poke in the face with his (declawed) paw, which, trust me, is like being hit with a tough old boxing glove. Guess who always gets his way? And btw, thanks to all the readers who sent him good energy. After nearly a week in hospital, he’s home again and recuperating. He still thinks “Hisss-growl” means “Hi guys, I’m home!” and he still snarls more at me than at all 3 barn cats together. That’s how we know he’s feeling better.
@Looking: I’ve been in therapy for just a short time, but it’s been a positive experience for me so far. You should take a look at what your expectations for therapy are. You had more of a chatty, companionable relationship with Dr. A, and you expect to come out of therapy feeling loved and hugged (or so your reference to the cat suggests). My therapist is a very warm and approachable person, but she will not let me operate under the misapprehension that she is my friend. If you feel you need some unconditional support in your life–and I totally understand that impulse, I’m also living far away from home–you should probably focus your energy more on making friends and building social relationships.
Avoidance is my issue, too, and a few times I’ve felt reluctant to go to my sessions, mostly when I have spent the week prior avoiding my problems and don’t want to face up to it with her. We’ve talked a lot about that, and it’s beginning to make a difference in my life.
For the record, she is the second therapist I visited, and maybe the fifth that I called. There is some effort involved in finding someone who works for you, and you shouldn’t continue with someone who seems totally out of touch with your needs, but you also need to be willing to trust a little bit, and give them time to do what they do.
Good luck.
Dyson – My cats DO fight when I’m not there to watch…I find tufts of fur occasionally when I get home. But the instigator is nearly always the skinny girl, and if the boys wanted to kick her hissy ass, they would. I’ve stuck my hands in a few boxing matches and encountered no claws, so I don’t worry too much. I found that Feliway sprays and plug-ins helped for about a month and then the calming effect wore off altogether. That was a nice month. *sigh* (Does the plug-in plug in to the outlet or into it? Hee.)
Places – I sort of agree with JenB – maybe the therapy is not what you need…it worked so awesomely for me that I recommend it a lot, though. DEFinitely find a new counsellor if you’re bored…therapy shouldn’t bore you! Could your Dr. A recommend anyone?
LEFTFIELD?! I’m sorry, I can’t get behind that.
I seem to be okay with it in an in-game situation, i.e. “Damon plays the leftfield wall like he’s fighting with his wife.” But in other, non-game sitches, I’ma sticking with the two-word format. Otherwise, it would feel like something out of left field.
@Amy & @Krista–yes, exactly! *hee* The same with “I ran in to an old friend” vs “I ran into an old friend”–IMO the first is an idiomatic expression of surprise meeting while the second is an accidental physical encounter. (Wouldn’t my 7th grade grammar teach be proud to know 26 years later I STILL take prepositions seriously…)
JenK – I know this is crosstalk – but yours is a situation that would be the one I think calls for rehoming one of those cats. As my cat has gotten older, I’ve really seen how miserable a cat can get when there’s tension in the house (no more visiting animals for us). I just think when a cat starts living in isolation, it isn’t fair to the cat.
To Looking – it occurs to me that those therapists weren’t proposing solutions, but coping techniques. When I started therapy, I made it really clear that I didn’t want an assignment to keep a journal because it wouldn’t help me cope, it would make me miserable. I guess what I’m getting at is if you can figure out why you’re resisting or what it is that you’re resisting, that would go a long way towards communicating with the counselor. In my case, there was something about being told what to do that pushed my buttons. So my therapist let me think I came up with my answers. It worked for us.
Places, I just want to second what a few other posters have said — therapy is not, generally, fun. It doesn’t make you feel loved. It doesn’t make you feel happier automatically, and certainly not immediately afterward. At the beginning I gave myself treats (literally, ice cream and stuff — kid stuff, but it worked) for going to therapy every week. By the end I appreciated the effects and the experience started to be less intense, but it was still an effort.
