Seeking Therapy

I forget where I heard this quote, so I am going to credit it as anonymous, but it is useful nonetheless:

"When we are sick, it is expected and it is the norm that we go to the doctor to receive proper treatment. Why, when we are feeling emotionally troubled for an extended period of time, is it not always the norm to see a therapist?" 

There are many people out there who would benefit from having having a therapist, but are reluctant to do so because of the stigma surrounding it. Today, I'd like to discuss why I believe that therapy should always encouraged, and provide a testimonial as to its effectiveness. 

If it weren't for modern medicine, many of us wouldn't be alive right now (including myself). This is simply because the human body isn't built perfectly. It has many flaws, and we aren't always the best at taking care of it. The same applies to the mind. Most people's way of thinking is inherently flawed in one way or another. Just as doctors specializing in compensating for the inherent flaws of the human body, clinical psychologists specialize in correcting the inherent flaws of the human mind. In specific, Cognitive Behavioral Therapists specialize in restructuring the way that we think, and eliminating faulty thought processes. 

If someone was battling cancer, it would be totally unacceptable to tell them, "toughen up! It's just cancer." By analogy, why is it remotely okay to tell someone battling depression to "cheer up. It's all in your head." If I were to say to a cancer patient, "cheer up! It's all in your tumor!", how do you think they'd react! The body and mind should be treated as analogous, and it is only appropriate that we do so. In many cases, therapy is required to cure mental disorders, just as is surgery for cancer. 

If it weren't for therapy, I wouldn't have recovered from OCD. My therapist (bless his heart) pointed out the numerous ways in which my thinking had been causing me distress, and slowly taught me more efficient, practical, and less stressful ways of thinking. In particular, my therapist emphasized the importance of avoiding "all or nothing thinking," which involves only giving yourself two opposite options or possible outcomes for a situation. For example, if I were to take a difficult test, I might think "I either flunked or got an A." A more rational way to approach the issue would be to think "I could have flunked, gotten an A, or anything in between." 

Overall, I think that it is about time that we recognize the importance of therapy, and completely eliminate the stigma behind it. Most people would benefit from therapy, not just those who are struggling from mental disorders. The analogy between medicine and clinical psychology is extremely robust. 

If you're comfortable doing so, share your experiences with therapy in the comments! 

An Experience in the Emergency Room

With all of these posts, I've made a point of being as open and honest as possible. With today's post, that applies to the fullest extent, because I'll be describing a trip I made to the emergency room after having an anxiety attack.

It all started November of my senior year of high school. One night, the anxiety from my OCD had gotten so bad to the point that interacting with people, going out in public, and being any place except my room was terrifying to me. The next day, I stayed home from school, figuring that I could better distract myself from the anxiety at home than at school. The entire day, my anxiety felt analogous to a 10 on the pain scale (like the one they give you at the doctors office).

A month went by, and I had started to get my anxiety under control. I had started to receive proper medication, and I was learning better to cope with these massive waves of anxiety I had started to get.  You see, at that time, my OCD had been coming in oscillations, each peak getting progressively worse. While I had started to feel better overall, I had yet to receive proper therapy for my OCD. So one day, a wave of anxiety hit me so bad that I could no longer function- I had to leave school, go home, and literally hold myself in the fetal position in the corner of my room in order to cope.

This, of course, was not a healthy way of dealing with anxiety. But, since I had yet to learn techniques to deal it, I unfortunately behaved in certain ways that made my anxiety worse (an example being curling myself into the fetal position- go figure). At around 6 PM that night, I hit rock bottom. I felt like there was nothing I could do to get better, and that I was doomed. I kept repeating that to my dad- "I'm hopeless. I'm hopeless." Eventually, I said to him, "I need to go to the hospital."

This was a markedly bad decision for my overall mental health, but a lesson I needed to learn nonetheless. My method of dealing with worry up to that point was by finding new ways to run away from it. I had always held "going to the hospital" as the ultimate escape from my own thoughts- there, I could relinquish care of myself to other people. I thought it would provide me a safe haven. However, quite the contrary was the case.

When I got to the hospital, they couldn't put me in a room because I didn't require any surgery or an IV, so I was given a bed in the hallway, right at the intersection of four rooms that all contained people in severe pain. As you might predict, this wasn't the "perfect solution" I had been looking for.  After an hour or two, I was directed to a "crisis" specialist (a psychologist), who basically gave me two options: go home tonight, or go to the full time mental hospital for as long as it takes to recover.

At that moment, I realized that I was the one who needed to stand up to my anxiety. I learned that I couldn't shirk that responsibility onto the shoulders of a therapist or crisis specialist. They could provide me with guidance, but at the end of the day, I knew I needed to stop running away from the thoughts that caused me distress.






Photo Credits to Deepak Sarda