Healing is Not Linear
Wikipedia’s therapy definition: “A therapy or medical treatment or the attempted remediation of a health problem, usually following a medical diagnosis. As a rule, each therapy has indications and contraindications. There are many different types of therapy. Not all therapies are effective. Many therapies can produce unwanted adverse effects. Treatment and therapy are generally considered synonyms. However, in the context of mental health, the term therapy may refer specifically to psychotherapy.”
My therapy is not linear. I have a Bipolar I diagnosis, and for the past 50+ years, I’ve run a jagged journey through what people told me what would remediate my feelings of life not being worth living and not to act on the suicidal thoughts.
Jag 1: The first intervention made me take mind-numbing, psychotropic medications that made any thinking and most body movement impossible.
Jag 2: “Talk therapy” with a professional person, offered me some critical thinking skills. Without those, I’d never make up what I wanted to do and how to get it.
Jag 3: Hospitalization, a revolving door, involved overdoses and general feelings of being unsafe and anxious about that. Some hospitalizations were instigated by overdoses, wrist cutting and voluntary admissions.
Jag 4: Institutionalizations in large, state facilities followed too many hospitalizations and no progress. It involved deep depression with despair, hopelessness, and worthlessness. This progressed over periods of years that ended when I realized that I would have to live my own life, keep my own hours, go where I wanted, and choose my company.
The final curtain: Advocacy and activism: They closed my public health clinic. The anger I felt at the injustice of removing something that was helping me, educating me, motivating me was intolerable. It immediately pulled me out of my depression, involved me in my first picket around the closing of the Rogers Park clinic, and taught me a new way to act and feel. There’s nothing like the marching with other like-minded protesters in the streets chanting for justice. There’s no other feeling like it in the world. It is a true expression of what is good for me/us. For me, it is the definition of self-esteem. That’s therapy!
