It twarn't me!

Anonymous — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 17:35:57 -0800

I started a new job a couple months ago at a small company, and since then, there has been some theft of company property. A computer was stolen, some HDMI cables, and a phone. Everyone seems to agree that it was either a current or former employee, since our office requires three different keys and a security code to get in. Because the thefts happened since I was hired (and to my knowledge, there were no such incidents prior to my arrival), I can't help but feel like I'm the prime suspect, and I'm suffering some moderate paranoia because of it. Compounding this is the fact that I'm pretty shy and I think this sometimes comes off as stand-offishness, and I worry that this makes me seem shifty, or at least less trustworthy.

I'm hoping that the security-code thing has some type of log that will prove that I wasn't there during the time the stuff was stolen. But until then, should I just try to relax and feel secure in the knowledge that I didn't steal the stuff? Or should I take some action to head off further suspicion?

Is there a therapist who can get past my mom's suspicions?

Nattie — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 11:30:50 -0800

Recommendations for a cognitive behavioral therapist in the Houston area for my mother? He/she is going to have to deal with a lot, especially because she is irrational and suspicious. I need to be sure that the therapist is good because my mom has a lot of issues that need to be addressed, but she tends to be suspicious of anyone who tries, or else she has a nervous breakdown and starts crying.

If it matters, she's in her mid-50s.

- My father died less than a year ago. She has said she might need to get therapy for dealing with this but, to my knowledge, has made no moves yet, so I'm hoping to steer her in the right direction. She understandably feels some anger about his death too, since he died from the Digitek tablets that were mistakenly twice the listed dosage.

- I'm not even sure how to put this except bluntly. For at least five or six years now, she has read a website that has lead her to believe all of the following: the government puts microchips in people's brains to program them, but people can be "deprogrammed" if they do the right things; reptile shapeshifter people exist that look just like normal human beings; the husband of the couple who runs the website has been abducted and informed by various different species of aliens of all this stuff; etc. They often take news stories and twist them into evidence of their claims. They post other things daily, like aliens landed here but it's been covered up, or the numerology of this and that means some outrageous thing, and so on.

It is extremely delusional and paranoid, but you can't disagree with her because she just thinks anyone who denies it does so because they're programmed to. If pressed on the more ridiculous stuff sometimes she will say she doesn't take it very seriously, but trust me, she does. It's very awkward to watch TV with her and have her say she thinks someone is a reptile, or for her to talk about someone being rude to her at work and attributing it to their programming or something.

The website also told her that California is going to physically break off from the United States apparently within our lifetime, and uses this as a reason why I should not move there with my husband who recently got a job there. She became very upset and started crying when we tried to explain to her that land masses take much longer than that to break off, if it's going to break off at all. Things like that make it very upsetting to be around her now. She is trying to influence the direction of my life based on completely out-there, untrue claims.

If I hadn't seen the website for myself I would think she'd developed some sort of mental illness, but she's always just been very impressionable and superstitious. Since she holds a lot of irrational beliefs, apparently because they make her feel better on some level (i.e. to believe she's deprogrammed and everyone else isn't), I think CBT would be best for her, but I think (I hope I'm wrong) this is probably more difficult to deal with than your typical patient.

- On a similar note, she will make stuff up and then believe it 100%. It's disturbing. For example, another one of her arguments against our moving to California was that the rent was three times higher there. When we told her we were only paying a couple hundred dollars a month more than we were in Austin, she would move on to another irrational argument, then come back to the "three times higher" argument again.

- More irrationality: she's maybe $100,000 in debt but she won't even compile her financial data to find out. When I asked her why, she admitted it was because then she'd have to deal with it, and she was scared. I pointed out that she was paying all the bills anyway so it doesn't make a difference, and that the only way she can make things better is to look at it. She doesn't even know what interest rate her credit cards are, for example, so she's paying way more than she needs to; she has a card that's 30% interest rate with a balance on it that she could entirely transfer to a 20% interest rate card. She won't do it. I have offered to do it for her and she just says she'll think about it.

