Therapy is dumb.

[bobtheenchantedone]

I just started therapy last week. I was all set to explore the options if she suggested drugs (I refused last time), but so far mostly what she's done is listen to me say all the words and respond with "wow."

[Portia]

Meds are scary! Glad they're helping you. Is she with the U.?

[TheBlackSheep]

Yes, both the therapist I'm seeing (a clinical psych PhD candidate) and the psychiatrist (a resident) are through the U's counseling center, and they are both excellent.

[Portia]

Well, we'll see if I can get a job with insurance, because I have pretty much just snapped.

[TheBlackSheep]

There are also resources for inexpensive therapy around, should you need it.

[S.A.M.]

Like the collective mind of the boarboard. We are nearly as good as the real thing, but much cheaper, and available whenever.

[Katya]

Like the collective mind of the boarboard. We are nearly as good as the real thing, but much cheaper, and available whenever.

I love us, but as someone with close friends who are trained counselors or therapists, I must respectfully disagree. It's great to be able to talk to friends, but sometimes you need a professional.

[Portia]

I love us, but as someone with close friends who are trained counselors or therapists, I must respectfully disagree. It's great to be able to talk to friends, but sometimes you need a professional.

Yes, I think there is an important place for both. I wonder, sometimes, if the breakdown of social networks and neighborhoods hasn't increased anxiety.

[S.A.M.]

Like the collective mind of the boarboard. We are nearly as good as the real thing, but much cheaper, and available whenever.

I love us, but as someone with close friends who are trained counselors or therapists, I must respectfully disagree. It's great to be able to talk to friends, but sometimes you need a professional.

For sure. Some things really need an experienced professional to work through. And to be kept confidential.

[bobtheenchantedone]

Ha! For me the bb is about as confidential as posting on Facebook.

[Portia]

I know, it was weird when I called my boyfriend last NYE and he was with Hobbes and Whistler.

[yayfulness]

Someone convince me to set up an appointment with the Comprehensive Clinic. I feel no desire whatsoever to do so, even though I've been intending to for two months now.

[Violet]

Someone convince me to set up an appointment with the Comprehensive Clinic. I feel no desire whatsoever to do so, even though I've been intending to for two months now.

Do it! I've had the best therapy experience there. I've felt like my therapist has really been trying to help me and has experience with various people in different situations, whereas my counseling center experience was hit and miss and most of them didn't seem to have a plan for therapy (although, I will freely admit, some of that was my fault).

Also, it's free, just like the counseling center, while you're a student. It's close to campus and easily accessible from where you live (you're still in the same place, yeah?). Also, I haven't had the "we're overcrowded so we're going to push you to every other week appointments" thing happen like I did with every therapist at the counseling center.

But really, just call. They have super flexible hours and were pretty quick for my intake interview.

[Emiliana]

Someone convince me to set up an appointment with the Comprehensive Clinic. I feel no desire whatsoever to do so, even though I've been intending to for two months now.

DO IT. Therapy is good for you.

[TheBlackSheep]

DO IT. The Comprehensive Clinic kicks the CCC's behind. And my current therapist at the U, a PhD intern, reminds me that higher-quality university-affiliated clinics often have fantastic clinicians.

Also, yayfulness, your openness about the meds helped me be open to trying them again, and I can't even tell you how well they are working, so thank you.

[Portia]

Well, I'm self-diagnosing on a Friday night, which is an interesting intellectual exercise and probably dangerous. But I suppose parallel to whether physical pain, loss of appetite, or physical problems are mere inconveniences or something that would benefit from the attention of a professional, noticing one's own mental abnormalities could have some benefit.

The type of problem I think I may have is both stereotypically feminine and quite stigmatized. So that certainly doesn't increase my already non-existent enthusiasm for a lifelong condition. I would just feel much more comfortable if they took brain scans, could point and say "oh, there's the overactive dopmaine receptors or the underactive hippocampus or amygdala," then I wouldn't feel that I had a moral and intellectual failing. To someone who her entire life has gotten both pleasure and recognition from her intelligence, the idea of a mental illness is particularly scary, even insulting. Add to that that someone with higher-than-average intelligence can usually interact normally, find work, and so on, and it de-motivates me to have someone tell me there's something fundamentally flawed.