On the other hand, a therapist shouldn’t be telling you you can’t be helped or that you need to get a hobby, and if you’re feeling so bad after the sessions that you want to engage in unhealthy behaviors, you should be discussing that with the therapist to find out what’s going on there. Meta-discussion of your relationship with therapy with your therapist can be pretty tough — I had a really hard time with bringing up issues with my therapist (not surprisingly since I have a hard time bringing up issues in general) and when she raised them, it was easy for me to feel hurt/defensive/helpless. But one of the points of a good therapeutic relationship is that you aren’t helpless, nor are you immune from constructive criticism — there should be enough space for discussion of the relationship itself, from both sides.
@ Looking “Was the counselor who told me that there really isn’t anything that can help me right?” – erm, NO, plus s/he was disgustingly unprofessional to even say that!
I know very little backstory on this one aside from that sentence, but it sounds to me like their professional ego was wounded and they decided to make you the bad guy in the relationship.
NO-ONE is beyond all help – not you, not traumatised orphaned kids who’ve witnessed war crimes and atrocities in their home nation, heck even serial killers in prison can get therapuetic help that eases them away from their violent fantasies, IF they want the help that is.
You do want that help (and hope it’s clear the serial killer thing was just for illustrative purposes) – I think you got some great suggestions so far on here to chew over, and I wish you all the best finding something that works for you, whatever that may be. Don’t give up!
Dyson –
My cats fight periodically for no reason. No real harm is ever done. It usually happens when my dominant male (Cloudy) decides that one of the other cats is annoying him (by making too much noise – usually Beasty – or simply being alive – usually Stormy) and, after a few warning noises, goes over and bites them on the nape of the neck and holds on. There’s a lot of snarling and yowling, and I usually intervene, but there’s never any blood or bruising and everyone’s over it in seconds.
I think Pip just wants to play; it sounds like the older cats are actually fairly tolerant. And I think you’re right that if they had really had enough, they’d let Pip know (and probably scare the crap out of him) w/o really hurting him or themselves.
I thought I had it rough with 3 cats – best wishes to you and your 4!
@Dyson: If you and your husband enjoy the aerobic workout of trying to separate the Fighting Cats O’ Fury, that’s fine – it makes for a nice, vigorous bonding session for you all. But, based on your description, it isn’t truly necessary. This isn’t one cat separated out by the others and bullied; this is Greater Garbo, who is Left Alone (her idea), and the Three Muscatels: Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cottontail. What you see your trio engaged in, courtesy of Pip, is the same kind of thrashing around that they all did as kittens (which Pip still is, really). It’s dominance play, in large part, but it’s also the kind of play in which all predatory mammals engage (to my knowledge, at least): it sharpens their skills, and keeps them in shape. It’s good for them. It’s healthy. Once Pip is a couple of years older, he may pounce less. But then again, he may not.
My younger cat does the same thing with the older one, and there’s about a TEN-year age difference. I occasionally feel a little sorry for the older one, as he yodels when the younger, bigger cat chases him – until I realized that the older cat is STILL the one who instigates most of it! He just likes to yell while he runs. Your young cat, like mine, needs to be active, and the Furry Feets of Fury are not engaged in genuine fights – they’re just thundering around, yelling and flailing and having a good time.
If your husband wants to work off some of Pip’s energy, he should be able to get him to engage in games of Tag, where he chases Pip, and Pip chases him back. There’s also engaging Pip’s attention with a Cat Dancer, or with a well-deployed laser pointer (perfectly safe, as long as it doesn’t go near anyone’s eyes). Pip would probably wrestle, pretty happily, with either of you; just don’t encourage him in behaviour you don’t want continued: no chasing the toes under the covers, or your bare moving hand, unless you WANT to wake up in the middle of the night with agonizing pain in your feet, or have your hand attacked suddenly when you’re just petting him.
If you ever find something which IS good at removing cat hair, pass it along here, would you? Because that would pretty much be the next best thing to finding the Holy Grail, only less likely.
