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Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.orgShown: posts 1 to 14 of 14. This is the beginning of the thread.
Posted by Annabelle Smith on March 31, 2011, at 22:58:35
I feel so depressed right now that I don't know what to do.
I seriously think I will fill my Ambien Rx tomorrow, just to have if I need it over the weekend.
My therapist and I got in something like a fight today. I had a session this morning-- it didn't go well. I wasn't present. Last week, I had the best session I have ever had. We *finally were able to talk about real issues. I had decided that I was going to stay in my current town for the program I was entering into. It is a masters program with decent funding-- but I will still have some significant loans.
My other option is to go to Boston. I got into a program there with better funding. Last week, I had decided to stay in my city, but had already planned a visit to Boston. I got back from my trip yesterday and am in absolute turmoil. I have to decide very soon.
That's what I needed my session today to be about-- but we went around in circles. He kept saying that he thought I was hurting, but OK. He kept saying that he honestly thought that I could go or stay and be fine in both places. He said that if he thought I needed to stay here, he would have told me. That is what makes me so angry. Why can't he see that I need to stay here-- obviously, he doesn't get what is going on; he doesn't get that this is so important to me, more than ANYTHING else right now. It makes me want to kill myself to prove to him that I am NOT OK and that the suicide is his f*ck*ng fault for not helping more, not caring more, not making this decision for me, not taking me seriously. God dammit, I am serious.
I feel nausea. I feel checked out. I am ready to die.
After all of this, I left the session in what feels like an inner torture. I needed somewhere else to talk this out, so I went to a free service at the psych and counseling center to try to seek more help for myself in this decision. I would have much preferred to have called my therapist, but I didn't want to bother him again. I went to the center and met with a psychologist, who was nice but to whom I felt no connection and who did not understand or hear what I was saying. I had this nauseating feeling that if I left for Boston and tried to find a new therapist there, this is how it would be. Never again would I feel the connection I have now. I left that session today in absolute anxiety, knowing that I needed to stay with my therapist here, but feeling so sure inside that he was going to leave and not be here anymore.
I had to call him to make sure this wasn't true. I called him, and he returned my call later. He tried to sound calm and normal, but I could tell he was frustrated-- I had just seen him today. He more forcefully said that he really thought I would be fine if I left. NO. NO. NO. He doesn't get it. :'(
I am done. I am so ready to check out. I feel so scared and one step away from absolute crazy. I have talked to myself over and over again that suicide is not the answer. But it feels like the only answer now. Before I have to leave, I feel like this needs to happen. I feel like I need to go to the hospital tonight-- I know the option is there.
For suicide, what I have are pills. All of the Ambien, 2 kinds of anti-depressants, nyquil, aspirin, tylenol. Dear f*ck*ng God. Death. To sleep forever. I feel like it is a way to stay connected to my therapist forever. Like it will be his thing to deal with. I hate him right now. How dare he to tell me that I am OK and would be fine to not work with him.
I think he knows that the program I would be giving up to stay here and work here is a bit better for me. Better program, better city, better financial situation. Slightly. But no him. And right now, he is the most important element for me. I could defer for a year-- but he told me that to do that and focus solely on therapy would not be good, as I am already too obsessed.
Dear f*ck*ng God, I hate you. I hate that I was born. I hate myself, my life, everything. I hate my therapist but I love him so deeply, with a primal love that feels like the very constitutive being of my own life.
I just want to die, to make all of this end. I don't think I can hang on much longer.
Posted by Annabelle Smith on April 1, 2011, at 1:30:53
In reply to so depressed, posted by Annabelle Smith on March 31, 2011, at 22:58:35
I feel like everyone around me with whom I have taken the liberty to trust and share this stuff with acts as if my attachment to my therapist is not a good enough reason to stay in my city. They almost act like they think I am in love. I won't deny the word love, but really don't think it is romantic love. I have never felt nor had romantic love, aside from small crushes on people here and there, but never beyond that. This is love, but it is a love that feels "primal"-- it is in continuity with the love that I used to feel for my mom and my brother and God and other places that are like home. It feels more basic that what romantic love can be, as if it underlies all other kinds of love. It is the kind of love of human connectedness that grounds all of life.
That is what I feel towards him. It is an intense primal love. I want to just be able to accept it and think that it is OK. But other people act like I am too attached, too dependent, and that that is bad. However, isn't that a part of therapy. I have only worked with him for about 7 months (3 months, then 6 months away, then 4 months) I feel like I am just now in the process.
