Finally, I’m figuring it out. When I first signed up for web hosting/blogging, all I knew was that I had a lot to say. I started with a bit of philosophical musing, spelling out some rather ordinary ideas about the difference between the conscious mind, which I called the ‘will,’ and the unconscious, which I called the ‘spirit.’ Looking back, that stuff strikes me as boring.
What really matters to me is mental health, and especially how professional services attempt to get us there. I’ve had both positive and negative experiences with medication and therapy. Both have helped me, but both have also caused some grievous harm. I’m interested in hearing what others have experienced. I’d like to know your horror story, and/or how a therapist or medication has changed your life for the better. As time goes on, I will share my own tales of disaster and delight.
Please join me as I explore the treatments meted out by the mental health system. I am tired of being treated as a ‘patient,’ or even a ‘client’ or ‘consumer.’ I don’t like being put in a separate category from those who are supposed to be helping me, but often that seems to be exactly what happens. I am a person like any other, and capable of solving my own problems with a little assistance.
Too often ‘the system’ wants to take over and dictate what is wrong with us and what we are capable of. But the fact is that psychiatric science remains primitive, with little if any predictive power. If any one of us wants, we can exceed the expectations the system tries to hand us. I just wish we heard that truth more often from those who are supposed to be guiding us. I wish they more often had the humility to let us know they lack answers.
That’s just a small taste of my frustration. I’d really like to hear yours.
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Lynn Dover at http://naturechange-lynn.blogspot.com/
I’ve been in therapy for major depression for 8 years now. In this time I’ve tried most modalities from psychodynamic insight-oriented group therapy though individual CBT. To some extent, I have benefitted and grown from each of these interventions and I am grateful for them. But I am discovering that there is a “but”.
One of the most life-changing of the therapies that I have had was a day treatment program at a local hospital. It involved treatment full-time 5 days a week for 4 months. To say that it was intense would be an understatement of massive proportions. It helped me to start examining my childhood in a more critical light. it helped me to accept that my problems had been pervasive through-out my life even though they had not previously been labelled as mental health issues. It helped me to recognize some of the rigidity in my attitudes and beliefs. During this therapy I came to recognize that I experience anger (prior to that I was convinced that I didn’t.) It helped me to start learning both the importance of and some methods for the expression of emotion. It helped me to look critically at my marriage and recognize that not everything was perfect. The list goes on.
But it also convinced me that I have personality disorders. The technical definitions of these disorders fit my history very well. In the last four years, I have been drifting closer and closer to being housebound. At this point, I leave my house to see my psychiatrist and my doctor. Other than that, I rarely venture out. I have been aware of this trend for quite some time and have wondered what sparked it. Recently, I have been discovering how difficult it is for me to believe that another person might truly enjoy my company. I am starting to wonder whether that day treatment program might have reinforced beliefs that I am an intrinsically damaged person whose presence is actively distasteful. I am starting to wonder whether that is why I’ve been staying home so much.
Posted at October 18, 2010 on 9:31pm.
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Will at http://willspirit.com
Lynn–
This post you’ve commented on was written so long ago! I wasn’t even to the point of putting photos with the essays. Thank you for looking so closely at my work.
As for ‘personality disorders’: I truly dislike the term. Borderline Personality Disorder is now called Emotional Dysregulation Syndrome by up-to-date practitioners. They changed the name because BPD had become widely known as a pejorative: it implied a difficult patient who was hostile and manipulative. I’ve been given PD diagnoses myself, but usually only by therapists who had become frustrated with me; others have disagreed. In many cases the behaviors that get labelled with PDs are the result of major childhood neglect, abuse, or trauma. Since childhood lessons of danger and unworthiness can be unlearnt, at least to some extent, the PD can be improved. Mindfulness can be very helpful for gaining skills in emotional control.
As I’ve practiced more meditation, acceptance (of myself and my circumstances), and forgiveness (of myself and others), I’ve gradually lost many of the behaviors that once tempted therapists to label me with a PD. This disproves the whole notion: the initial idea of a PD was that it represented a fixture in a person’s makeup. It couldn’t be substantively changed, anymore than one’s baseline personality could be changed. But the brain is amazingly malleable. You can learn new ways of being.
In short: look at the PD diagnosis as provisional; it shows you something about yourself that was no doubt hard to see. But now that you have the understanding, you can change. I don’t know what PD they stamped you with, but look for Marsha Linehan’s work on (what used to be called) Borderline PD for an enlightened stance that can help you see ways to change.
Best wishes.
–Will
Posted at October 19, 2010 on 5:53am.