Mental health care is complicated and irritating to maintain. And just like every other kind of health there is no magic pill. If you sprain your ankle and they tell you to take anti-inflammatories it will do no good unless you also rest the dang thing. Heart attacks mean "lifestyle changes" as well as possible pharmaceuticals. In general, whatever pill you are popping, there really needs to be some accompanying activity on your part.
Crap. I used to think that I was immune to psychology. That counseling and therapy would just bounce right off me. Because I know all the crap that they are going to tell me. Eat better. Exercise more. Get a good night's sleep. Don't feel terrible about things that are actually not terrible. This last one is the hardest. Okay, so I'm not really doing the other ones either. Not without an outside expert telling me that I need to keep doing these things over and over again. It cannot be a friend or (heaven forfend!) a family member giving me the same advice. It doesn't have the same weight. (Sorry, folks. No offense.) There is the same expert phenomenon in academia. Perhaps the best, most expert person on a given topic lives right next door. But if you fly someone in from across the country, people pay more attention. (We are really not very smart as a species sometimes.) I have had to admit (again and again) that I am not, in fact, immune to psychologists. *sigh* And this is not remarkable. First off, I am not trained as a psychologist. So just because I feel that I have been counseled to within an inch of my life (although mostly as an adolescent and young adult) does not mean that I have the same expertise. Also, even if I did have that expertise, it's not likely that I would have the distance to practice psychotherapy on myself. And this is another unremarkable thing. In addition to pills not being magical (U&#@(*^^!!!), it is true that even the experts cannot (at least not effectively) operate on themselves. Or even close family members. We are too close. If I had the distance from myself to do an adequate job of psychoanalyzing me that would be a whole different problem. Apologies for not posting. It is not, as you might fear, because I have been obsessively beading (or anything else). I have actually been quite good (since going off the Lithium) at engaging in a variety of activities. I'll say more later. Computer battery about to die. Posting... now. Comments are closed.
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K. BuchananQuaker, teacher, parent, |