I think to leave now would be crazy. But I feel like I am doing something "bad" by staying. You all on here "know" me. I also think you know what it is to feel this way. Other people who have not been through therapy or who aren't familiar with it just don't get it.
Can someone please respond and just offer affirmation. I feel scattered. I need more time. Please affirm me and tell me that I am not inappropriate, that though intense, this is commong for therapy in some cases, and that with the process (I would have up to 3 years), I will probably get better and become more independent.
Please help me. Please, please help me.
I feel like there is an inner scream coming from a void in the center of me. Please help. I feel so desperate.
Posted by Dinah on April 1, 2011, at 8:51:54
In reply to so depressed, posted by Annabelle Smith on March 31, 2011, at 22:58:35
Annabelle, before I started therapy I knew someone who quit her job and moved several hundred miles when her therapist moved. At the time I thought it was very strange and unhealthy. Now I understand. My therapist said he thought it would be strange and unhealthy before he was in long term therapy with me, but that after he did understand.
What I don't quite understand is the intense anger and suicidal feelings. You have a choice. No one is making you stay or making you go. You have two very good opportunities, either of which has its good and bad points. I understand you can continue your studies where you are but not with as much prestige?
Again, I wonder if you've looked into the possibilities of medication. It's terrible to see you in so much pain when the choices are both so positive. It makes me worry about what will happen in those inevitable times they aren't.
I think if you term your attachment to your therapist in terms of increased suicidality, it's likely that those who care about you would think it's better for you to leave. You aren't sharing them the positives of therapy. Are there positives? Or is the attachment the sole benefit? I'm not discounting that, just pointing out that your presentation may be affecting their response. If you phrase it in terms of how much your therapist helps stabilize you so that you can excel at school, if this is the case, and how harmful you think disrupting this positive relationship might be in terms of your accomplishing your scholastic goals, they may feel differently.
Truth be told, from what you've said here, *I* haven't gotten a really good sense of the positives. Many of us have been through intense and overwhelming transferential relationships with our therapists. But usually I can also sense the benefits that are coming from the therapy.
Deep breaths. Relax. Do you have any DBT training? This would be the time to use it.
There is no right or wrong answer, only what is right or wrong for you. Imagine your career and life pattern that will arise from either decision. Which is more appealing to you? Do you think you can manage the program that's far away from where you are? Are you functional at school?
In either case, might it not be a good idea to consult with a psychopharmacologist? This constant stimulation to your nervous system can't be at all good for you, no matter whether you stay or go.
I know when you're young, it seems as if every fork in the path is a life or death decision. I think when you get older you realize that whichever path you choose, you can make decisions now and in the future to make decisions that will lead to a good enough journey to your ultimate destination.
Step back. Calm breaths. Does your chosen profession call for calm and professional judgement? Draw on that.
You will be ok. No matter which choice you make. Not everyone needs to go to the most prestigious programs. People are perfectly happy in all sorts of life paths. Which is the path you wish to choose? And don't worry that it has to be the perfect decision and the rest of your life will be blighted if you get it wrong. Life isn't really that simple.
Posted by pegasus on April 1, 2011, at 10:35:55
In reply to Is it OK?, posted by Annabelle Smith on April 1, 2011, at 1:30:53
Yeah, it's OK.
What you're describing sounds like the attachment to our Ts that we often talk about here. I'm guessing there was something wounded about your early attachment to caregivers, and so you developmentally *need* to attach like this some someone reliable and stable, in order to finish developing a solid sense of yourself that will eventually fill that void inside you. It's just how humans work.
No one questions it when it's between a mom and child, because that's a universal experience. But think about how utterly dependent children are on their parents, not only for food and shelter, etc. but for psychological well being. W
When it's an adult person and their T . . . well that's more unusual in our society, and a lot of people don't get it. But it doesn't mean that it's wrong. From my perspective, it might be exactly what you need. As long as your T is going to be able to hold it for you, and provide what you are needing from him.
- P
Posted by sigismund on April 1, 2011, at 14:18:28
In reply to Is it OK?, posted by Annabelle Smith on April 1, 2011, at 1:30:53
>I want to just be able to accept it and think that it is OK. But other people act like I am too attached, too dependent, and that that is bad
Annabelle, I don't know you. But since I have been reading your posts I have felt you need to love.I think it is your destiny. So very Mills and Boone of me.
