Mental Illness and Being "Shrunk"

I just broke up with my shrink....well at the end of the year,   but I wanted to give her notice and the opportunity to really hone in on things if it is needed.  I made a commitment to see it through for 18 months to fully dredge once and for all.  Breaking up is huge because this woman knows more about me than anyone else.  I basically pay her to reveal all – every resentment, pain, hurt, fear, emotion, action and dysfunction. One thing I am sure of is that with the life I live and the colourful characters in it, I’m sure she has not been bored!

I really have come a long way – I have come from starting the first session pointing out the key performance indicator that a potential patient uses is “Please tell me that I’m nuts enough that you’ll keep seeing me!!!” to having a six month period with relative stability and peace of mind.

Now you may think that seeing someone every week for 18 months equates to being stark raving mad – which is not a totally wrong conclusion, but it more relates to the type of therapy.  After seeing a number of therapists over a 10 year period and either not committing to a long term process or not feeling they were the right person to treat me, I went back to this psychiatrist who I saw 6 years before.  I stopped therapy because it became too hard going both logistically and mentally after the birth of my first child.  So I returned to her to finish the job.  If you think it is hard to find the right mechanic or hairdresser, try finding the right therapist! 

My Doc is what’s called a “Psychodynamic therapist” as opposed to psychologist or cognitive behavioural therapist.  This basically means I go there, talk for 50 minutes and leave – often with a stop to the dunny which is basically one of the few places in my world where I can cry in peace because there is no child, elderly person or someone on the end of the phone wanting something from me.  My therapist gives very little feedback and I know absolutely NOTHING about her personally.  If I ask her opinion on something she won’t give it but asks me what I think. She does pose questions and makes suggestions but ultimately I have to arrive at the conclusion.  She will not give me a definitive response.  

You have to trust in the process – that talking unprompted on a week to week basis about the things that come up in your life will act as a longitudinal study over time that reveals to you (and your subconscious) the patterns of behaviour, themes and triggers that guide your existence.  As you start to recognise these and explore the root causes you can catch yourself at the top of a downward spiral and create new patterns of behaviour to replace the dysfunctional ones. 

I don’t think it is all her though.  As a devout Christian I have approached this in a prayerful way asking God to bless the process, reveal what needs to come up and give me the courage to face the fear of opening a can of worms -  and being assured God will never leave me alone trying to shove the slippery suckers back into the can!  I might be challenged but never alone or incapable of getting through. I do a Christian mediation in my favourite “happy spot” looking out on the river just before my therapy session so I am prepared.  I am amazed at how things have come up in therapy and then been directly confirmed and the way out laid down in front of me in my spiritual life. I have often unravelled something in therapy and then been able to really specifically pray and study to come up with the answer and be “released” from the problem.  Both God and my therapist (who I suspect has other beliefs than mine) have guided me out of the mess in my head that I’ve been stuck in for so long.

So given I am now officially qualified to make this statement, I am going to be a sane self righteous pratt for just a few moments.  Listen up.......

For people who make judgements about people who see therapists and believe all this self examination is a bit self absorbed and queer and you should just snap out of it... it is better to get help than be unaware or unwilling to do anything about your own dysfunction and the heartache you inflict on the people around you.  

For Christians that believe  God can help anyone who asks to reveal to them the things they need to work on and then heal them, sometimes God uses people ,  medicine and science to do a work of healing.  He often employs a process rather than a miraculous fix.

For people that are afraid of opening “Pandora’s box” and think it would all be too painful...the pain inflicted by your subconscious is already ruling your conscious life.  You’re better to eyeball it and get it done and dusted so it doesn’t control you anymore.  Just because pain lurks under the surface does not mean it is contained.  Pain and unforgiveness silently leaches into every pore of your existence and subconsciously lurks tainting every experience and the ability to truly feel joy and freedom.

 And lastly, want to hear my theory on aging gracefully?  Get your stuff dealt with while you are young and before your body and mind gets too exhausted to do the hard yards.   I think the key to being happy in old age is directly correlated to how much of your baggage you have psychologically offloaded during your life.  If you leave it until the end when everything is wearing out and you don’t have the capacity to deal with it, it starts to infiltrate in other forms.  For example, could it be that dementia is the mind’s way of escaping what it no longer has the capacity to suppress or deal with and without life’s distractions it has no other choice than to go off somewhere?  

It’s time that everyone started to think of depression as any other form of illness in society.  If you are thinking in terms of a hierarchy of organs in our body, the fact that the brain and mind is central to everything else and the most important of all the organs, it should be prioritised.  Yet when we seek to have a healthy brain it can be viewed with trepidation or fear that is not viewed the same way than if it was a cancer getting cut out.  Surely it is time that our society embraces the importance of looking after this most essential organ without shame.