Posted by messadivoce on September 30, 2005, at 0:47:42
I am currently out of therapy (not really by my own choice, originally) and don't have plans to go back any time in the foreseeable future. There are a couple of reasons for this. 1. I am doing okay, aside from the occasional depressive episode, which is easier to pull myself out of now 2. I don't feel like therapy is something I want to do right now when I'm preparing to get married...I've worked on a lot of stuff and right now I feel like I need to test drive everything I've learned for awhile.
My fiance is deadset against me ever going back to therapy. He is afraid that I will be dependent on it the rest of my life if I start a "pattern" of going. He has seen what it did to me when I was in twice-a-week intense psychodynamically oriented therapy--intense anxiety, panic, moodiness, sadness, anger. He doesn't understand how something that temporarily causes all of the above can be beneficial or good for me.
I have pointed out to him that I feel a lot better now that I've gone--my thought patterns have changed, I don't tear myself down like I used to, and our relationship is happier. He maintains that I could have eventually made these changes on my own. I just doubt it. I don't think that anyone who has not experienced depression can really know what it's like. I described it to him this way--it's like being in such a dense fog that you can't even see your hand in front of your face. You can't think about the next hour or the next day, because it doesn't exist, and you don't have the energy. He seemed to accept this and think about it. But being a scientist, he is uncomfortable with things that don't have an "answer" or a "solution" that is cut and dried. He doesn't understand how I can acknowledge all the risks and repercussions of therapy, and still want to leave the possibility open that I may go back someday.
I don't want you to get the idea that my fiance is a bad guy. He cares about me and he wants me to be okay. It tore him up to see me suffering while in therapy. It's hard for him to see me depressed because he wants to fix it, and he can't really.
But we are so different, the two of us. He has never had a depressive episode. He has had terrible things happen to him and he has the most resiliency of anyone I've ever met. He just has unbelievable inner drive and confidence. He will probably never see the need to be in therapy, and the thought of ever being in therapy himself makes him uncomfortable. Knowing the kind of person he is, I'm pretty sure that therapy would not be beneficial to him.
I don't really know what I'm asking. I figure that most likely, some of you guys go to therapy without the blessing of your spouse. I don't want to cause that kind of conflict in my marriage, but at the same time I realize it's impossible to bind two people together and NOT have conflict.
The good news is that we've yet to attend our church required pre-marital counseling, and most likely this will get hashed out a little more at that point.
poster:messadivoce
thread:561172
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20050920/msgs/561172.html