blargblog

You just reminded me that I forgot to take my anti-depressant this morning. So you're not alone, brother.

But, yes, do something about that. I saw a counselor for a year and it really helped. The talking cure can be quite effective with an attentive, compassionate and honest professional. "Honest" as in "calls ya on yer bullshit" which I personally appreciate...and can always use. :)

I went to a psychologist for awhile and, I have to say, she was a dreadful waste of my time. This isn't to say that all psychologists are, just that mine was not the right fit for me. She was of the Southern attitude that I needed to pick myself up by my bootstraps, take meds, and admit to myself that any problems I'd had with my parents' pathological issues were my fault.

So, yes, do something about that. Choose, but choose wisely, for a good analyst will bring you peace, while a bad analyst will take it from you.

Well, I guess I'll fess up and just admit that the "someone" who asked me the question in the original post was a therapist. I've been seeing her for a few months now. I usually feel better after seeing her, but this last time I felt worse. On summing up my life so far, she basically admitted that, while financially secure, I have otherwise had a rough life, and she doesn't blame me for being depressed about how it's gone thus far. My reaction to her saying this was mixed. It was a sort of relief to have this person give me permission to feel sadness and anger about some of the shit I've gone through. On the other hand it seemed to make me feel worse, having this permission for self-pity.

The next day, the strangest thing got me out of my emotional pit. I was sitting in my car in a parking lot, feeling like shit. In addition to the emotional stuff, I've been physically under the weather. Well, this person in a new Mercedes parked directly in front of me, about two car lengths away. They had a pretentious personalized license plate. And for some reason this person decides to sit there with his headlights on, right in my face. (This was late afternoon on a cloudy day.) The lights were bright enough that they were giving me a headache, even with my visor down. So after about seven minutes of this I turn on my own headlights. No response. Another minute goes by. I turn on my brights. Immediately, the guy's headlights turn off.

For some reason the pettiness and absurdity of this little power struggle started me laughing about how nuts life is and how silly people can be (including myself). My mood was lifted immediately. This stupid little parking lot etiquette battle had done what my therapist wasn't able to. I felt good.

So, the lesson is that humor is healing and you are doing the Lord's work, Mr. Moore.

The problem with therapy is that you have to feel worse before you feel better. Sounds totally crackpot, but it's true. For the most part, you have to figure, bad stuff happens, and you feel terrible, but you still have to live your day-to-day life; the result is you sort of squelch those bad feelings down into a tidy little packet that resembles one of those cans of spring-loaded snakes. So you still feel badly, but you don't feel as badly as you did before, and you can't quite put your finger on exactly why you feel so badly. Therapy snaps the lid off the can of snakes. So you figure out why you feel rotten by feeling it all over again. But really, that peanut brittle label wasn't fooling you anyway, was it?

I certainly understand why many people are resistant to medication. It's scary. Only crazy people who talk to their shoelaces on the subway take "meds." But a short trial of anti-depressants, while you sort out the snakes, can help you find some clarity of judgement. I truly wish you good luck with this. It's hard work; stay hydrated.

And don't listen to your shoelaces. What do they know?

Actually, I encourage people to try meds if they and their doctor really feel that it's necessary. Most of my personal aversion to medication revolves around having had to deal with my father's Xanax (and other anti-depressants) addiction, as well as having had a psychiatrist intentionally over-medicate me when I was in middle school. She explained that she wanted to stifle my creativity because if I didn't have any ideas I couldn't write, and writing was the major source of all my problems.

My problem was "distrust and hostility to authority." No medication was prescribed, but several years of useless counselling ensued before I was old enough to call it off myself. It took me over a decade before I would see a counselor again. But this time I was my own person, I could make up my own mind about whether or not I wanted or liked a particular counselor, so I felt more at ease.

Still distrustful and hostile toward authority, at least of the unwarranted kind.

My family therapy experience hapened when I was 14 or 15, and we really didn't have any money, so my mom took us( me, my brother and sister and herself) to this clinic where they were doing some kind of study. for a discount rate, they gave us family counselling, but they recorded and videotaped the sessions. Sounds a little weird, right? Well, it gets worse, because there was a giant two-way mirror on the back wall that had an unknown number of observers behind it. If they had a question or comment during the session, they would KNOCK ON THE GLASS, and our therapist would get up, go talk with the mystery knocker, and then come back and offer a suggestion or ask their question. How is that therapeutic? I wonder if their ad said "special new 'trauma therapy' experiment, yours for a competitive rate!"
And for the record, Xanax is actually a benzodiazepine, in the same family as Valium. Before the advent of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors such as Prozac and Zoloft, many depressives were treated with benzos, primarily because depression does not always manifest iteself as major depressive episodes, but more often as vague feelings of anxiety, difficulty concentrating, irritability and insomnia. The unfortunate side effects of this treatment are that the problem is not truly addressed (lack of available serotonin in the brain) and benzos are highly addictive, psychologically and physically. the SSRI's don't have these problems. All drugs have side effects, but SSRI's at least are not addictive, and if you don't have a serotonin deficit, they won't do anything for you.