Was it Depression’s Fault I Did Not Meet My New Therapist Last Night?

It wasn’t that I didn’t have an appointment.

And it wasn’t for inattention on my part. Or at least it felt that way to me. I called my employer’s Care network. And I answered all their questions. They wanted to know if I preferred a male or a female therapist. I explained that I have worked with both.

All I want is someone who I can talk with and possibly connect with.

Now I may be reading more into this than is appropriate because I do have depression. But, the more I think about the different phone calls I have had from the new therapist group, the more I wonder about their ability to help me. Maybe ability is not the correct word, but I am having trouble understanding their attitude.

Maybe it is just me and my perceptions of their attitude.

My depression loves to have me practice mind reading. It may be all this is an attempt by my depression to undermine my attempt to get professional medical help. But the idea of their participation has gone from me being excited, to me being ambivalent about their assistance.

For the record, I am ready to work with a talk therapist.

And I am ready to listen and poised to work on whatever is needed so that I can lead a balanced life with depression. But maybe my depression has other plans. I know that what happened is a combination of factors. And each piece isn’t my fault directly. But put together, all of the pieces resulted in my having to reschedule my first appointment with my new therapist.

It all began when I was writing the staff schedule at work.

One of the other managers wanted to switch to working Sunday night so he could be there to help prepare for a department’s inventory the following morning. So, I switched and took the earlier Sunday shift.  So far, so good. Then I looked at the schedule and felt guilty that I was not having as many closing shifts as the manager who I had just swapped shifts with.

Even though it was his idea, I felt responsible for what I saw as being fair about how many closings each of us had.

This led to me changing yesterday’s schedule so that I would close, and he would open. I did this completely oblivious to the fact that I had scheduled my new therapist’s appointment for that same night. So now I am scheduled to work and scheduled for an appointment at the same time.

Further complicating things, I did not change the staff schedule that is on my refrigerator at home.

This resulted in me not seeing the conflict in advance. What I did see was a chance to take the earlier appointment yesterday. As I was pulling up to work before 9 am yesterday, I called the practice and suggested I could be there an hour earlier if it worked for them. I had been offered 6 PM or 7 PM. If 6 was still open, we could get started earlier and I could get home sooner.

Well, I hadn’t gotten into the office before another manager was asking what I was doing there.

Oblivious to the changes I had made to the staff schedule, I was there to work the early shift that I had seen on my schedule at home. It was only then that I remembered I had switched the schedule. So, I am over 3 hours early for my shift. And I am going to be working at the same time I have my new therapist appointment.

And the manager I had switched with had come down with something, non-covid, and was staying home.

So even if I had not changed the schedule, my schedule would have changed and I would be working at the same time I was to be meeting my new therapist. What a mess. And what a situation since I had just called to say I could come an hour earlier.

So now I must call their office again and ask to reschedule.

The operator who answered was the same person I had spoken with less than an hour earlier. I quickly explained the situation and that I must work and would need to reschedule my appointment. She said, once again, that she would e-mail my new therapist and have him get in touch with me to reschedule.

Her thought was that this reaching out would happen yesterday.

It is now the next day and I have not heard from him yet. I know it is too early to call and ask what is going on. After all, I was the one who had to cancel. It was because of my error about switching the schedules that I was needing to call out from my new therapy appointment.

This kept me from remembering that I wasn’t the manager who got sick.

Even though I had messed up the schedules, I was going to need to cover for the manager who was out sick.  This allows me to justify my error by saying that it would have happened anyway.  But, my getting to work early so I could get to my therapy appointment had nothing to do with the manager who is sick. And had nothing to do with my decision to go in at 9 Am instead of 12 noon.

What I am hearing is me trying to blame someone else for me showing up at the wrong time.

Clearly, I would have needed to reschedule my therapy appointment even if the manager wasn’t sick. I had changed the schedule. I had forgotten that I had a therapist appointment last night. And I had made the choices that kept me from getting back to talk therapy. Or at least it kept me from restarting talk therapy last night.

In my mind, depression is off the hook for this.

Now my depression may have taken a role in this situation. Because of the way it turned out, I have not yet met with my new talk therapist. This works in my depression’s favor. It doesn’t need to justify its relationship with me or worry about what I will say. My depression is off the hook for now. If I do not hear from the therapist by tomorrow, I will call and follow up.

My depression may have come out on top this time, but I am still saying, “I have depression, depression does not have me.”