I wouldn't mind being told, "a combination of genetics and environment predisposes you to XYZ; do this and it will go away and get better." It's like high cholesterol or something. I don't think I could cope with "here's your defect, it will never go away, mask it with medication, and if you go off, these terrible things will happen." Unlike, say, someone who is clinically depressed, I like life very much, and, well, the very things that are perhaps flaws are probably the source of my mystique.

But the wild mood swings, the relational conflict (which is sort of the downside of the upside of an intensely erotic, passionate life), and above all, the intense fear of abandonment are starting to seem less like the affectations of an artistic intellectual and more like really debilitating, crappy emotions that I wish would go away so I could feel normal again. Not someone else's normal, but mine.

I'm ready to hear your armchair diagnoses. ;)

If I do go through with it, what do I actually do? They always just say, "well, what are your problems?" And I just feel like I can easily say what they like to hear, that it's just like a boring blind date with less mouth-on-mouth at the end. I wish someone would say, "here's a quiz, here's a scan, here's a computer test to take, and you're normal/outside the norm."

[TheBlackSheep]

You have just given the textbook definition of a certain diagnosis, but all anyone should tell you is: See a therapist.

[Whistler]

confession: I once went to a therapist at BYU's medical center in hopes of helping to treat my IBS. The therapist asked me some questions and diagnosed me with generalized anxiety disorder. I cried and never went back. I was a psychology major who worked in BYU's counseling center and I didn't want to be one of "them." As much as I gave lip service to "oh yeah we shouldn't stigmatize mental health," that doesn't mean I actually believed it about myself. Looking back, I wish that therapist hadn't been so eager to give me a diagnosis (although I understand that it was probably necessary for insurance purposes). I know that I internalize most of my anxiety and it gives me health problems, but it has taken a lot of medical tests for me to accept that (and sometimes my medical problems aren't anxiety-caused, which just makes it more complicated).

I feel like I can manage my anxiety pretty well, but these are skills I've learned, many of them through my psychologist mentor of my undergraduate years. I can understand your reluctance about therapy. I think it would do you good, but research shows that bibliotherapy can also be helpful. Rather than becoming overwhelmed with self-help books, it works best if you choose one and go gung-ho on it. I'm a fan of Albert Ellis's work, so I'd recommend A Guide to Rational Living, but the research shows that the particular book doesn't matter as much as you putting some trust in its advice. One of my favorite parts of Ellis's philosophy is that he believes that everyone is a little neurotic, which I find helps relieve me of some of the stigma I have against seeing myself as having a mental illlness.

[Portia]

confession: I once went to a therapist at BYU's medical center in hopes of helping to treat my IBS. The therapist asked me some questions and diagnosed me with generalized anxiety disorder. I cried and never went back. I was a psychology major who worked in BYU's counseling center and I didn't want to be one of "them." As much as I gave lip service to "oh yeah we shouldn't stigmatize mental health," that doesn't mean I actually believed it about myself. Looking back, I wish that therapist hadn't been so eager to give me a diagnosis (although I understand that it was probably necessary for insurance purposes). I know that I internalize most of my anxiety and it gives me health problems, but it has taken a lot of medical tests for me to accept that (and sometimes my medical problems aren't anxiety-caused, which just makes it more complicated).

I feel like I can manage my anxiety pretty well, but these are skills I've learned, many of them through my psychologist mentor of my undergraduate years. I can understand your reluctance about therapy. I think it would do you good, but research shows that bibliotherapy can also be helpful. Rather than becoming overwhelmed with self-help books, it works best if you choose one and go gung-ho on it. I'm a fan of Albert Ellis's work, so I'd recommend A Guide to Rational Living, but the research shows that the particular book doesn't matter as much as you putting some trust in its advice. One of my favorite parts of Ellis's philosophy is that he believes that everyone is a little neurotic, which I find helps relieve me of some of the stigma I have against seeing myself as having a mental illness.

Well, considering my personality and symptoms, many of the great women in literature displayed a lot of the same symptoms and either (A) committed suicide or (B) drove their partners to suicide. WOOO.

It seems to be fairly treatable and to abate quite a lot in your 40s, though, so if I can get my act together now, I'll probably have a pretty decent life.

[Giovanni Schwartz]

confession: I once went to a therapist at BYU's medical center in hopes of helping to treat my IBS.

I hope beyond hope that there is something else that IBS stands for besides Irritable Bowel Syndrome, because 1) that would mean I know way more about Whistler than I ever wanted to, and 2) I would wonder what kind of counselors they have up at BYU.