i’m now seeing posts that are basically accusing therapists of being the same as ““““neurotypicals”””” who tell you that doing yoga will cure your depression
and it’s fucking killing me because ??? the idea of being annoyed by people telling you that stuff is because those people honestly think that doing yoga and “looking on the bright side” will magically cure your depression, because they can’t imagine happiness not coming as easily to someone else as it does to them. the idea isn’t that getting exercise and practicing positive thinking are useless ways to treat depression. but that’s what i’m seeing a lot of now and i just want to say…. i got some fucking bad news, cause that is the treatment for depression.
therapists telling you to get good nutrition and exercise are not the same as your yoga-instructor aunt on facebook posting pictures of the sunrise and wondering how anyone can be depressed when the world is so wonderful!!! thats not just an anti-recovery attitude, it’s an anti-treatment attitude, and it’s unbelievably ignorant.
there’s sort of this interesting circular form to dealing with mental illness, where you start in a place of “i just need to think positively and push myself out of this ditch” and then you move to step 2, which is “depression is a real and very serious illness and it’s not my fault that i’m tired all the time, stop telling me to just “think positive” all the time.”
But then there’s step three, which is where you size up your situation and say “look, i understand how serious my illness is, and i’m no longer blaming myself for it. And it sucks, and I don’t “deserve” this, and I didn’t bring it on myself. But regardless of how unfair it is, the truth is that I’m the only one who can actually do anything about it.” And so in a lot of ways, you end up with parallel ways of thinking as before, but this time you’re coming from a completely different source of understanding. People who don’t know anything about mental illness say “depression is a choice.” People who are fed up with being depressed and realize that wallowing in the comforting embrace of self-pity is useful to erase guilt, but ultimately won’t help them lead a better life say, “recovery is a choice.”
The first group means that if you’re depressed, you can just magically decide not to be depressed. The second group means that depression is a crushing weight on your back determined to make your life as miserable (and as short) as possible, and that you didn’t do anything to cause it, but that ultimately you have the choice of giving up and accepting being depressed for the rest of your life, or you have the option of making an effort to improve your quality of life. Similar statements, totally different meanings.
But I think a lot of people are sort of seduced by the comfort of giving up, and with the good intention of creating communities of understanding and non-judgement between mentally ill people, social media has unwittingly created communities of mentally ill people encouraging each other to give up. To just accept that this is the way their lives are, and there’s no possibility of getting better. And that’s how it’s gotten to the point of people dismissing actual mental health professionals as being no different than some ignorant person who doesn’t know the first thing about psychology and thinks an avocado smoothie will solve all your problems.
Avocado smoothie people are coming from the first perspective, that being depressed is a free choice that you can easily opt out of. Therapists are coming from the second perspective, where mental illness is a horrible reality, but given that you’re seeing them, a provider of mental health treatment, of fucking course they’re going to give you advice on how to treat your mental illness! Your therapist isn’t going to sit around and say “yeah man that sucks, haha look at this funny meme about how much you want to kill yourself.” Your therapist is going to give you recommendations of activities and habits that will help you recover. And they understand that these activities are not easy!!! They get that!!! The reason they’re there is to help you introduce these activities and ways of thinking into your life!!! Otherwise they’d just hand you a pamphlet and walk out!!!
But you can’t access that kind of help - the kind where you say “getting out of the house is a real problem for me, I never have the energy to get out of bed” and your therapist says “okay let’s figure out how to break this down into small steps, we’ll set a small goal for this week, and next time we meet you can tell me if it worked out, and if it did then we can figure out what the next goal will be, and if not then we can figure out why it didn’t work and try a different approach” - if you immediately dismiss any mention of recovery as “neurotypical bullshit.”
Anyways please please please take your healthcare seriously, get treatment, and realize that giving up and normalizing your depression/anxiety/etc as something that will never ever get better (yes, even if it’s a chronic condition that you’ll never fully cure, you still need to treat it) is not okay. Try to get good nutrition. Try to get sunshine and exercise. Try to be social. Making an effort to do things that will help you is not the same as thinking mental illness is a switch you can easily flip. Getting treatment is not the same thing as pretending your mental illness doesn’t exist or isn’t serious. On the contrary, getting treatment is taking your mental illness seriously. I’m not saying you should never make a joke or reblog a fucking meme or anything, I’m saying don’t use social media as your mental health care provider. Social media can be a way to vent, but venting is not the same thing as recovering.
Honestly it can take a very long time to get to that “step 3″ perspective but it’s a vital step.
THIS.
