as small as a world and as large as alone, dendriforming: There’s a lot going around right...

4:25pm August 15, 2014

There’s a lot going around right now about how if you’re suicidal, seeking therapy is always the answer.

And that’s true for a lot of people.

But for me, leaving therapy was the answer. Not leaving therapy and finding a better therapist. Just… leaving therapy entirely.

I fought my parents for months to be able to do that, and it’s probably the best thing I’ve ever done.

And seeing promises that therapy *will* help terrifies me, especially when it’s directed to young people whose parents will be able to control the direction of therapy.

Same here.

Especially because, for me, the “Therapy is your only hope” and “Psychiatry in general is your only hope” stuff only fueled suicidal thoughts.

Because suicidal thoughts happen, partly, when you think you have no way out.

And when you think you have no way out, you go to therapy for years, you take every med they throw at you, you do everything they tell you, and you only get worse and worse and worse?

Then your only hope is gone.

And that’s a horrible thing to do to anyone.

So don’t ever tell anyone that therapy, meds, or psychiatry are “the only answer” for any psychiatric problem. Because that’s just a really good way to make it so that if they don’t work for someone, they give up on life entirely. Which is a very real thing that happens to a lot of people. You just don’t hear about them.

(Except sometimes, when they’re actually honest with you about their success rates. At one point when I was misdiagnosed with schizophrenia I was told that they had only about a 30% success rate treating schizophrenics in any way. That was depressing to hear out of a psychiatrist who actually believed in his profession.)

I did manage to stop being suicidal, and actually getting away from psychiatry was my first step in that direction. Doesn’t work that way for everyone, but works that way for some people. I didn’t have the option of psychiatry anyway. As in, psychiatry would have resulted in my death eventually. So I had to find other options. I get irritated when I hear people say that there’s just this kind of person where psychiatry is the only possible hope for them, because if that kind of person were me, they’d be up shit creek without a paddle. And I was told for a long time that I was that kind of person, that not taking my meds was like a diabetic not taking insulin, and all sorts of bullshit along those lines.

Mind you, I do take some meds now, but not through psychiatry, just through my regular doctor. But for awhile I had to make do with herbal meds (which are just as much meds as pharmaceuticals are, don’t let anyone tell you different) and also all these non-medical techniques that bore some resemblance to CBT but were really stuff thought up by people who’d been where I’d been. And that had a decidedly different flavor than any kind of therapy I’ve ever seen.

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