This is going to turn out very badly if she doesn't get help soon.

- She is extremely judgmental. She was completely anti-racist as I was growing up, until about high school when she started hating Hispanic people because we lived in a Hispanic ghetto, and then after Hurricane Katrina she started hating black people because crime rates in Houston went up. This has gotten progressively worse and it's quite upsetting. I can't have a conversation with her anymore without racist stuff coming up, even in the oddest places. (It would be more bearable for me if I could just avoid certain topics, but it doesn't work that way.) It makes her feel better on some level to believe that she's better than minorities and that they're the cause of her problems, so I think CBT might help with that.

- She worries about everyone, for mostly irrational reasons. She has always been this way, even since she was a child. The 24/7 worrying makes her an emotional mess, and in the past has had a lot to do with why she cries and has nervous breakdowns. I don't see how this can continue and I don't like seeing her get worse.

- This has started to affect our relationship negatively. She loves me more than anything and can't deal with my moving out of the state, especially after my dad has died. I understand that. But the ways in which it comes out lately have been very upsetting. She is negative and resentful of anything that makes me happy or I am excited about. She sighs about how different I am from her and calls me weird for normal things like being an introvert, which makes me feel very unaccepted. (I'm not a "weird" introvert either; I go out a lot and have normal friends. She calls me weird for being tired by social interaction.)

I try to see her more often to make her feel better, and because I used to have so much fun with her, but the last few times I have visited her she has been so negative and unaccepting of me that I've been entirely unhappy and just want to leave. I can't just go fake it either, because it's gotten to the point where I have nothing I can safely talk to her about. I point out how I'm feeling about specific things, like when I told her to quit being negative about California, but just that made her cry. I think if I told her that her behavior was pushing me away, instead of making me want to see her more, it would absolutely destroy her. Normally I would agree that telling her how I feel is the best solution, but I think it's well past the point where such a thing would be safe and I don't think I'm qualified to deal with the extent of her problems.

I'm hoping if I can recommend a cognitive behavioral therapist and say it's to help her deal with losing my father and my moving away, especially because she already expressed some interest in it, maybe the other stuff will get slowly dealt with too.

I'm not the only one affected by this either.

Sorry for the long explanation, but I partly wanted to vent and partly wanted to show how important it is that the therapist really know what he/she is doing. I think it would be difficult for any therapist to deal with my mom thinking they're trying to steer her wrong because they have a chip in their head, for example, and she's going to cry and deny things a lot.

One other caveat: I would prefer someone who's not going to drug her. I realize such a thing might be necessary but I would rather that conclusion be reached after a significant amount of sessions. She tends to have bad reactions to medications, too (runs on her side of the family, it seems) so that's a concern.

Thanks for reading all this and any suggestions you might have.

Tap this again and again. Beat on this tool.

Moistener — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 15:34:25 -0800

I create loop-based MIDI music. I want to jam with a live drummer who can't play to a click track so I'll have to manually sync to him. Come!! Let us discuss tactics and tools. So yeah.

Q: In the shifting waters of human tempo, how do I pilot my little MIDI rig through the Jungle of Most Prosperous Groove?

A: In the words of one of my music teachers, "Listen. And adjust. Listen. And adjust. Listen.." So forth. And so on.

I imagine a foot pedal onto which I stomp quarter notes. Or maybe a little midi trigger doodadpad. There I am: tap, tap, tap along with the drummer.

I imagine a simple little midi applet that listens to my clumsy stomping and applies math vaseline and starts pumping out rock-steady MIDI clock at exactly "133.3 BPM".

Will I have to tap every single quarter note of the song? What if I take a break and use both hands? Will the beat-tapping-midi-clock software of today meet my needs? Or will I need to code this up myself with some midi programming language? How can computormachine let me adjust. And adjust. And adjust. ???

All I fracking need is "Humanly Repeating Midi Event" converted into a "Steady Midi Clock". Please unfurl your intelligenitals.

Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with suspicion

It twarn't me!

Is there a therapist who can get past my mom's suspicions?

Tap this again and again. Beat on this tool.