I’ve got my boyfriend calling me at 8am every weekday morning to get me out of bed so that I *get out of bed*. I then tell him when I’ve gotten to the gym.
We have worked this out between us, consensually, because I can’t fucking make myself do it. Because depression. But when I get up and go to the gym, suddenly my days get way, way more functional. I eat real food, I run errands, I cook- instead of laying on the couch feeling like my diaphragm got nailed to the floor. (They don’t all necessarily happen every day, but they become at least theoretically feasible.) This isn’t part 1, it’s part 3. Because dammit, I am fucking sick of this shit. I don’t deserve it and it’s a real issue- and for me, having someone to basically hotwire me because my starter is broken is how we’re gonna get a routine that takes minimal spoons to run.
Sometimes depression is cureable. Sometimes it’s just treatable. But dissing treatment because “gah neurotypicals” is shooting yourself in the foot.
Sometimes self-care is baths and Netflix and junk food and Tumblr. And sometimes self-care is an arranged phone call at 8am.
I agree with the message of this post, but I have to add the caveat that bad mental health professionals do exist. And in my experience are unfortunately not that uncommon. I have encountered many different therapists in my life, and some of them, I genuinely have no idea how they became licensed mental health professionals because they were the most horrifically bad at actually listening to the things I had problems with or needed help with.
I have had therapists that focused on my gender or my sexuality when I needed help with not spiralling when I thought about the future. There was the guy who kept telling me to exercise without trying to help me figure out how exactly to do that with my chronic physical illness that affects my muscles and causes me chronic pain. He was just spouting rhetoric.
That being said, I have had therapists who have helped me come up with plans to help me shower every day, eat three meals every day, who encouraged me to go swimming once a week, but also to get a mobility aid so I could do more walking on a regular basis, being aware of my limitations but also being encouraging and helping me get around them, who encouraged me to both work hard when need be or to take breaks when I was completely overwhelmed.Tl;dr yes, there are behaviours which can treat and manage depression even when it is not necessarily curable, and it is a therapists job to help you be able to incorporate these behaviours despite your mental health, but not all therapists are good and do their jobs, some of them are exactly like yoga moms on Facebook for all the help they do, and venting about a bad therapist is not the same as encouraging giving up.
I would also like to emphasize that there really are quite a few bad therapists/psychiatrists. If what you’re being told to do feels wrong or inappropriate, please seek a second opinion. If you do what you’re told and it isn’t working after a reasonable length of time (which can be a month or two) and your therapist isn’t listening to your concerns, find a new therapist.
You should be comfortable with you therapist. If you struggle to connect with them or feel like you’re not being listened to, please don’t give up. Find a new therapist. It may take a few, or many, tries to find the right fit, but in the end it’s worth it to find someone you can actually work with.
this and this *points up*
This, and also: “therapist” is not necessarily a thing you need a license for. It depends on where you are and what their title is, but in a lot of places, “psychotherapist” is NOT a protected term, psychotherapy is NOT regulated, and all you have to do in order to set up your therapy booth is comply with the business laws. Same goes for counsellor or counselling - in some places you need a license, in some you don’t, and what sort of qualifications you need to get a license vary. (And of course, saying you’re a “licensed therapist” if you’re not is illegal.)
[description: Peanuts cartoon by Charles M Schulz. Lucy is in a booth labelled “Psychiatric help, 5c.” Charlie Brown is sitting in front of her booth. He says “I have deep feelings of depression… what can I do about this?” Lucy replies “Snap out of it! Five cents, please.” Lucy is breaking the law, but only because “psychiatric” is a protected term and I doubt she’s registered her business or is paying taxes.]“Psychologist” IS a protected term, and so is “psychiatrist” (they mean different things, have different training, and do different jobs.) Psychologists and psychiatrists have to have had years of specific education, and be registered with their boards, which means they have to continue to meet the registration requirements (among other things, continuing education, insurance, and supervision.)
That doesn’t mean that a plain old therapist or counsellor might not be exactly right for you, or that there aren’t good ones out there. Nor does it mean that there aren’t deeply shitty psychologists and psychiatrists out there. There are also decent, well-intentioned mental health professionals of all types who just aren’t very effective. (They’re not required to be good at their job!) And there are excellent, wonderful therapists who never the less are not right for you personally. (The best therapist in the world at helping people with a fear of public speaking is not necessarily going to be any help to you if what you need help with is insomnia.)
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big ass reply incoming i think there’s an issue with the concepts of nuance and stigma that contributes to this. a lot...
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