
On therapy and intrusive thoughts - steve_w
http://steveworsley.com/on/therapy
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wdewind
> It’s taken me a few weeks to write this post. Not that I was really afraid
> of putting myself out there, but that I needed to write it in such a way
> that it wouldn't scare people or make them worried.

This really is a major part, if not the biggest part, of the stigma associated
with therapy now. It's hard to get mental help without it being a Big Deal.
Which is stupid because everyone should go to therapy.

Therapy is great. It's like strength training for the mind. You don't have to
have some kind of specific reason to go, you don't need to talk about that
remark your parents made when you were 11, you don't need to be crazy. It just
gives you a toolkit for understanding and dealing with every day emotions. It
is expensive, but if you are an engineer you likely have a medical plan that
covers some kind of mental health. Do yourself a favor and check, seriously
the best decision I've ever made was going to therapy.

~~~
viewer5
Would you mind elaborating a bit? I've heard the same sentiments as yours, but
without any more elaboration.

What kind of tools does it provide you, for example?

~~~
marincounty
I did therapy for around a year. Six moths with a Ph.D and another six months
with a MFCC. The PH.D was charging a lot, but I really thought she would help
me. I had a horrid case of anxiety, and panic attacks that came on during a
holiday, and would go away.

I believed in Therapy, and really wanted it to work. It didn't work in the
slightest. It actually made things worse. I didn't learn any fancy tools. I
didn't find any out anything about myself, that I didn't already know.

I will say this though, if I didn't go through therapy; I would always wonder
if I could have changed my destiny. In my case, I needed medication.

I found no difference between the PhD, and the MFCC. I did talk to a
psychiatrist about my unsuccess in therapy, he said I didn't do it long
enough. I will never know if he was right?

Because I was feeling so bad, for so long, and those Therapy sessions were
expensive, I was completely honest in therapy. I devulged my innermost
secrets, thoughts, warts, everything. In my case, it just didn't help my
condition.

Drugs, time, and exercise helped my condition. I'm still not the person I used
to be before the breakdown though. (I was told not to use word breakdown, but
my brain just decided to breakdown. If I said anything different, I would be
lying.)

I don't want to discourage anyone from seeking the help of a Therapist, but if
you are a well adjusted individual, happy, going to school, or working, and
don't have any real complaints, but one day your brain decides to bust a
gasket--I would try to see a Psychiatrist. But even then a lot of them want
you to go through therapy before they medicate you.

And if you decide to go through the medication route, realize you might be on
the drugs a long time? Especially the benzodiazepines. I'm not sure if what I
know now about addiction, I would have ever used them, but then again they are
better than self medicating with booze?

It's a shame we still know so little about mental illness, or even how the
brain works. I really thought we would have made huge strides in treating the
mentally ill by now, but they haven't.

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toothbrush
Unfortunately it's not displaying for me in Firefox, even when i whitelist the
domain in NoScript, and allow ajax.google.com as a cross-site destination.

EDIT: Here's the article text on Pastebin:
[http://pastebin.com/apMGGHQs](http://pastebin.com/apMGGHQs)

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pflanze
The problem is from "body * { opacity: 0; }" in:

[http://steveworsley.com/assets/css/styles.css](http://steveworsley.com/assets/css/styles.css)

(It didn't display in Chromium without JS either; right click "inspect
element" on the middle of the page, turn off opacity: 0)

~~~
steve_w
Thanks for spotting that! I'll sort it out.