@Dyson: My two cats did fight. Unfortunately the older one always interpreted when she was stressed to it always being the younger one’s fault (due to a botched introduction when the younger one was brought into our home). As a result, the older one took her stress out on the younger one :( In my case, letting them fight it out didn’t achieve anything except make it become an ingrained habit that the older one couldn’t break on her own.
Keeping an eye on things and using the squirt bottle or can of rocks to create a really loud noise to distract them from the potential skirmish really helps. But the best strategem (we tried feliway and whilst good, it was very expensive and not as good as what I’m about to describe) is 15 mins play time twice a day. This was what I was prescribed by my cat specialist/behaviourist. And yep, that is PER cat on their own as doing playtime together just reinforces territorial issues, fighting etc. This gets done in my house by taking one cat at a time into a room and shutting a door! I’m lucky, this is a shared ‘duty’ in my house but it has made such a huge difference it’s stopped being one. My cats LOVE their ‘da bird’ cat toy, along with human created sound effects (*ahem*) so 15mins day and night….happiness. Peace has reigned even when we aren’t in the house! (Please don’t ask how I know this, I feel this post has truly damned me to the crazy cat lady stakes without further condemning myself.)
You do have to be disciplined and stop at 15mins (leaving them wanting more) To be truthful, we haven’t been as good at the twice a day thing in the past few months but I haven’t noticed any regression in behaviour. You have reminded me to get back into things because, well, it’s so much better than the vet bills due to the serious scratches, bites, stitches, stress induced cystitis, anxious sad felines etc.
I am not sure if my suggestion helps as I don’t know what sort of ‘fighting’ your cats get into. I am also not sure, what with you having four cats, if 15mins a day per cat twice a day is realistic. Maybe there is another way of doing playtime (because seriously, an hour day AND night would be tedious!) but I can certainly endorse it as being a good redirection of the pent up aggression, boredom and stress. I’ve now got two happy well adjusted cats (the older one has gone from despising the younger one to grooming her and calling out for her when she isn’t around!). All because I make them chase and catch a feather on a long bendy plastic stick. Go figure.
Dyson: Our “trouble maker” bothered the piss out of our cats all the time with his roughhousing, and it was usually during quiet moments. He’s a punk like that. One day I laughed my ass off when I saw our dominant “father” cat had had enough, and he took trouble and sat on him. All you could see was trouble’s distraught little eyes poking out from under tuffs of belly fur! The other cats will put a stop too it when they’ve had enough. Oh, and true enough on the Dyson. For $700 the vacuum better suck up the fur and knit me a sweater out of it!
NO-ONE is beyond all help – not you, not traumatised orphaned kids … You do want that help
Well, unless she doesn’t. I agree that it was an unprofessional comment, if that’s how it was phrased, but if she has unreasonable expectations for therapy or just doesn’t want to face it/the issues head-on, then…it’s true. There is no therapy that can help her if she’s not going to, you know, do the therapy.
I want to say again that I think this is normal — if in fact a reluctance to sit with the ugliness of the past for an hour a week is the central obstacle here. She may just have had a string of bad counseling matches; that happens too. Certainly she’s not beyond help her own self — but if the help involves dredging and she doesn’t want to do it, that’s that.
@ Looking
I am curious about the therapist who said that there wasn’t anything that could help you, and the therapist who said you should get a hobby. In my experience, people don’t generally try to dissuade you from purchasing their services, especially when you could be paying them once a week for years on end- this seems like unusual advice and since you received it from two different therapists, some self examination might be in order.
I don’t mean to belittle the problems you have, but your letter doesn’t mention what your issues are, and I really don’t have any guesses. I would start with the assumption that all really large, dysfunctional issues can be worked through in therapy and then work backwards. Perhaps these therapists were saying that you are putting all of your time and energy into being unhappy- that you are in need of distraction from thinking about your unhappiness. Perhaps they were suggesting things that you refused to do- did they suggest medication you didn’t want? Or a type of therapy you didn’t agree with? Or were you asking for something from therapy that they felt you could not get ( the suggestion from others that you might be looking for happiness and comfort rather than clarity).
