Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Update & Thanks

I was looking through my old posts and shocked to see such nice comments many of you have dropped by and left for me. What a nice surprise to know my words and research and thoughts may have helped someone out there. I am quite a novice at this so you can imagine this was truly a pat on the back for me. It has inspired me to write some more and keep everyone up to date with my new thoughts inside my head- I never stop trying to help myself improve, whether this is a blessing or a curse, I haven't figured out yet.

Lately I have been seeing a counselor again, and also a psychiatrist. For those of you who don't know, a psychiatrist is the one able to prescribe medication for depression, anxiety, all sorts of mental health conditions. A therapist is not usually the same thing as a psychiatrist, and in most U.S. states cannot prescribe medication. What they can do though, is work on the problems while you are taking medication, so that one day you can have the mental tools to come off the medication slowly and live a life medication free but changed. I also have my counselor talk to my psychiatrist over the phone periodically. Let me tell you about what happened a few weeks ago. I felt awful one night and was very teary. When I talked this over with my boyfriend, I realized I was not being completely, 100% truthful to my therapist about how awful I can feel at the worst of times. I mean at times I can wish I was dead. Not that I would kill myself or have a plan or anything of the sort. Wishing you were dead is entirely different from wanting to kill yourself. (If you want to kill yourself, PLEASE call a hot-line or visit an emergency room). But I realized this was not normal and I did not have to live like that, feeling so bad that I could wish I was dead. SO anyway, I realized that I had been embarrassed to tell my therapist how bad I can feel sometimes. I didn't want her to think I was "crazy". Well what's the point of that?

So, my boyfriend convinced me that the only way I would ever truly get any genuinely needed help for myself would be to stop being afraid the therapist would think I was crazy. (Here is a funny similar question someone asked)Or not good enough. Or not capable of ever amount to anything. These were all the fears running through my head, that a medical professional would find me inferior or inadequate or defective. If I were truly in need of help, I didn't think I could also amount to anything in life. But really, this all creates a vicious circle. So I decided at our next appointment (we are in couples counseling where I talk about all these issues) he would help me be completely honest. I recommend this style of counseling because it has really worked for us. In this case my boyfriend helped me get straight with my counselor so she could really know what was going on when she wasn't around. If you aren't in couples counseling, I recommend once in a while bringing a close friend into the session so they can tell your counselor what is really going on.

So, since then, I have since been a lot more honest in therapy and, as a consequence, decided to go on some medication to help me finally get some of these same old problems under control. I want some new problems to contend with! I have been sick of struggling over the same old situations year after year.



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