Talking and therapy may come in handy, but words will never cure me.
My experience with years of therapy and taking a break from it.
The first time I experienced prolonged symptoms of heavy bipolar depression, I was fourteen. The first time I acknowledged them was when I was sixteen, and I decided to look for solutions.
My friend and guide Google told me that the first step was to talk to a professional, and I started to look for a person who had the appropriate credentials to be valid enough to sit across and listen to a bawling teenager.
The first time I ever shared my pain with an adult other than my parents was with the school counselor who was a woman with an outdated psychology degree, a large blabbering mouth and a generation’s worth of prejudice. Her counsel was so ridiculous, even my depression asked me, “Is this your weapon of choice against me? Am I a joke to you?”
My second therapist was a kind man who called himself a Life Skills Coach. He was against all medication, or as he put it “no pills, only skills”. Ultimately, it came down to a standstill, jargon overkill and I was mentally ill still, with medical bills and tears to spill and a ticket to anxietyville. (See, even I can rhyme, Dr. T)
My third ‘professional’ had a doctors’ degree and told me to read Louise L Hay’s books on healing oneself through affirmations and positive energy. When I expressed skepticism, he shook his fists at me in frustration. That didn’t help with the healing either, so I sent him positive vibes and left without paying. I still send him positive vibes from time to time from the comfort of my own home. In fact, let me just send him some right now. Done.
My fourth professional was a real doctor who diagnosed me with bipolar disorder after a long analysis. He gave me pills, the real stuff, and the pills worked very well. He asked me to seek therapy along with the medication, so I found a new person whom I could pay to watch me wipe snot and tears.
The new therapist listened to me. There were a lot of words spoken, tears shed, cuss words thrown around, fists unclenched and emotions expressed. I felt lighter than before.
This went on for a month, and then we hit the plateau region. You know, the graph of therapy sessions vs recovery went on climbing steadily and then became stagnated and no amount of therapy would change it.
I felt sad but I didn’t have anything to talk about. Words, tears and feelings were exhausted yet I did not feel ‘well’. My medication continued, and I could see the results but some residue of unpleasantness remained.
So I got another therapist, only to find it changed absolutely nothing.
My therapists were frustrated. I was frustrated. I felt like the heroine in a series of unsuccessful relationships that you see in romance books, where she is the common denominator, maybe there is something wrong with her, why can’t she find the spark? And just like raven-haired Rebecca in the steamy clinch, I decided to look for compatibility for the last time. And just like her, I did not make any effort to change my approach. Instead, I asked my doctor to recommend me a good therapist. He obliged.
I put all my faith in this doctor-approved well-qualified old man. I told him in detail about my medicines and previous therapy findings.
And then, I was just a girl, standing in front of a shrink, asking him to cure me.
“Go. You do not need therapy.” he told me at the end of our first and only session. I stared stupidly. I wanted to argue, I wanted to insist that I needed treatment, so shut up and sit there and whip out that notepad and get ready to pass me that tissue. How dare you say I did not need any more of the treatment which was clearly not working for me!
“Your medicine is fine, your recovery is fine, you are good to go. I know you don’t feel good right now, but you need to learn to manage that on your own. At least for the next month. And I am sure you can. Go home now, pleasure talking to you, send the next patient in, will you?”
I opened my mouth to protest and he waved his hand in dismissal. “We have talked enough, and no more talking is needed. You need to go and just be alive now.”
I slowly walked out with my purse, my water bottle, my tissues and my utter bewilderment. What just happened?
I decided to follow what the therapist said, and started living the way I was minus therapy. I deleted my mood tracker app, medicine tracker app, half a hundred Google notes and locked away my therapy journal. For a while, it felt like a vacuum, for I had nothing much to do except prepare for my next therapist session.
Eventually, I found new things to do and began to focus on my life and wellness objectively.
The next time I saw my psychiatrist, he asked me how my therapy was going. Immediately, I lied and said it was going very well. He responded in a triumphant voice, “I know. My patients always benefit from a good therapist.”
And that was when I realized that I too, benefited from a good therapist who told me to stop seeing any more therapists.
It has been six months, and I haven’t had a session. Here is a list of changes I have observed in myself -
- I sleep better. MUCH better.
- ‘Constantly being aware of being mentally ill’ is not a part of my daily routine anymore.
- There is no exhaustion that comes with trying to reflect upon ones’ emotions.
- I am saving a lot of time, money, tissues.
- I do not cry as often.
- I am able to see certain small life events without the context of bipolar disorder. Yes I didn’t feel like socializing yesterday, and that’s it. It does not have to mean depression always. I am still a human underneath my mood swings, and sometimes humans feel lazy.
- I do not have to fill up worksheets and refer to them every time I am sad.
I am much happier sans therapy. Yes sure, I still have my days when I have a bad episode, but I am still able to get through it. I feel that taking a break from therapy was the best therapy I ever gave myself.
Now, I am not saying that you should fire your therapist cold turkey. I attended hours of therapy but left it when it no longer served the purpose of healing.
I wonder how my psychiatrist will react when he learns I quit therapy on the advice of the therapist that he recommended. But that is a blog for another day.
Originally published at http://hypomanica.wordpress.com on March 12, 2019.
