Psychotherapy is for the strong, the brave and the healthy. Talk about a powerful message. I was in to see my therapist this week and this is the message she was giving me. More than that though, the conversation came as a way of helping me articulate something that had been rattling around in my head.
For a long time now, probably ever since the day of my diagnosis of depression, I have had it in my head that I will only be ok once I stop taking medication and no longer go to therapy. Recently something shifted in me and I realized how not true this is.
I am pretty sure that depression is chronic for me. (I will be happy if this is ever proved wrong). And so, I need to continue to live with it, rather than suffer from it. Personally, I don't like or use the phrase "battling depression". For me, it feels like I am fighting myself, and the only way to be ok is to eradicate all signs of depression. I much prefer living with it. The same way people live with diabetes.
With this mindset, I really have started to piece together the things I need to live in a healthy way. So far, medication is a part of the picture. I will try again to stop taking it, at some point. Exercise, eating fruit and vegetables, and less processed sugar. Not over packing my life with activity, leaving room for down time. I am sure there are other things as this is a pretty new exercise for me. The final one though is psychotherapy.
I see a therapist about once a month. It does me a tonne of good. For the most part, things are going pretty well these days and so my sessions with her are different than they used to be. It is nice to have a place where I talk about things that are hard to talk about, and often I find a different way of thinking about things.
So why for the brave, strong and healthy? Let's say that therapy is one of the hardest things I have ever done. It has been a place where I have faced a lot of difficult truths, about me and about others. It is a place where I have had awful panic attacks because of the areas of discussion. It is the place where I have relived some pretty awful trauma in order to make some sense of it. And it is the place where healing began and continues to this day. So that explains the strong and brave part.
The therapist I saw this week said that really, for the most part, the people she sees are the healthy people. The people who are interested in finding new ways of being. The people that are truly suffering are usually the ones that do not seek help and spin in circles. I was once one of those people. My life felt so out of control. Thoughts that now seem irrational, seemed totally reasonable, including feeling so stuck in a traumatic situation that the only way I could see to end the pain was to take me own life.
Then I got some help, some real help. From someone who saw past the facade and made me face some hard stuff. But also started me on a journey from mental illness to mental health.
