Fascinating thread

I have also found myself in a situation a bit like Byzantine's. About a year ago, I was dx with something that threw all previous dx in to question. So, for 16 something years, I was "treatment resistant" in certain respects because I did not FEEL what I actually UNDERSTANDING. The types of therapy were not beneficial for what I was actually dealing with. How it was missed, I put down to therapist fatigue, some mismanagement, not enough questions asked and treated according to my BEHAVIOUR and not what I was actually saying WHEN I had a voice.

There are simply too many people in the public system for them to treat properly. It took a very shrewd and fresh set of eyes 2 years ago to look out of the box and trust her instincts. The tricky part then, was to convince me of her findings. I am now getting some help with the symptoms even though, the Syndrome itself will never be "cured", and I don't need it to be. For without the wiring, I would be a different person, and none the wiser.

I also KNOW that a mental health professional can only get me part of the way to insight. For there is not just my mental health to consider. There is also my spiritual health. Forgiveness took me a lot of the way to spiritual health in many respects, and forgiveness can only come from me. Most of my intensive times of forgiveness had nothing to do with therapy, and a therapist cannot "teach" or help me to forgive, for then it would not be instinctive on my part, but part of a "therapeutic" plan, and therefore would have no meaning.

I remember saying to my step-mother recently...."I have had plenty of people work on me, but I have done little work on myself". And that involves practicing a whole bunch of stuff that seemed foreign and frightful and I did not have the maturity or insight for. Working on oneself in a non-confrontational and peaceful way requires much stamina, for it was not something I had done easily in the past.

And the one thing above all others is that a therapist cannot teach me, is how to "love thyself". That is an ongoing and painful process that I can discuss in therapy, but I am ultimately alone in that journey, and so it should be that way. I would not want their interference or anyone else's.

Take care everyone,

Michah