I would take a long look at why you are going to therapy and what you expect out of it, and then look at why your therapists may have been pushing you towards other things.
@ Dyson: Sorry, me again. Just read La BellaDonna’s advice (all very sage and wonderful as usual!) but wanted to add a little aside to the laser pointer toy. In my experience, this toy worked off energy in the short term but caused a HELL of a lot of frustation/angst in the long term. Maybe it was my cats but what was explained to me was a lot of the fulfillment in the play sessions comes from chasing and then having the satisfaction of catching something tangible. (And you have to give them more catches than not – makes them feel all big, happy and hunt-ery!) What happened with me, because my two couldn’t ever ‘catch’ the laser dot, the older cat got more agressive and the younger cat became even more anxious and neurotic!!
“Da bird” truly is fantastic because you can sit on your arse and flick it around if you feel tired and not up to an energetic play session. The cat runs around like a mad thing, pouncing, leaping, hiding (and the all important catching!) but you can be still like a rock.
So, like La BellaDonna says, a toy will help both your husband and Pip redirect their energies (Pip really does need to burn some off)!! Here’s a link to my magic cure: http://www.drsfostersmith.com/product/prod_display.cfm?pcatid=11643
@Ash, I will DEFINITELY look for “Da Bird†– anything to help my panther burn off energy. I absolutely understand, and agree with you, about the need for successfully catching his “prey†– I would normally end the game by clicking it on one of the toy mousies, so he’d have something to bat and kill. What’s unusual about this kitty, however, is that he appears to KNOW it’s just a game. The laser pointer lives in a box. The box lives in a drawer. If he sees me open the drawer, he comes running over, and he’ll poke the drawer. If he’s elsewhere, and hears me knock against the metal box *tik*, he comes running. If he sees me HOLD the box, he does the Butt Wriggle, waiting for the Red Devil Bug to come out and play, or he’ll paw at the box/my arm. In fact, when the Red Devil Bug comes out to play, I’m not necessarily the one who picks what we’re doing – I was going to flick it at the couch, but HE’s already aimed himself at the dining room runway. He wants me to aim it THERE, and run up the boxes. And he’ll wait until I aim it where HE wants to go. Sometimes if he loses track of the Red Devil Bug, he’ll come over and pat my hand, or stare up at the pointer. He knows that the Red Devil Bug isn’t an ordinary bug.
Oh, and *ugh*. I went to pick up one of the toy mousies the other day, off the floor? Apparently he’s not *completely* frustrated. It wasn’t a *toy* mousie.
Re “left field” versus “leftfield” — If I can brush off my twenty-year-old otherwise unused linguistics degree here, I can tell you that there is a marker in spoken English about when a noun phrase becomes a single idiom, and it has to do with where the word stress goes. For example, notice how you say “My sister lives in a white house” as compared to “Mr. Obama lives in the White House”. In the first case, “house” gets more stress; in the second you say “WHITE house”, since the two words have become one concept. There are lots of examples of this. (e.g. “Cellular PHONE” –> “CELL phone”, “blue JEANS” –> “BLUE jeans” etc)
“OUTfield” has clearly gone through this shift, but “left field”? I don’t think so. Are baseball announcers pronouncing it “LEFT field” now? Maybe I’m just behind the times.
@John: I don’t hear announcers pronounce it that way, but maybe they’ll start now that “leftfield” is rendered as one word occasionally? I hope they don’t, but I could see it shifting that way.
La BellaDonna, I’ve found that the best thing for removing cat hair from couches, cushions, curtains, clothes, etc is this red mitt I got at Petsmart for about 6 bucks- it is made from stiff material that picks up hair when you “pet” things in one direction, and then lets go when you go the other direction. It does a pretty great job except for hairs that have somehow woven themselves into the material, and it doesn’t take long. I also use it on the cats sometimes, they love the feel.
