The stigma around mental health

I have only one therapy session left to attend, so you can say I am now officially sane. A close friend of mine asked me to tell her about therapy, and since I don’t even know 97% of my followers personally, I thought, I can just as well write everything here and share it with lots of strangers.

My therapy course started in April of 2014. I had some serious problems with eating and a friend told me I should probably see someone to check if I maybe had an eating disorder. I didn’t want to see anyone, but my problems had worsened over time. It was my first year at uni, and it has been the worst time of my life. Finally, when I could not go on like that any longer, I decided to take part in a study which dealt with eating disorders. I applied online and received a letter with further questions on my problem. After I submitted my answers, it became clear that I don’t qualify to take part in the study, but they invited me to come anyway and talk to them and suggested me to consider therapy.

The first five sessions were for the therapist and me to get to know each other better, then we continued to work on the problem itself. When I started the treatment, they only told me I had that eating disorder, but I seem to have developed some other problems over time, and some months later, I was diagnosed with depression and social phobia.

It’s always interesting to listen to people talking about these kind of problems. I’ve been a part of the group project at the uni with two other (“normal”) people. They told me about that guy they’ve worked with before, who was so strange and didn’t say much most of the time, and how he’s weird and horrible to work with. I was sitting there thinking, “that’s a very precise description of myself”. If you’re a healthy person reading this, think twice before you talk. Especially when you meet someone for the first time in your life. You cannot imagine how much energy it takes us to talk to most of you. There are certainly people we find interesting, and we look forward to talking to them. But most of the time, we prefer to just avoid any contact with other human beings. “That’s strange!” Is it, though? For me, it’s just energy saving, nothing personal.

In some seminar that I took last semester, one of the students said she thought that everyone who’s depressed takes medication. That’s not true. I haven’t received any. Just hours and hours of therapy. Two years of talking.

There’s generally an assumption that people with mental problems are dangerous. Well, let me assure you, we are not dangerous for you. Imagine that you’ve moved in with a person whom you don’t like or even hate. Now imagine you’ve moved out, and they’ve moved out and followed you to your new house. And they follow you eveywhere you go, 24/7. Well, this is what it looks like for me: I will have to spend the rest of my life with the person I hate, and that person is me. It’s like playing against your own team. So believe me, if we are dangerous for anyone, we are only dangerous for ourselves. Fearing us is the same as laughing at us or pointing fingers. It doesn’t help. What also doesn’t help is this “stop being sad”, “you’ll be fine soon”, “but the sun is shining”, etc. This is stupid, being sad and being depressed is not the same. Learn the difference, and don’t diagnose yourself with depression if you’re having a bad day.

I won’t disclose any details as to what exactly we do in the therapy sessions. Just think of them as conversations with someone you can trust with anything. If you consider starting therapy, I advise you to be completely honest with your therapist. Otherwise it will be hard for them to help you.

Does therapy help? That depends. There are some people who, after completing a course of therapy, come back later having the same problem. I am happy to say that I’ve had no problems with eating or talking to people for months. I still tend to avoid people I don’t like, but that’s natural, I guess. I rarely start the conversation first, though. And I still don’t say much, which might make people feel that I’m rude, but that’s just because I don’t like to ramble. Most people are not interested in my “personality” anyway. So I can say that two of my three problems have been successfully solved over the course of the therapy.

How much does it cost? Probably, a lot. The good news is: the insurance company covers the complete cost of therapy, even if you are a student.

Does it hurt? It does.