Headology*
Things are getting dark. Again. Looking for a therapist. Again. Good grief (see what I did there?), it's difficult. I can find 43 reviews on the local fried-potato food truck, but therapists? Uh-uh. And I think therapy could possibly help.
I don't believe I'm a bad-brain-chemistry depressive: yes, I'm on anti-depressants, but I'm also very bad at remembering medication when things go dark, and the analytical part of my brain hasn't noticed that it makes any difference at all. In contrast, if TDO forgets meds for two days, it's obvious to us both. TDO also responds positively to a much narrower range of medications than I do; essentially, any SSRI seems to mute the worst of it for me. But that's also all it does: mute. Turn down the volume. That's enough to get me out of bed and to work most days, but it's also still a crappy way to live most days.
So I think I'm a molded-by-bad-experiences depressive. And talk therapy seems to be the best approach for that, based on my completely unscientific observations.
The sticking point is that therapy requires a therapist, and I'm just -- even when I can convince myself the expense is doable, and acceptable, I still can't find someone I think I could come to trust.
I'm a bad, bad, bad patient, you see. I've done therapy oh, so many times now, and I've almost routinely been a bad patient, and I'm not even sure my therapists realized it. Some must have, right? But I bring all my excellent coping / compartmentalizing / deflecting /
manipulative skills into therapy with me, and almost inevitably deploy them, along with (she wrote with an unpleasant and unjustified pride) a fair portion of intelligence and verbal ability.
My life, you see, is a massive, towering fake, and I think the only one who knows that is TDO. Other people believe I am confident, competent, secure, adult, generous, even wise. This is possible because (a) again, I am a massive, towering fake and (b) I am close to no one besides my poor TDO. It's a tremendous effort to reveal, regularly, how I feel, how I frame things; I'm simply out of practice, if I ever was in it. I don't do vulnerable. Not in public.
As if that weren't barrier enough, I'm also picky, judgmental, and protective of people in my life.
It's curiously difficult to say to another person that I grew up with parents who loved me so very much but treated me so very badly over and over again, who wanted so much to be better parents than they were that they lied, almost immediately, about what happened in our home. It's a betrayal.
I can't stomach anything "new age". A therapist who touts EMDR, or inherited trauma therapy, or any number of fringe theories, is an absolute no-go. If I can't trust your judgement, why would I tell you my deepest, most painful secrets?
More hurdles to jump? Sure! I need someone smart, I hope smarter than me. I have difficulty opening up with someone a lot younger, so the available pool shrinks daily. I'd prefer a woman, because I have woman-stuff to talk about. I'm conflicted, as a white person, about seeing someone African-American or Hispanic -- there's such a history of white people being not just served by but nurtured by African-American and Hispanic women: would I be perpetuating that? Would my fear of perpetuating that get in the way of therapy, or could I get past it?
And on top of all that, I'm so damnably craven and fragile that I must, I need to feel some warmth from my therapist. The times therapy has helped me -- and understand: my coping skills are hard-won and the place I am in is actually an improvement over where I used to be, when I thought everyone would be better off if I could just die -- those times have been when I've had therapists who expressed what felt like genuine caring. Again and again. I'm sure it's part of my pathology, but there it is.
That is -- that is a lot of requirements. And there seems to be no way to determine if they can be met, other than to serially work with everyone available, moving on to the next as the current is found wanting. Like a Mad Hatter, if you will. And this seems impractical. Also very, very depressing to contemplate, let alone experience.
Result: stasis. A dearth of possibilities. And extremely long online rants.
* Headology, of course, is courtesy of the late, greatly lamented Terry Pratchett, via Lancre witch Granny Weatherwax. If most of that sentence is gibberish to you, get thee to the library: deliciousness awaits.
My life, you see, is a massive, towering fake, and I think the only one who knows that is TDO. Other people believe I am confident, competent, secure, adult, generous, even wise. This is possible because (a) again, I am a massive, towering fake and (b) I am close to no one besides my poor TDO. It's a tremendous effort to reveal, regularly, how I feel, how I frame things; I'm simply out of practice, if I ever was in it. I don't do vulnerable. Not in public.
As if that weren't barrier enough, I'm also picky, judgmental, and protective of people in my life.
It's curiously difficult to say to another person that I grew up with parents who loved me so very much but treated me so very badly over and over again, who wanted so much to be better parents than they were that they lied, almost immediately, about what happened in our home. It's a betrayal.
I can't stomach anything "new age". A therapist who touts EMDR, or inherited trauma therapy, or any number of fringe theories, is an absolute no-go. If I can't trust your judgement, why would I tell you my deepest, most painful secrets?
More hurdles to jump? Sure! I need someone smart, I hope smarter than me. I have difficulty opening up with someone a lot younger, so the available pool shrinks daily. I'd prefer a woman, because I have woman-stuff to talk about. I'm conflicted, as a white person, about seeing someone African-American or Hispanic -- there's such a history of white people being not just served by but nurtured by African-American and Hispanic women: would I be perpetuating that? Would my fear of perpetuating that get in the way of therapy, or could I get past it?
And on top of all that, I'm so damnably craven and fragile that I must, I need to feel some warmth from my therapist. The times therapy has helped me -- and understand: my coping skills are hard-won and the place I am in is actually an improvement over where I used to be, when I thought everyone would be better off if I could just die -- those times have been when I've had therapists who expressed what felt like genuine caring. Again and again. I'm sure it's part of my pathology, but there it is.
That is -- that is a lot of requirements. And there seems to be no way to determine if they can be met, other than to serially work with everyone available, moving on to the next as the current is found wanting. Like a Mad Hatter, if you will. And this seems impractical. Also very, very depressing to contemplate, let alone experience.
Result: stasis. A dearth of possibilities. And extremely long online rants.
* Headology, of course, is courtesy of the late, greatly lamented Terry Pratchett, via Lancre witch Granny Weatherwax. If most of that sentence is gibberish to you, get thee to the library: deliciousness awaits.
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