Mental Health Thread

Sundry Chitchat
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I’ve learned the very hard way that stopping medication and/or therapy leads me down a path that is very difficult to recover from. But everyone is different. I have gone every 2 weeks for 4 years now.

Sometimes it’s hard to tell what you’re actually getting out of therapy. For me it’s really at this point a feedback mechanism for my thoughts and ideas. I don’t have anyone neutral enough in my life to give me feedback I trust to be objective - so my therapist provides that. That’s really valuable even if it’s not really helping me “get better” it allows me the space to work things out on my own, which I prefer to do, but with a safety net.

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1190

To me therapy is a gym for your brain. In the beginning, you make crazy huge gains but eventually the gains start to slow up and it’s hard to see short-term results. You sort of have to think long-term and trust the process.

I’ve only been going weekly for a few months and I can feel the session-by-session results tapering off. I’m considering going to once every other week but I’m not sure if I feel comfortable with that.

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Thanks, @JohnnyTruant … I definitely have a sense that I have regained my footing over the past year. I started seeing my therapist in the midst of a painful breakup, and a lot has happened since then.

The therapist has been a huge help, and I am reluctant to give up that resource, as I mentioned. A piece of me remembers the intense loneliness and pain, and doesn’t want to abandon something that helped.

On the other hand, I often talk with her now and find myself struggling for topics. It is a marked shift from the content-dense sessions and emails of not so long ago. I am not in a hurry to make the decision, but in recent sessions I often find the time goes slowly and I am sometimes wanting to be done.

Semi-unrelated, I recently have gotten a window into my ex’s life and some problems and relationship issues they have had. It seems that our breakup fits squarely into their pattern, and that they were never so stable or grounded as I thought. In many ways, this information is reassuring–the problem wasn’t me. I mean, I’m a flawed individual of course but the pattern which played out between us fits ongoing events.

Of course, this is in some ways just as confusing–I overlooked so many red flags, and allowed myself to be mis-treated. It really feels like I was in a cult of 1. And because this person is actuallty a kind of spiritual teacher or resource, it makes sense.

So, that remains the piece I can’t quite figure out. Or am uncomfortable with. What got triggered, early in the relationship, to make me so oblivious to what was happening? To give up agency, in a way. To commit to someone who did not return that? And why, once I knew I was being treated poorly, did I struggle to end things?

I experienced some things with my ex that were new to me, and I gave them a lot of weight and significance. My ex didn’t give them meaning, having had more of these experiences before. So, maybe that’s part of it.

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1193

Yeah, I suspect a few things overlapped that made it difficult for me to extract myself.

First, she had kids. Not only did I really start to attach to them and help her in running her household with them around more (this was early pandemic), but I suspect there was a piece of me that latched on to the the idea of Sapo in a new role.

I also have struggled with codependency and fears of abandonment, so this hit a whole bunch of the right keys. And yes, I think her role as “teacher,” and feeling like I was absorbing a lot of new information, probably played a part here.

So … yeah, I look back and think “Who WAS that guy.” It kind of feels like a perfect storm though. A bunch of factors wholly disrupted my attachment system, to the point where I felt like losing the relationship meant losing a family, a home, a belief system, feeling unworthy … It’s good to see.

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1194

Rexx <3 <3 <3

I have started doing this more often. Instead of seizing those good days (or hours or minutes or seconds) as a chance to indulge in fun–I’ve started using those good periods to really do the things for myself that I can’t do when the pain is too much for me to do more than survive until I can function again.

But the reason my options so quickly become limited to little more than “survive when in pain” is because I don’t have systems, people, resources in place beyond shallow indulgences and deep pain.

I still take those moments sometimes to just relax though. I can’t treat every second like I’m looking at a ticking time bomb.

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1197

Weird, I think I avoided answering this question for a couple of days. … I don’t know if there is a reason, or if once a month is sometihng they would want. I also don’t think I’m giving up seeing my therapist right now. Just wondering how others approached this. I think the time may be close, but it doesn’t feel quite right yet.

1200

Have to say that therapy is helping me a lot. Been 3 months and I’ve made some considerable gains over such a short period.

