I must have been feeling particularly adventurous this morning as I decided to try and drive to the shops to do some grocery shopping.  Mind you I took Yale as a back up just in case you know.  So I pull out of my drive way and up onto Belmont Road, and manage to get about half way down Meadowlands Road (not even half way to my Mum’s) and am feeling so distressed about being behind the wheel that I had to get out and let Yale drive.   🙁   I feel like I am totally out of control – rising sensation of panic, inability to breathe properly (which is something we tend to place quite a bit of importance on whether one is driving or not), gripping the steering wheel for grim death and that horrible feeling of being aware of your own heartbeat.  The car feels like it’s moving to me even when it’s not…. like if I brake going down hill, I feel as though the whole car is floating all over the road and isn’t reacting in a measured and predictable manner.  Even when I’m in the passenger seat, whenever anything comes towards us from my peripheral vision, I am instantly shying away from it and fighting the urge to simultaneously cover my eyes, scream out and cry.

It’s positively ridiculous and it’s driving me crazy… or maybe it’s the being crazy that is causing the not driving… or perhaps I always was crazy and it’s only now I’m sane that I can’t drive.   Whatever the fuck it is … I AM GETTING TOTALLY FRUSTRATED WITH THIS SHIT.  I am singularly unhappy with my wash and I know not what to do about it.  I feel like I’ve lost my independence having to rely on others to ferry me around.  What on earth happened to that Borys who went prancing off to Pakistan on her own last year?!?!?  Where the hell has she gone  🙁

At the risk of making a sweeping generalization – this sort of nonsensical phobia is for the weak willed and feeble minded in my book – so what gives?  why is it happening to me?  And why now after accident number four?  Why not after accident number 2 which was high speed, higher impact and more damage?  And while I am on the subject of traffic phobia… isn’t the definition of a phobia  a ‘persistent irrational fear of something’…. and is it irrational (given my history)  that I’m increasingly alarmed in traffic?   Seems perfectly logical to me.  If someone had been bitten by snakes four times and then became exceedingly frightened and wary of them would we call that a phobia? 

I’ve been thinking about all this too much, and way too often and it’s consuming a far too much of my mental energy right now.  But I don’t know what to do from here.  The EMDR experiment was pointless, the distraction exercises that the psychologist gave me don’t appear to be overly effective either…. so what next?
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Pain Clinic ….. Day Nine (but who’s counting?)

Floor exercises.
Followed by Psychology session – Affect of Chronic Pain on Relationships
Followed by Gym
Followed by 2km stroll by the river
Followed by lunch break
Followed by Occupational Therapy
then home.

Somewhere in there – in this morning’s Psychology session to be precise – one of our fellow pain clinic participants decided to start hurling abuse at me across a room where I was having a quiet and private conversation that went something like this :

Uncle Frank:   I am tired of these sessions, I feel like everyone else is getting to air their issues, but as soon as I want to discuss something,  TrixieCyclist (the psychologist) cuts me off. 
Borys:   Yes, I know what you mean, we do have a couple of very demanding and vociferous people in the group who seem to dominate the sessions…. but she is doing what she can with what she’s got and she knows she has to focus her attention on those that are having the most difficulty adjusting blah, blah, blah ….

when unexpectedly from across the room in a unnecessarily loud and extremely accusatory tone we hear :

Tracey Shoulders:   Don’t you two talk about me!  I’ve had it up to here with you (this was pointedly directed to me) 
Borys:  (perplexed) Excuse me Tracey?  We were neither talking about you nor to you.
Tracey:  I know you were talking about me and I’m sick of it!   If you have a problem with me you can tell me to my face.
Borys:   I am sorry to disappoint you Tracey but not everything revolves around you.  We were not in fact discussing you, and you may be assured that if I did have a problem with you, I would certainly approach you about it, though I would do it privately in a calm and mature manner rather than inappropriately yelling across a room full of people!
Tracey:  Oh, I know you were talking about me!  I heard you saying ‘she’ , ‘she’, ‘she’ !!!
Borys:   Tracey, you’re not the only female around here and believe it or not some of us have concerns that have nothing to do with you.  None of us should have to tolerate this sort of disrespectful behaviour and I believe you owe both Frank and myself an apology for your rude and unwarranted intrusion.
Tracey:  I won’t be apologizing to YOU!!!

or roughly something to that effect.  At which point the less than cluey TrixieCyclist realized the situation was deteriorating rather rapidly and jumped in suggesting that we resolve our differences later.  No doubt this was because it was obvious that Tracey was about to start hurling expletives at me.  Which is a not uncommon reaction I tend to illicit from certain people when they pick a verbal fight with me….  sigh.

So fun for the whole group you know.  Tracey being barely three years my junior is about 15 years my junior in the maturity stakes.  She has been a disruptive, uncooperative, hypercritical, disgruntled, belligerent  high maintenance little malcontent (read: whiny little dumbass bitch) from the day we started the program.  I believe this has probably had a significantly detrimental effect on the rest of us given that the physios etc running the course have had to pull her kicking and screaming every step of the way throughout the last three weeks.

I am so pleased that I have only one day left and then I will not have to put up with her puerile and small minded behaviour ever again.   I’ve rarely encountered anyone so blatantly selfish and self centered.  We’ve all put up with her telling others to ‘shut up’ when people try to help her, we’ve had to put up with her objectionable fart jokes and constant twittering over the most infinitesimally asinine and banal things, and we’ve had to listen to her constant bellyaching about her woes… you’d swear she’s the only person on the course.

If I never hear her loud, nasal, whiny, grating aussie-shazza voice again – it’ll be too soon.
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