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Blog > Thoughts > Sean's Thoughts > Going to therapy

Going to therapy

Written by Sean on Wednesday, October 12, 2005

A friend left me an IM today, saying that she’d been reading my site and that she noticed a consistent pattern of what seems to be pretty severe depression. She then wondered if I’d considered therapy. And yes, I have considered it, and mostly dismissed it.

Yes, I’m depressed. I know that. The first time I’ve been diagnosed with chronic depression, I was in my teens. Things have generally not gotten any better. I have some “patches” of things going relatively smoothly, but all in all, this is something I struggle with pretty much constantly.

I’ve attempted therapy a few times. I’ve attempted medication a few times. Neither have been all that successful.

First attempt at therapy

I was 17 or so, and the shrink sexually assaulted me. Needless to say that put me off going to shrinks for a while.

Second attempt at therapy

My girlfriend at the time took me by the hand (literally) and dragged me to the local mental health clinic, we made an appointment for me to see someone. It was nearly a month before I could see anyone. I went back at the allotted time, and had to answer questionnaires after questionnaires. Tests upon tests. I think it was nearly 2,500 questions I had to answer. It took another 4 or so weeks before the results came back in. And the eejit woman told me “You’re depressed, we need to set an appointment time to start therapy!”. Took another few weeks before I could see her. So we’re nearly three months past the point where my girlfriend thought it was bad enough that I needed immediate help.

When I did start working with the woman, it went nowhere quick. At the second session, I told her about the transabled thing. She was clearly out of her depth. It wasn’t long before she referred me to a sexologist, despite my attempts at explaining to her that it wasn’t something sexual. Despite my telling her I wanted to work on the other issues, not necessarily the transabled thing.

Third attempt at therapy

Dealing with grief of losing my spouse, “garden variety” depression, and transability, all at the same time, was too much. I embarked on a journey to find a shrink. I did eventually find one. This time, I went on the basis that someone with experience working with transsexuals might be able to grasp the concepts a little better.

We didn’t work on transabled issues. Not immediately though. Tried and work on grief, some depression stuff. Eventually we got to the transabled issues. And while I was able to get many insights, I didn’t not achieve anything of real value.

The fact of the matter is, my solution to the transabled problem is to become paralysed. One might say I’m too picky about how that happens, and I won’t argue the toss, they’d be right. I don’t want to risk ending up with something I don’t “want”. Like death, or a traumatic brain injury. But in the end, the therapist really couldn’t help with that. While she might have been able to prescribe/refer me for a sex change surgery, it’s not acceptable to refer for disability adjustment surgery.

Drugs

As for medication, I was on Prozac for a while. It helped, a little bit, for a while. Then it stopped working. Had to up the dose. To the point I started to feel like a zombie. Switched to a different drug, tried a few cocktails of them, in fact. Perhaps they work for some, but for me, the result was unsatisfactory enough that I didn’t think they were worth the bother (and expense).

Where does that leave me?

Up the proverbial creek without a paddle is where! I am depressed, and know it. Part of what is exacerbing the depression is my transabled feelings. I have a solution in sight for that, but no way to implement, as it requires assistance (and no one I really trust that would be in their right mind would assist, and those who might, I’m not sure I trust, or are simply on the other side of the world). Becoming a para would probably not heal my depression, but it would remove a huge factor in my being bummed out.

I’m far from convinced that going to therapy would help at this point. I may be wrong, I’ve been wrong in the past. But I have this feeling it wouldn’t help at all. Plus, finding the right person, when you live in a small town of 80K people is not such a winning proposition. And that’s even if I could afford it. I couldn’t afford to go get a haircut, let alone sustained therapy.

So yeah, hunky-dory, my life isn’t.

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