Posted by Annabelle Smith on April 1, 2011, at 20:54:56
In reply to Re: so depressed » Annabelle Smith, posted by Dinah on April 1, 2011, at 8:51:54
Thanks, Dinah, for all of your thoughts. I sill feel really depressed today, and as if I am in chaos.
I want to say something about the positives that have come from therapy. They are there, but I just usually don't share them here because I usually come here to release desperation. But I have noticed huge shifts in my life. I will share two here.
The first, has to do with how I used to relate to other authority figures in my life. The dynamic in therapy is similar to what used to occur in my relationships with professors, pastors, and other mentor-types. I would seek them out. I would feel lost, confused, and alone and would go to them in a helpless way. We would meet to talk and send emails to one another (often mine were embarrassingly long and personal), and would begin to feel obsessed with them and with our relationship. I would think about the particular individual and would have conversations with myself out loud as if I were speaking to him/her, just as I do all the time with my therapist now. Sometimes I would pull up their pictures online and talk to it for long blocks of time. Whenever I would plan a meeting with him/her, I would think about it all week, but often, when I got to the meeting, I would feel like I went blank and didn't know how to act or speak-- just like in therapy (although that has been slowly getting better for me in therapy). It was like I became hyper-reflexive and self-conscious and was observing myself act-- like I was split. I would leave the meeting (which one time lasted for four hours) feeling like I had not said everything and feeling dependent upon that person. It was like an enslavement. But since I have been in therapy, I haven't noticed that happening much at all in the ways it used to-- now it has all centered upon the therapeutic relationship with a barely tolerable intensity. But the pressure has largely left from relationships with pastors and professors. I don't feel desperate to meet with them and talk, and if we do meet, it is normal, and I don't feel hyper-self-conscious and absent.
I'm a little more hesitant to speak of the second shift, but it is really big. I've never told anyone this before. It has to do with the process of imagingination and falling asleep. I have always had trouble falling. My mom usued to stroke my face to help me fall asleep when I was young. But from as long as I could remember (at least the age of ten onwards), I have had these imaginative thoughts-- anytime my mind is idle, but especially when I am falling asleep. In these thoughts, I was always badly physically injured-- I would imagine the worst injuries possible: starved, raped, beaten, bleeding, broken, dying and would imagine being rescued by competent and compassionate doctors. In fact, the worse the injuries and suffering, the deeper was their concern and compassion. I would invent gruesome things to be saved from. I would usually go to sleep in with my mind filled with the images of being on a hospital bed surrounded by doctors saying that they were going to take care of me and that it would be alright.
Sometimes it would be the opposite. There would be no compassionate doctors, but anonymous, face-less medical individuals who were doing painful and bad procedures to me that nevertheless they told me were necessary for my health. Sometimes I would just imagine the worst, most uncomfortable things possible and imagine that they were given to me. I would get very creative with this. These thoughts occupied my mind every night and often during the day, for hours, as I layed on the couch or rested.
At any rate, now, these kinds of imaginings have completely left me. I do not go to sleep thinking in this way anymroe-- a 10+ years-long thought obsession has been broken. But now, I go to sleep thinking about my therapists safe presence, his caring, his compassion, and his comforting words. Sometimes I listen to his voicemail messages on my phone to re-conjure his voice, because it is hard to recall his presence. But I see this as progress. Maybe one obsession has been replaced by another, but the latter seems better and more "normal," if one could say that.
I had to even censor what I said here, for fear of embarassment-- and this is anonymous. I could not at this point tell anyone in person.
Posted by Annabelle Smith on April 1, 2011, at 21:07:41
In reply to Re: Is it OK?, posted by pegasus on April 1, 2011, at 10:35:55
Thank you, Peg, for your affirmation.
When I read this, my eyes filled with tears. Thank you for telling me that it is OK.
The word that I have for this is terrifying. This is all so terrifying.
I sense a push-pull in our therapeutic relationship. Part of me wonders if the drive to go to Boston is really just an expression of the push-- of the fear of committing to working with my therapist here and really facing what is inside. I have at times felt the need to run from him-- to end the relationship. But I simultaneously am afraid that he is going to leave me, and that is so, so terrfiying. I feel like I will dissipate and not exist fully without this relationship. If the drive to go to Boston is really a pushing of him away within this relationship, then I think even more that I must stick to this relationship and work through the push-pull. Maybe it's not about Boston or that program at all but is about a terrfiying feeling at the center of what is the most important and life-sustaining connection for me right now.
I can't go and I can't stay.