@Dyson The key is, are the cats wrestling or fighting/attacking. Wrestling is pretty natural (and good exercise). Sometimes a scratch results, but scratches heal up (wrestling). Bites get infected and lead to vet visits and plastic collars (fighting). Is anyone getting stalked at the litter box so they can’t use it? Getting stalked at the water dish? If they’re in a tumble, does it break up when Lucky or Simone yell? If so, then they’re still playing by the rules (stopping when someone says, “Ow!”). I’d only break it up if someone has cried uncle and the other cat doesn’t stop–or if its happened at the food or water dish or litter box. I mean, if its just grumbly rumbly, you could let them tussle, but if its an “ouch” kind of yell, they should stop…I guess you have to go with your gut.
My 17 year old cat marched my mom’s 1 year old pest “kitten” across the living room and made him sit in the corner under the evil eye after he had bothered him one to many times. “No, I do not want to play, not now! Not ever!” Sometimes you have to just let them push one too many buttons. On the other hand, we had 2 cats that we had to keep separate with child gates because when left together, they would fight (of the biting, trips to vet to get plastic collar type fights). You *know* those kind of fights when you see them, there’s no mistake.
@Places I know its a one-off from your letter, but (as with pretty much anything) if you really like it, you can build a big hobby around it and knitting is no different. Making awesome stuff is just one component. Knitting groups, online groups, conferences, making your own designs, becoming a yarn snob, etc. Scope out ravelry.com if you haven’t tried it yet.
@La BellaDonna: your post made me genuinely laugh out loud :D And glad I can help! I have a sneaking suspicion your boy and my older girl must be related somehow. Just too smart for their own good. My girl got to the point with the laser toy that when she wasn’t pleased with me (usually because I had just paid attention to that younger cat, the bane of her life, didn’t I understand?), she would nonchalently come up to the toy, put her paw over the point where the laser light emitted and look at me with a very pointed “how stupid do you think I am? Game over” look.
You are going to find that your boy is going to perform his little routine for “da bird” and then some. I have to say, my girl eased off after a few MONTHS (gees) realising that this playtime thing was a daily thing and wasn’t ever going away. I have had to change the hiding spots though because…well you know all about it.
And considering how honed your boy’s hunter instincts are…ummm… maybe not so much for the outside after introducing da bird? I can’t imagine what you will say to me if you find a *not toy* bird in your house one day….*shudder* Real mice are bad enough!
Ok, this crazy cat lady (I feel I’ve officially outed myself in this Vine) is signing off.
Just my 2 cents about therapy: Have you considered a group? The dynamics are different than with a one-on-one therapist; there are more opinions to hear and more ways to express them, so sometimes a different way of looking at things will make sense to you. My group has a six-month commitment, too, so you aren’t allowed to run away when it gets tough. (You can, of course, we won’t track you down and drag you back, but you promised up front to give it the six months.) Anyway, I just wondered if anyone had suggested that option.
My kitties (serial ones) have always fought and it’s always been the healthy play fighting. Lots of grabbing, batting, and yelling, but not claws and no serious biting. In fact, the way I know when one of my cats wasn’t feeling well was when there was no fighting going on. If they didn’t have their evening rasslin’ match, I knew someone wasn’t up to snuff. Now that I have just the one cat, I (and probably he) kind of miss the evening show.
On the therapy front, my therapist was recommended to me by two different health care professionals. If you have a primary care physician or gynecologist with whom you have any kind of relationship, they may be able to steer you to someone with whom you can work. You may also want to talk to the physician or the therapist (or both) about medication. I’ve had great results with talk therapy, but studies show that while talk therapy alone can work and medication alone can work, a majority of patients benefit from the combination of both. It’s just something to consider.
