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Originally Posted by ArtleyWilkins
When it comes to my grief, I find it very important not to pathologize it. Grief is a very difficult and slow process, but it is a normal process. I know I am not depressed. I am not in need of medication. My grief is not something talk therapy is going to "heal" because that just isn't how grief works. Finding a support group of other people also going through the grief process is BY FAR more helpful than a therapist would be because they understand without trying to "fix" it. As much as I like my therapists, I am pretty sure they would go into "fix it" mode and that honestly would cause more harm than good.
If I was truly in a mental health crisis: clinical depression, severe PTSD, anxiety - symptoms really needing monitoring and perhaps medication - then yes, I'd go back to therapy. I just don't feel the need for therapy at this point in my life if I am not in crisis.
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Wow, thanks for this summary.
So how would I know whether I had a mental health problem at all? Because my suspicion has been growing stronger and stronger: that I do not have one that needs to be "pathologised" and "fixed". In the last few months that's been my suspicion.
Basically everything I've read about "standard" mental health problems or been told by the therapists, most of it has felt like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. I'm not exaggerating, really. I just didn't know that I was feeling that way, let alone what to call that.
Even the adjustment/stress disorder stuff I sorta relate to, is fully explainable by external factors.
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Completely my personal viewpoint on this: As far as taking a break went, I found it helpful to give myself some time to "reset" and see where I was without a therapist. In my experience, I know while in therapy, I can tend to get bogged down in my navel gazing and forget to look up and see truly where I am at. Breaks are rather enlightening for me. They give me that opportunity to apply what I have discovered in therapy and see how my new learnings/skills, etc. hold up to reality.
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That makes a lot of sense too, yeah.
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I returned a couple times -- eventually -- to therapy when I saw I needed that other set of eyes on me: I was struggling again with depression usually, and wasn't sure I was truly managing well on my own. But being able to go back at that point - after an extended break and with a different therapist - felt fresh rather than more of the same. It was with a different set of eyes, a different approach to therapy, a different personality to interact with. Those differences provided fresh insights that I honestly don't feel I would have gotten from an old therapist who had already decided who I was. What I knew was that I wasn't really the same person this time around that I was the last time around: I was in a different place and I didn't want to be held to the "old" me.
If fact, there was one time (almost forgot about it) that I did try going back to my last therapist. It lasted exactly one session because I realized he still was seeing me from an "older" perspective and I was not in that "old" place. It immediately frustrated me, and I decided I didn't want to spend time retraining him (LOL). I decided not to try to restart therapy, and instead, I just continued working on myself by myself, which I realized I was quite capable of doing -- and my rates are MUCH cheaper. LOL.
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Very interesting to me. I agree with the end hahahaha my own rates are much cheaper.
