I'm new to this website, so hopefully I follow all of the given rules, but if not, please do let me know so that I can fix this for future postings.

I am wondering what kind of success people have had with therapy. I saw therapists on and off throughout college and graduate school. I never went for more than a few sessions with each. It wasn't because it was hard, but more that I felt like some kind of freak show on display. In more than one case I was told by university counselors with limited resources that I had too many issues to be helped. My history is long and full of tragedy-- born addicted to cocaine, physically and sexually abusive parents, foster care and split from siblings, reunion with family and the murder of my siblings and mother at 13 years of age, and a succession of horrendous foster homes with "fathers" I'd rather forget, until I ran away to university at 17 to escape them all.

But I've recently decided to go back to therapy and to try to stick it out for the long haul. I am by all accounts a successful young adult. I have a wonderful marriage and a meaningful career, in which I help others every day (although I never take my own advice). I'm kind and empathetic, endlessly cheerful (at least in public), and am constantly helping others. But as the stability of my life has increased, I have felt more empty than ever before. It seems ironic, because in some moments my body feels so deflated and empty that it could just decompose back into the earth. But in other moments, I feel so much pain from the twisted global soul of those around me, that I can barely function.

A few months back I saw a psychiatrist who met me for an hour and before prescribing pills, declared that I had OCD, PTSD, Major Depressive Disorder, and Generalized Anxiety Disorder. He came to this conclusion so quickly. In a way I envied him, as I've never been that decisive. But then I wonder what folly it must be to feel that you can infallibly heal a mind and body after knowing someone for just an hour.

I met with my new therapist for the first time yesterday. She was recommended by a colleague who is a psychology professor, and by all accounts she seems to be a kind and competent woman. She says she wants me to just come in and talk...to tell her everything, beginning with what is most bothering me. But I don't know how to do that.

It's like trying to triage someone who is bleeding from every orifice. Do we just slap a band-aid on each of the jagged wounds of pain and hope that in the end I arise whole? And what do I do with the gaping holes that riddle my memory? If I could draw my mind, it would resemble a piece of Swiss Cheese, as much of the trauma has seeped out of my memory and into my bones. It stops me from remembering or from even thinking coherently.

Will all of this time and money and effort to embrace this stranger be worth it? It seems as though maybe I have no other choice, unless giving up is one, and I've never been one to surrender without a fight.