I guess that’s how CBT is. You make solid gains early and then it progresses a bit slower where you’re mostly reinforcing your new thought patterns rather than learning new things.

The thing that makes me feel sad is that I wish I did this earlier. I mean I would’ve been better off doing this 20 years ago. Thankfully, an hour of light therapy per day has been working wonders on my seasonal affective disorder.

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1201

Lol wrong thread :P

1202

Have been struggling the last couple of weeks. I’ve never really had a history of mental issues or depression, but I do get pretty rough SAD every winter.

The only time I can remember having a serious bout of depression was when I was planning my wedding. I was stuck working night shift during the winter (which I’m now back on, thanks Pandemic for forcing me to switch jobs!), and I just got stuck on this feeling that life was a never ending checklist with no point to it. I remember getting the shivers regularly when my mind would think about dying, or not existing, and the infinite nature of the universe, and it would just wig me out.

This time around, I just kinda feel beat down and isolated. I’m used to having tons of friends around, plenty of things to go do every weekend… And now even though they all still live within a few miles, we just can’t see each other. We made it through for a while by being able to hang out outdoors and meet in parks and such, but these past 3 weeks it’s been consistently below 20 degrees, so even doing things like taking a walk outdoors or meeting someone for an outdoor hangout is out of the question. This has manifested itself with me just not being excited to do anything and feeling like every single day is its own repeated form of drudgery.

I’m hoping weather changes, getting vaccinated, and returning to some of the fun things in life will help snap me out of it, but the way things are looking in Chicago it’s gonna be at least 6-8 weeks until that happens.

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I don’t have anything helpful to say but I relate to 100% of what you wrote. Pandemic sucks sooo much.

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1204

Pandemic is definitely fucking people up mentally.

I’m dying to go back to school to teach but I know that it’s a terrible decision. Wouldn’t go as far as to say it’s torturous but this situation is mentally unsustainable in the long run. Eventually, I will get to the point where I’ll be protesting the restrictions just to get out.

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So many people are going to have legit PTSD from this shit. I’m worried about the opposite of most of you. Not sure I’m going to be able to re-enter regular society lol.

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1206

I’m with you. After working from home for 7 months, I am DREADING returning to a commute and normal office life

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1207

Gotta admit that I’m feeling a bit like this myself.

I don’t like distance teaching but it’ll be a bit of a shock to the system suddenly jumping back into school come March. I’m sure I’ll adjust but there will still be a transitional period.

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Had a good week. Therapy is helping. Family is helping. Friends are helping. Dogs are helping. Cats are helping. Memes are usually helping.

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https://i.pinimg.com/originals/2a/d2/0f/2ad20f3474461203a6e1cb7c44590bce.gif(image larger than 8 MB)

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Imagine you’ve had a rare disease since childhood that was un/misdiagnosed for thirty years, and that this disease had insidiously destroyed most aspects of your life. People are generally unfamiliar with the disease, and its effects (e.g., fatigue, psychiatric disturbance, cognitive impairment) can be mostly invisible, even to health professionals, so don’t expect much empathy or accommodation. Therapy is a standard component of treatment and recovery since depression, anxiety, and PTSD symptoms are common even following a “cure.” What kinds of things would you be looking for in a therapist and from therapy?

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Here’s a decent list of various diagnoses as well as their most evidence-based treatment protocols: Diagnoses | Society of Clinical Psychology. Given your description there’s a good chance that the specific disease doesn’t make this list, but a Ph.D. level psychologist comfortable with cognitive-behavioral therapy would at least be able to provide support for the three psychological comorbidities you described. I’d also generally recommend someone who advertises themselves as “strengths-based” (or at least uses the term “positive psychology”). They’d most likely be empathic while also being willing to let the client educate them re: their experiences with the disease as well as working to enhance and add to (rather than entirely replace) already-successful coping skills/treatment strategies.

Expect some combination of relaxation skills, cognitive interventions (e.g., positive reframing), mindfulness, behavioral activation, and exposure therapy for the comorbidities above.

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