Are they making you mad at us?
-My Mother, 2014
If therapy makes anyone mad at anything, it’s either because:
A. That anger existed in the first place
B. That anger existed in the first place
It’s not therapy’s job to turn someone against their family. It’s therapy’s job to make the client understand themselves, their past, and the relationships they have with others. If you’re looking for brainwashing then you should join a cult. If people continue to believe that therapy is only making people unnecessarily turn against their loved ones, it only perpetuates the stigma that therapy is for the weak or the crazy or those looking to join some sort of therapist cult-army. PLEASE if someone you know is in therapy – be supportive. Statements like the one above only serve to undermine the work being done with the therapist and weaken the relationship between the client and their loved one. Saying things like this is only passive aggressive, unsupportive, and manipulative.
And I just won’t stand for it.
It’s hard to feel like you’re getting better when you feel so isolated from the outside world. I’m at this place and it’s great – but it’s weird knowing that you’re at a point in your life when you need so much help that you can’t live by yourself. I keep telling myself that I can’t get better – I’m crazy. You can’t fix crazy. I’ve been in two inpatient units, a partial hospitalization program, and now this residential program. How long do I have to keep trying before everyone realizes I’m hopeless?
Depression isn’t just feeling sad all the time. I feel like there’s this dark and twisted part of me taking over my brain. No matter how hard I try this part is going to try and kill me.
And it’s hard when you can’t find any reason to fight back.
I’m crazy.
Female, early 20s, clinical depression.
According to my discharge papers from an intensive therapy program I completed, that sentence is me. At one point I could add a lot of other adjectives to that list. Now, thanks to the fact that my brain isn’t working I can barely see past the last point.
Two months ago I tried to kill myself. Since then I’ve been in and out of hospital inpatient units, and recently left an intensive therapy program for an even more intensive residential treatment program across the country. Outside of scaring medical students and getting used to “feelings,” I still don’t feel like anything is happening. Nor do I understand really, what is happening.
This blog is an attempt to make sense of things. It’s not meant to be super serious all the time. I’ve got some great stories from inpatient I’ll probably cover in another post. Seriously, if you’re looking for a bizarre time check out the psych ward at your local hospital. Warning though – you can always check yourself in but you might not be able to check yourself out. Mostly, though, I want this blog to be one of many examples of how depression manifests itself. People with depression aren’t just a list of symptoms on WebMD. Depression goes beyond changing your mood to a permanent state of shittiness, it takes over every aspect of your life until you’re left with an empty bottle of pills hoping for relief. It’s frightening and horrible, and something I don’t know how to deal with.
I also want to make it clear that I’m still dealing with this. I struggle with the idea of not harming myself every day. And there are times when I feel like nothing is working nor will anything ever work. But after speaking with my therapist yesterday, she mentioned how going to this residential program isn’t an end, it’s just the start. I’m trying to keep that in mind. This whole process is just a beginning. A pretty overwhelming and shitty beginning but a start nonetheless.
Here’s to happiness?
One Flew Over 