Posted by estrellita on April 18, 2008, at 22:15:55
In reply to should i walk away from therapy?, posted by CareBear04 on April 16, 2008, at 0:44:44
Hi CB,
I can relate to what you wrote about being stuck, and yes it's frustrating and sometimes depressing for me, too.
You said you still feel like "the bottom can and will fall out" from under you in the future, and that even when you get out of a period of depression/mania, you'll experience it again at some point in the future. Until maybe a year ago, I would have said (in fact, DID say, many times) the same thing about depression. I thought it was always going to return and return again, sometimes a little milder, and other times at full force with me feeling like the only alternative was suicide. I felt like eventually I'd attempt suicide because it was either that or spend my life fighting depressions and that wasn't a life I wanted any part of.
Not to trivialize my experiences or yours, but now I feel like while there is SOME possibility that I may go through depression in the future, I have reason to believe that that is NOT how my life is generally going to look. Sure, I definitely am not a sunny person, a complete optimist, or anything like that. But I'm also not fighting for my life on a regular basis anymore. And if someone had told me that would be the case 3 years ago, I wouldn't have been able to believe them, because I didn't even know what a life without that kind of struggle would even feel like.
So, all that just to say that while it FEELS like you know these mood episodes will come and go for the rest of your life, you don't really know that. Now that I've been in CBT and read a list of cognitive distortions about a million times, I've learned that that kind of thinking can be referred to as "fortune telling" - it's a distortion because no matter what we think, we can't predict the future with any accuracy.
Does it help to think about your future (in terms of mental health) as unknown rather than something you're already sure of?
I do think it's good that you continue to go to therapy even though you feel like it's not helping right now. I spent 2-3 years(!) working with a psychologist who I came to trust absolutely, but at the time there were many difficult sessions where I couldn't talk. I wanted to, but it hurt so much to be alive that anything more than dragging myself there seemed so impossible.
What I realize now, though, that even though I haven't seen her for maybe a year and a half, she's still with me, and the memory of some of the sessions is too. I think back to things she said, or things I realized as a result of the therapy, and it helps me at times. Where before there was no knowledge of what my experiences were, or how to cope with them, now I have this mental database that I acquired through therapy, and when I feel a certain way I'll flip through it and find something that helps.
So my suggestion for that is, unless you are sure this particular therapist isn't helping you at all, I would keep going. Even if you don't feel like it's helping you immediately, realize that you're building your own database that you will be able to draw on for the rest of your life.
Have you told him that part of your desire to quit is based on a desire for him to try to convince you to stay? I know what you mean about going back and forth about stuff like that and wondering if I could force someone to show me they care. I really hate when someone suggests something like that - "have you told him xyz?" - but unfortunately it's usually a good thing to open things up when they're bothering you. What could he do to show you that he cares, that he believes that you're worth his time/effort?
Therapy sucks, and it's great, and I hate that sometimes it's great. I hate all the closeness/distance of it, I hate the inevitable loss, I hate all the stuff that feels so foreign to me. But I must believe in it too, and I wouldn't want to go back and see what my life would look like right now without it. Anyway, I so get your ambivalence and confusion and everything else and hope things are working out.
*estrellita
poster:estrellita
thread:823539
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20080405/msgs/824166.html