0820blog
I had a bad drug reaction in college and thought I was going crazy so I came home that weekend and my mother said I should just have something to eat and take a nap.
A nap and food are helpful if you’re hungry and tired but it is no replacement for therapy. It was a time when psychotherapy was still looked on as a weakness and a sham at best. Some perceptions die very, very slowly, if ever.
I soon saw a therapist and it was pretty useless so I just learned to deal with the panic from the hallucinatory drug and it gradually retreated, though not without a great deal of emotional pain. It was no fun and looking back, I realize that I probably saw a lousy therapist and was not ready to take the interior trip in to the bowels of my mind.
I’ve been in and out of therapy for much of my life and the experience has been invaluable in getting closer to understanding myself. And no, I am not a nut, although many who know me might disagree.
Sometimes, I went to a therapist because of a crisis, like a marital breakup, and found that therapy was just a fancy, albeit expensive, word for having someone to talk to and it helped in a relatively short time.
Other times, I continued with therapy simply because I enjoy the process of examining my actions and motives and fears and dreams. For those who haven’t tried therapy, and there are fewer and fewer of you, you would be surprised at the things you learn about yourself that can make your world richer and easier and even make more sense.
Therapy comes in many shapes and sizes. There is definitely a place for deep, long-term psychotherapy where issues are probed from childhood and parental influence is examined. But it need not be so involved and could be a finite series of sessions where a skilled therapist can lead you to your own understandings and how to cope better with life’s ups and downs.
And therapists come in all shapes and sizes and not every therapist fits every person’s needs. Some are closer to the classic Freudian therapist who says little but leads the patient toward his own conclusions and answers any question with the response, “what do you think?” Some therapists are much more involved and you can actually expect answers to your questions.
I suppose the stigma to therapy remains so deeply ingrained because we are taught that we should be strong and self-reliant and that crying to someone is just a sign of weakness. Anyone who needs to see a therapist must be really weak and really sick and pretty crazy or so the stigma goes.
For some it’s a cultural bias as in the Italian world, where any sign of weakness is looked down upon and must be deeply hidden and ignored at all costs. But hey, even the mobster Paul Vitti had to get help from therapist Billy Crystal in the 1999 film, “Analyze This.”
Or the bias may be based on religious beliefs that the way to a healthy mind is through prayer and that God has all the answers and can heal all wounds. That may be true for some but it rings hollow and pretty useless for many other people who are living in daily angst with psychiatric problems.
Others feel quite threatened by the thought of therapy, worrying that the process is one step before lifetime hospitalization in a psych unit, commonly and cruelly referred to as the loony bin, a place where once you enter, you never leave, ala “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”
And there is the stereotype that is still strong that you have to be this side of the bug-eating Renfield in Dracula before you should go for help or you should be seeing pink elephants and hearing voices telling you to strip down and run screaming down Route 80. Those are rather extreme situations although anyone who eats flies and sees imaginary elephants probably should seek help.
Many people believe they have to be just this side of suicide or a complete breakdown and madness before they should see a psychologist or therapist. So they continue to suffer silently and maybe they won’t be cured but their pain can be lessened and minimized relatively quickly and painlessly.
The truth is that depression is an illness, post traumatic stress disorder is an illness, agoraphobia is an illness. You may not die from it but your life can get pretty unhappy. If you break your leg, you go to the doctor, with no hesitation and you have no problem reporting the problem to family and friends. The same ought to be for an illness that is in our heads.
The fact is that psychotherapy is a booming business and hasn’t been this popular in years. The American Psychological Association reported that nearly half of American households have had someone seek mental health treatment this year,
Probably many if not most of the people you meet have at one time or another sought out a professional to help “shrink” their troubles and put them in some perspective.
People who could benefit from counseling have all kinds of reasons why they don’t seek help. They’d rather speak to friends, they don’t have the time, it’s too expensive, it won’t do any good because I saw a therapist once and he didn’t help.
Some feel weird talking about divulging personal stuff to a stranger and don’t want to air their dirty laundry to anyone.
Some expect their pain will just go away if they give it enough time. Others have weird preconceptions and fear treatment. They may minimize their problems and don’t want anyone to know they are seeing a therapist.
And others believe that the issues that make them unhappy and unfulfilled and curtail their growth are just part of life and they should just deal with it.
Anyone who’s feeling down for more than just a little while or feels his or her life is spinning out of control should seek out a therapist. There is help available and many need it now more than ever.