You're in luck! We have a diagnosis for you!

If you go to a psychiatrist, you will leave with a diagnosis.  This isn't a proven fact, but I have yet to meet anyone who went and came out with the doctor saying, "I'm sorry...there's nothing wrong with you."  Of course, generally speaking, people do not go to a psychiatrist unless something is "wrong" with how they feel (or the people around them feel).  It's not like primary care and prevention...you're going there because you feel like you need to. 

Over the years, I've had many diagnosis'.  My first psychologist said I had "dysthymia," which is a mild depression that lasts for 2 years or more.  I would later be diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Panic Disorder, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Major Depressive Disorder (recurrent), and Borderline Personality Disorder.  If I, as a social worker, were diagnosing me, I would diagnose myself with Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Major Depressive Disorder, recurrent, and Anxiety Disorder including panic.  Now, if you have cancer, they don't diagnose you with Leukemia and then say, well, it sounds more like breast cancer now.  But, in psychiatry, depending on the doctor you see, they can change them; add things on.  Seems like a craps shoot sometimes.

So...what would you be diagnosed with if you showed up in a psychiatrist's office?  Would you have a personality disorder, a perception disorder, a depressive disorder, an adjustment disorder?   And then what?

Everyone would do a little better with a little therapy

The world would run a whole lot smoother if everyone got some intensive therapy, by a trained professional.  The therapy relationship is like no other.  It is sort of like a one-way friendship with someone you can tell all of your "deepest, darkest secrets" who will help you, if they're a good therapist, to see things a bit differently.  It's one-way in that she (I'll use the female pronoun as there are more female social workers and psychologists than male) will not tell you her secrets.  This used to really upset me.  I felt that if I was going to share all of this important, personal information...she should, too!  After all, when she uses my past against me, I won't have any leverage.  There will be nothing to protect me.  And that's what it was all about: trust that my "stuff" would be safe with her.  It seemed unfair.  I complained about it.  I wanted to know anything at all - what kind of music do you like?  are you married?  what do you do when you're not here, listening to a subscription to my issues?

I remember asking a therapist how this dynamic was fair.  She said, point blank, "It's not."  I thought, "Whatchoo talkin' about, Willis?"  I fully expected to hear, "It's in your best interest.  Blah blah blah."  And while she did, eventually, get to that point, she didn't start there.  She started with validation and it made me feel okay for feeling the way I did.  She wanted to "explore it further," which I felt game to do, particularly with the sense of feeling understood.  She didn't dismiss my concerns.  Now, granted, she also did not tell me one, single thing about herself, which irked me to no end, but she did make me feel like I wasn't an needy, idiot for feeling this way.  Wow!  What a revelation!  I had the right to my own feelings, whatever they were!  Oprah would call this an "Aha moment."  It struck me as somewhat obvious and, yet, I don't remember ever experiencing that kind of acceptance of my emotions.

Instead, she said to me, "The therapist-client relationship is like no other.  We're not friends (which she knew I really wanted to be).  That doesn't mean the interdependence is not important to me or to you.  It means that it's a different kind of relationship.  You came here for therapy.  You didn't come here for friendship.  I would be doing a disservice to you if you came to therapy and I sat here and bitched about the problems in my life.  It wouldn't help YOU.  Boundaries (a word I detested) are important and I see them as protecting the therapy relationship, in a way, from becoming a different kind, like a friendship or parental connection.  Does that make sense?"  And, for the first time, after many therapists explaining this to me without my opinion shifted, I felt my mind begin to change.  My mind could change!  And that was a moment I remember because it helped me so much.

I imagine if, say George W. Bush had had some psychotherapy pre-9/11, he could have worked out his Daddy issues and not have had to go into Iraq.  Maybe Freud would have worked out his own Oedipus complex and his Mommy issues (and maybe Daddy issues, too!).  I'm sure you can name a few celebrities, as well as people in your life, who could do with some good ol' fashioned talk therapy.  I think the world would improve drastically if people looked at the plank in their own eye before examining the sliver in another's!  Imagine that.

I Understand Inside

I understand inside.  This means several things to me.  I understand pushing your feelings so deep inside that it seems like nobody truly knows the "real" you, even maybe yourself.  I understand being inside the proverbial closet: about my sexuality, about my mental health diagnosis', about a lot of things.  I understand being inside of myself, screaming on the inside, "I'm here!  Can't you see me?" and watching people walk away because they can't.  I haven't let them.  I understand being inside the mind of a child who was abused and re-experiencing the traumas that the mind can only repress for so long.  I understand being inside a hospital  (private, public, and/or state) against your personal will because depression and anxiety has taken over your mind, convincing you that you are not worthy of love or life.   I understand looking out the windows at visitors who come and go, their feet crunching in the snow and then, drive out of sight, leaving you to color with broken crayons and write with golf pencils.  I understand referring to the hospital as, "The Inside" and away from the hospital as, "The Outside," as if it the world is so black and white.  Unfortunately, some of us are on "The Inside" even when we're not in the hospital - after all, wherever you go, there you are!  I, like many, have erected my own self-imposed walls that keep others out and myself in, clawing at the walls and hoping for a bulldozer to knock it right down and, yet, fearing the demolition at the same time.  These walls I have for myself are what we've all built, some more than others, to protect us from our feelings.  Keeping people out keeps us in, too, and protects us from all of the potential good feelings! 

My goals in writing this blog are the following: to lend a voice to the voiceless and help others to see that they are not alone, to get some writing experience and exposure because I want to write a memoir and be published (and be on Oprah's book club, but that's not the point), and to use this as a place to write down my thoughts, opinions, theories, and so forth.  I'd like it to be a conversation, so please feel free to comment! :)