But I think I must stay, because the thought of going makes me feel like I just can't make it right now. The grief will be unresolved and unbearable, and will haunt me forever.
I will feel dissipated. I feel dissipated now.
Scattered.
Dispersed.
F r a g m e n t e d . . .
Posted by Dinah on April 2, 2011, at 8:50:16
In reply to Re: so depressed, posted by Annabelle Smith on April 1, 2011, at 20:54:56
I hope you manage to tell your therapist, since this sounds like a really really great insight.
I've always been somewhat bemused by the fact that (a) you often feel bad enough that you think suicide is an entirely possible response to stop the pain. And (b) you are not open to using medication to make the pain less bearable. Which has led me to the uncomfortable (for me) thought that either (1) you find the state of being dead somehow more appealing than being on medication, or (2) you find the state of being in less pain somehow more frightening than the state of being in intense pain. I'm not saying that this reflects your thought processes at all, only my own.
It makes more sense in light of your rescue fantasies. Fantasies that aren't all that unusual I think. I told my therapist once about a recurring image I had of our relationship at that point in time. That I was reaching up like a small child to be picked up and comforted.
It makes sense that you'd want to work on this with your therapist, instead of playing it out over and over again with males in authority. I think there are likely all sorts of themes to explore there, from the purely pragmatic question of whether seeking attention in that way is at all effective for you on up.
I'm not at all sure I could sit on such an enormously exciting insight with my therapist. :) I'd be bursting to tell him.
Although I suppose that would involve a fair amount of tension between wishing for rescue from the therapist himself, and allowing the therapist to actually rescue by helping us learn new ways of relating. The fantasy of rescue versus the less appealing reality of rescue, or at least of helping us to rescue ourselves.
If that makes sense?
Posted by Annabelle Smith on April 3, 2011, at 20:12:54
In reply to Re: so depressed » Annabelle Smith, posted by Dinah on April 2, 2011, at 8:50:16
That does make sense, I think. Thanks, Dinah.
The thing about medication is this: I don't think it will make much sense to many other people. But it makes sense to me.
My lostness is this sense of disintegration, of things falling apart, of being lost in the maze-- I can't make sense of my situation. I exist amidst all of these fragments that I can't integrate. I need my suffering to be addressed on its own terms. Medication introduces an unknown factor for which I can't account.
Posted by Dinah on April 3, 2011, at 23:07:06
In reply to Re: so depressed, posted by Annabelle Smith on April 3, 2011, at 20:12:54
Well, at any rate, next time you think of suicide, you might want to consider that medications might be a lesser evil.
I'd think that death would lead to a lot of disintegration. And, as Linehan says, it really is the ultimate in therapy interference.
I hope you share your insight with your therapist!
Posted by emilyp on April 3, 2011, at 23:52:35
In reply to Re: so depressed, posted by Annabelle Smith on April 3, 2011, at 20:12:54
I read this thread and the subsequent one you posted. I realize that not everyone thinks medication is the cure. But you seem to be all over the place, with an inability to focus or think clearly. You may think medication cannot help with this, but I think you don't know until you try. If you remain unable to think clearly, if your remain feeling disintegrated, you will never be able to address the other underlying issues. You will be so focused on trying to think straight, you will never get to the meat of things.
As others have said, I strongly recommend you consider medication. Without it, I fear you will be spinning your wheels.
Posted by pegasus on April 4, 2011, at 15:27:45
In reply to Re: so depressed, posted by Annabelle Smith on April 3, 2011, at 20:12:54
Yeah, you're right that it doesn't make a lot of sense to me, as an outsider. It sounds to me as though you have plenty of unknown factors that you can't account for already. I don't get why it's bad to add another one.
And anyway, I would think that if you took meds, and felt better, that would then become one *known* factor in the whole situation.
I would like to understand your point of view, though. Can you explain again, maybe in a different way, why it might be bad if you took meds, and then felt a lot better?
- Peg
Posted by Dinah on April 10, 2011, at 18:43:14
In reply to so depressed, posted by Annabelle Smith on March 31, 2011, at 22:58:35
Posted by Tabitha on April 14, 2011, at 6:27:17
In reply to Re: so depressed, posted by Annabelle Smith on April 3, 2011, at 20:12:54
> I need my suffering to be addressed on its own terms. Medication introduces an unknown factor for which I can't account.
>I think I get this. Your suffering seems real and important. It feels like an important part of your very identity. It feels like a big loss to medicate it away and lose the important message that it *must* be there to convey. Does this fit?
This is the end of the thread.
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