 - Last login: 3 hours agoFindtheriver
- d'Zhuoy is a 41 year old woman from Ex-Urbs, New York, USA.
- Likes 948 pages, 44 videos, 88 photos • 122 fans • Received 32 reviews
- Member since Aug 13, 2006
"All my thoughts, they come in pairs. / I will, I won't, I doubt, I don't, / I'm not surprised but I never feel quite prepared." --Bright Eyes ...---... "When you see yourself doing something badly and nobody's bothering to tell you anymore, that's a very bad place to be. Your critics are your ones telling you they still love you and care." --Randy Pausch, "Last Lecture"
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I had everything pretty well contained for a long time: no teariness, no heavy moping, nothing but a harmless and painless emptiness. And although I believed my doc when he said I am depressed, I sensed that this was a different flavor of depression than what I'd lived with for 30+ years. Precisely because I had everything well contained. "Emptiness" wasn't the right word, above. It was more like having my insides removed -- bones, organs, flesh, blood, everything -- and replaced with straw, straw packed in solid. It was a vacating of my very self, an abandoned carapace stuffed with a space filler.
So everything was under control until I started this partial hospitalization program (PHP) last Wednesday. I was happily surprised that the staff in the PHP were really competent and supportive. Most of them are social workers, psychologists, and psychiatrists, with only one mental health worker (a sort of assistant who drives patients home, rounds them up for the next conference, photocopies, etc.).
The sessions are mostly group sessions, but the program has only 6-12 participants at a given time. (It fluctuates because it's only a two-week program, so there could be 10 one day and 11 the next and 8 a few days hence.) There's a variety of diagnoses, from internet addiction to bipolar disorder to major depression (findtheriver raises hand) to eating disorders. The social workers run most of the sessions, and they do a good job of listening and responding and observing.
Each person is assigned a social worker as her one-to-one therapist. Mine is Anna, who is this wonderful crusty older woman who challenges negative thoughts ... relentlessly. She tries to see inside without making assumptions about what she'll find there. I quite like her.
But I digress. What I was leading up to was the end of my well-controlled emotional state that barely seemed like depression to me. Once I got into the PHP and met with Anna, I suddenly burst into tears, and have done so every morning when I get there. Partly it's frustrating trying to find my way around the literally labyrinthine building, so that as I make the long trek, backtracking and going down blind alleys and backtracking some more, my torn achilles tendon starts protesting. With fire and knives. And there's something about the cavernous hallways and 10-foot-tall doors that kind of tweaks me, and then I start thinking about how gimpy I look and how normal everyone else is as they pass me in the hall, and by the time I figure out where I'm going and I get there, I'm pained and wrought up.
So I cry for a while, and then the sessions begin, and usually I get sad at some point and stare at my shoes until a teardrop falls and my eyes dry up. I get engaged in the discussions, for sure, but there are times when I feel so sad I think my chest will burst open and show my gray little heart.
Probably it's not a bad thing that I am having actual emotions now. It's probably better to endure them and be mindful of the self than to be stuffed with insensate straw.
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