Therapy

Yesterday was therapy day. I meet with my therapist after I drop the kids off at school. The waiting room usually has two or three new faces in it, and there seem to be more doctors in the building as well. An epidemic of mental illness is sweeping our community, it would seem.

For several weeks after I began I didn’t think therapy was helping much. Why drag up old painful stuff? Then after some of that stuff got dragged into the light, I could see the benefit. I began feeling really good, much freer. Then I started sliding back down into the gully. Now it takes me most of the session just to work up to saying anything of substance about how I’ve been feeling. Yesterday at about the 40-minute mark I was able to say that I had not been feeling particularly sad lately, just irritable and numb and…disgusted. With myself.

Therapist: “Well, that’s the difference between ordinary sadness and depression, that sense of self-loathing.”

We talked about that for a bit and then it was time to go. Afterward, instead of running the errands I had planned, I went home for a while and just felt exhausted. I often do after a session. Later that afternoon I slept for several hours. When I wasn’t asleep I was bored and numb. But he said today will stick with me for a while, I think.

~ by irishtraveller on March 14, 2007.