Jul 16 2008
A Long Time Coming
For all my discussions about politics and weight and everything else, I don’t often talk about my depression. Which is a shame because I do spend a lot of time considering my mental health and the nature of happiness in general. I just tend to do it privately because I am sorting most of these things out on my own and also because, much like weight, I believe good mental health and happiness are personal paths that take different forms for different people.
I was in “lay on my couch and talk the shit” therapy for about three years when I was 13 or so. I credited therapy at the time with helping me end my self-destructive behaviors, but nowadays it wasn’t therapy that did it. It was realizing I was surrounded by a bunch of losers. Those kids weren’t smart (although they thought they were), they weren’t special (although they thought they were). They were just kids, doing stupid crap for attention. And I didn’t want to be them, I didn’t want to be grouped with them.
I think this therapy was mostly useless, minus a year or so of group therapy that taught me a few things. One, everyone has issues. Two, you will have common ground with anyone if you try to find it. Three, a sense of humor is invaluable and finally, a good listener will charm the pants off everyone. Not that I got laid in group therapy, it was against the rules.
I stopped that therapy for a combination of reasons: my parents were arguing with the therapist over money, the group therapy dissolved because out of five girls - one girl was graduating, one was in a mental hospital, and one got leukemia. Seriously. Mostly, though, I left therapy because I was through with it.
I hate to give anyone the impression that my life was awful in intervening years. I had friends and crushes and parties and cupcakes and jobs. I was pretty normal, by my account.
I chose to re-enter counseling towards the end of my second year of college with a direct focus. I had identified a specific area of my life that obviously had to change and sought out a counselor who mostly helped people with drug addiction. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but rather than making me talk about why I exhibited certain behaviors, she had me do week after week of worksheets identifying values I admired, identifying behaviors I disliked, working through the mental processes that led me there and also, just talking to me like an intelligent being.
I had spent most of my life feeling like a shell of a person and those few months of counseling helped me figure out who I wanted to be, what I liked about myself and helped me realize that I had control over how I felt.
And yet, a few months later as I started my junior year of college and joined up with clubs and worked out and dieted and lost weight and made friends and everything seemed to be on track, I still had the same issues that had plagued me for what took up the majority of my life. The same enforced isolation, the same worthlessness, the same meaninglessness. The same catch-22 I kept falling back on because I was scared to see things work out any other way.
So I turned to medication and started forcing myself outside my comfort zone. And I was happy, for a while, until the same feelings and thoughts came back. I went off my medication, on my medication, on different dosages, on different medications. I visited a few more counselors very briefly before several of them told me that I needed more help than they could give me.
I got engaged and dropped out of school and got a job and moved out of my mom’s house and got married.
So here I am now, all married and medicated and I’ve been thinking a lot. I’ve been resistant to counseling because I am not sure how much it could help me now. My doctor keeps telling me to get my butt to therapy and I don’t want to. Not because I’m avoiding something, just because my last several experiences with counselors have been overwhelmingly negative. I don’t want someone to focus on my past, to focus on my varied diagnoses, to focus on my medication. I want someone who gives a crap how I choose to define myself, what I want for my life. But mostly I’m resistant because I don’t need a therapist.
Here’s what I’ve realized, in my very short years. I am okay. Most of us are okay. It’s okay to be shy or uncomfortable or unhappy. It’s not necessarily wrong or bad. The way we react to those feelings or qualities is where things go wrong or bad. My brain isn’t the problem, the way I’ve trained it is.
The fact is, my brain is having issues accepting the fact that so much of what it experiences now, on a daily basis, doesn’t fit into it’s training. It wasn’t prepared to accept love from others, or even love from itself. The way it would normally react would be to disregard that evidence or manipulate it. It can’t even do that anymore, most of the time.
I guess the conclusion I’ve come to is this: a therapist or a counselor guides you. They help you examine what you might be hiding behind your behavior. They help you identify who you are and who you want to be. They can guide you towards changing your behaviors. But all the work outside of that - it’s yours.
You have to forge your own path through emotional problems and trauma. You have to do all the heavy lifting, make all the important decisions. On your own. It’s isolating at first and in the end, it’s rewarding. As many stories as people tell you, no matter how hard people push you - it’s all your responsibility. None of us do well without help and care from others, but we can’t survive solely on that either.
It’s not as if I have magically solved all my issues. I don’t think there is a solution for the human condition. Right now I’m focusing on the steps I have to take to get off my medication since I believe it’s mostly a placebo. Steps that will give me insight into when I have problems and why and steps that will insure that I have effective coping mechanisms built into my every day routine.
Maybe this is a piece of self-indulgent claptrap but then, what other purpose is there for this web space? I am one of many people who has struggled through medications and therapies and a new diagnosis with every new doctor or counselor. I don’t see much practical use in most of it. In my perspective, we’re looking for impossible solutions when we should be seeking our own paths to more fulfilling and enjoyable lives.