Posted by badhaircut on June 19, 2005, at 16:35:30
In reply to 1st post here--long, but *please* help., posted by med_empowered on June 19, 2005, at 7:57:52
Med,
Sorry to hear your situation. It sounds like you've tried a lot. I've done lots of meds, too, without benefit. And I tried CBT, which really helps but in a limited way and like you say it seems to wear off. I've also tried years of daily psychodynamic therapy and found it ultimately pointless, even destructive.
It sounds, though, like there's a lot of good stuff that's important to you: having strong friendships and relationships, having meaning and purpose in your life, being who you really are, advanced education, and helping others. As far as improving your life goes, having interests like those is not a bad start!
If you'd like to try something truly different therapy-wise, maybe there's an Acceptance and Commitment Therapy provider near you? "ACT" gets the person willing to have whatever rotten thoughts and feelings may inescapably come up, but to have them *mindfully*, so that they're not as powerful and controlling. Then ACT orients the person to take action toward what's already uniquely important to that person, not what the therapist thinks the client should do or what others say is "mentally healthy."
ACT thinks everybody and each emotional problem is absolutely normal. It doesn't label anything or anyone, and it doesn't try to find underlying causes like psychoanalysis does. It separates me from my rotten thoughts & feelings without trying to "kill" them.
Anyway, there's a small list of ACT therapists here, but it's in alphabetical order. (You can do a Ctrl+F text search for your city or state.) If you're interested, you might get lucky.
http://acceptanceandcommitmenttherapy.com/referrals/name.htmlJust a thought.
-bhc
poster:badhaircut
thread:515396
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20050615/msgs/515588.html