Hi Moonkin,

I am sorry that you are struggling so much right now. A lot of us have been there too, and know that it is a miserable place to be. Nobody knows exactly what it is like for you, though. Only you know that.

It is good to hear that you have a goal (to become a psychologist)! You have something to work for, and to hang onto in case you forget why you are still fighting the battle in the hard times. That has been the goal that I hung onto also. It's a long road, so please make sure that you have other goals along the way, like finishing high school, and other road-marks. I hope that you also have personal and relationship goals. Don't be a workaholic, or so focused on developing your career that you forget to live your life. Just another trap that I get stuck in sometimes.

I've also been in therapy a lot of times, and for quite a few years. The earlier times I felt never really helped me at all, and I thought that the therapists were so clueless. Maybe they were missing the picture, but the biggest thing that they missed was that I needed to learn what my responsibility was in my own therapy. I guess I thought that they were supposed to fix me, or that just by talking about things, it would get better.

But the thing is, the only way to recover from mental illness is to heal yourself. Doctors can give you medicine that might make you feel better or control some of your symptoms, but you don't get better until you change your thinking. Therapists help you to discover what it is that you need to change, and they serve as a guide. That's really all that they can do - the idea is to help you to become you. As much as it would be nice if someone could do the work for you, nobody can. Your mom can't, your therapist can't, your best friend can't. It all comes down to you making the decision that you want your life to be different, you deciding how you would like to be, and you buckling down and doing the work. Just like nobody can learn algebra for you - they can show you how, but you are the one who has to learn it.

I am in graduate school now, and one of my professors taught that "when the therapist is working harder than the client, it's time to fire the client." That's because clients are not going to get better until they are ready to do the work. If they ever get to that point, they will come back. I've been terminated as a client several times, and at the time I thought that the therapist didn't care. They didn't tell me that I wasn't doing the work though - they said that I was better. I knew that I wasn't, but I didn't say that. My current therapist has also threatened to terminate me several times, but she has stuck with me. When she said it, I knew that it was because I wasn't doing the work. I think I'm finally doing it now. It took a long time for me to get it, and I don't know if it would have made a difference if someone had told me earlier on what I needed to do. I'd like to think that it would have. I'm glad that you have the chance to start now. If you work hard now, you can have a normal life and achieve your goals, and not lose so many years to going through the motions or being miserable. I hope that you will do it.

Rap