@places, I don’t know if you’ve tried this already, but Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is a more results oriented therapy approach. You usually have a short term commitment and work on specific issues like improving your social life or dealing with negative thoughts getting stuck in your head. I have a friend who swears by it and I am looking into it myself.
I also agree that talking about medications with your doctor is a good idea. Most primary care doctors will know about different meds and their effects, and then you can avoid getting charged for seeing a specialist if cost is an issue.
I also second trying things besides or in addition to therapy. I think of depression/anxiety as being sort of like diabetes. It’s more of a chronic condition that is managed, not cured. Complementary therapies like a good diet, exercise and stress relief skills all help keep you where you want to be.
Keep at it, we’re all rooting for you!
@Looking: After working unsuccessfully with 15 or so different therapists over a couple of decades, I took the advice of a friend who teaches counseling psych – she told me that the only mode of therapy consistently proven to work in clinical trials is cognitive therapy. I checked out the nearby Beck Institute (http://www.beckinstitute.org/ – there’s also New York’s American Institute: http://www.cognitivetherapynyc.com/ – and I’m sure many others). I started just a few months ago with a cognitive therapist.
In all my experience of therapy, this is the first time I can say that every single time I leave my therapist’s office, I do feel better than I went in. No matter how depressed, desperate, hopeless, or rebellious I’m feeling, she helps me put some perspective on it, find some hope, and take some steps (however small to begin with), and that’s gold to me. I have a long way to go but I’m starting to see the light. I wish you all the best as you continue your journey.
Ash: Oh, no, no blame to you! Both my boys were rescued and are hunters; the younger one, though, has youth and SIZE on his side; he’s not fat in the least, just densely muscled and incredibly long – if I’m sitting on the couch, he’ll just go sailing over my head. The boys don’t go outside, and I will be sorry for any of God’s little creatures who are foolish enough to come INside when I’m not around. I will feel Very Very Sad if there is a Darwin Moment in the house (and I hate those times when I discover half a mouse in my slipper), but either the outdoor creatures come in when I can rescue them, or they understand that indoors belongs to the Mighty Hunters, and they enter at their own risk, because I would trust the young one to pick off a bird in flight.
@Dyson:
As a Certified Crazy Cat Lady who rescues, fosters, and adopts more kitties than I care to admit: 99% of the time, cats just work it out, and when one of the others has had enough of Little Brother’s antics, they will school him and he will get the message.
Unless – as another poster mentioned – there is stalking at the litterbox, food bowls, or water bowls. Then you should intervene for certain. But otherwise, it’s just normal, especially with a younger cat.
@Ash: You mentioned Feliway, and I just had to share: I have Feliway diffusers just about everywhere in my house, and I was very surprised to find at one point that one of my cats had… um… desecrated… the very diffuser that was supposed to eliminate their angst. Talk about a statement!
John: “there is a marker in spoken English about when a noun phrase becomes a single idiom, and it has to do with where the word stress goes. For example, notice how you say “My sister lives in a white house” as compared to “Mr. Obama lives in the White House”. In the first case, “house” gets more stress; in the second you say “WHITE house”, since the two words have become one concept. There are lots of examples of this. (e.g. “Cellular PHONE” –> “CELL phone”, “blue JEANS” –> “BLUE jeans” etc)”
Interesting. I have heard Mickey Mouse spoken with both pronunciations, depending on the speaker. And it always grates on my ear to hear MICKeymouse. First name Mickey, last name Mouse, right?
As to therapy.
Therapists typically will not continue therapy for very long with a person who has a drinking or drug problem and won’t quit. If you drink or drug, and they think you should stop, and you won’t, then they may sound flip in their refusal to continue to treat you, but it’s actually standard procedure.
Obviously I have no idea if this could apply, and no offense is meant. And sometimes people are slapped with a drug abuser/alcoholic label when it doesn’t apply, so if they’re getting records from each other, this could be “poisoning the well” for each subsequent therapist.