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What began in my last entry has blossomed into a feeling or set of feelings that I’m not sure are healthy. Okay, let me just amend that by saying I know feelings aren’t good or bad. However writing is, and what I really meant to say is that I’m considering a set of ideas on how I should behave that I’m not sure are healthy. These ideas are based on feelings.  Yes, I did it. I lost weight. Lots of it. I went from 200 lbs to a svelte 159 (not that individual pounds matter) which at 5’ 11” made me skinny guy. Actually let’s step back; I went from 175 at 5’ 4” when I was 15 to 154 and then back up to 200 when I was 20 and then finally down to 159 when I was 25. As I write this I hear strains of a song I first heard in 1978. As I hear it, I remember what I felt then which indeed was a moment when I was remembering something even earlier. In 1978 I heard this song with different ears and remembered things that had come before. When I first heard these tones, guitar strings and simple voices, I was a younger, fresher though far more screwed up (in many ways) person. But I had choices and options before me, with happiness and struggle and confusion to come. And the song brought me memories of years earlier, of childhood, of Saturdays, color, model ships, Halloween, harvests, sunshine and blue sky. My last piece about borderline personality has stayed with me, particularly because I’ve had reason recently to revisit many of the places I was at before whatever it is that happened to me to generate this state that some called a borderline personality occurred. I’m at one such place now in fact. I started in therapy in 1982. I was living at home after graduating college. I had failed to achieve what I thought I’d achieve career-wise after school but was still thinking it was possible. I thought therapy might help me in this. It didn’t, but it did help me move out of my parents’ house in 1984. It would have been about six months sooner but there was a family illness that slowed me down. When I moved to a new city and began working at a series of subsistence jobs I continued in therapy. During that process I was told by a therapist that I had Borderline Personality Disorder. I don’t understand why I’m like this. I have a friend (actually several but let’s focus on this one) who is just plain stupid. Well, maybe he’s not stupid in the strictest sense, but he’s a very very very poor example of what a citizen should be. He disagrees with me politically which is part of the problem, maybe most of it, but he also does very little to understand problems of the world and so sticks to a point of view that keeps blinders to reality. WHAT GOOD IS THERAPY? From 1983 to 2000 I went to therapy pretty consistently, changing cities three times and therapists far more than that (due to circumstances not my dislike of the person I had). I had quite a variety of experiences and I never really judged one as being better than the other because I never felt I could judge. What criterion should I use? How I feel? How my life changed for good or ill? I can’t say my life changed much under any of my therapists except due to things that would’ve happened anyway. I can say that my first therapist oversaw my picking up and leaving home to move to a new city, and maybe that was a real, tangible result. It probably would’ve happened anyway though due to other circumstances, but it didn’t hurt to have the therapist to talk to about what was happening, and help get my mind and feelings around everything. The Blog of the “Anonymous Patient” is designed to ask you, the reader, to act as the author’s therapist or adviser or peer in some fashion. Each entry is an honest depiction of the author’s state of mind and emotion. The Blog of the “Anonymous Patient” is designed to ask you, the reader, to act as the author’s therapist. Each entry is an honest depiction of the author’s state of mind and emotion. What would you advise him to do? I Simply Can’t Move. A horrible lethargy has overwhelmed me. I have so many things to do, so many people I need to follow up with and satisfy, yet I cannot presently get out of my own way. I’m not sure what’s causing it. My friend died recently. That has changed me I feel. I’m not sure why or how but it has and I’d like to understand how it has affected how I feel. The Blog of the “Anonymous Patient” is designed to ask you, the reader, to act as the author’s therapist. Each entry is an honest depiction of the author’s state of mind and emotion. What would you advise him to do? |
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Copyright 2009 Carolina Partners in Mental HealthCare, PLLC |
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