I have been on and off anti-depressants for 18 years. I am a little bit of a nightmare with medication and I don’t deny that. I am terrible at remembering to take it, even though I was taking it regularly for a long time. I constantly decide I have had enough of taking it amd take myself off it. It has now been 7-8 months since I last took myself off it. This time I did so with the doctor knowing what I was doing, that is unusual for me.
I think medication has kept me alive for a lot of my life. It has taken the edge off just enough to help me keep going. It has helped to balance things out in my brain just enough to allow me to function. It allowed me to go to counselling and talk about my past and to be able to just about survive it.
So, now… now for the first time I am having counselling and I am not on medication. I am delving into all the pain and hurt and I don’t have the medication helping to numb everything. I literally feel like I am feeling more. There is all this stuff that comes up in waves, that physically hurts, that makes it feel like I’m drowning, that takes me somewhere into the depths but not to a point where I would do anything. All these things swirl round my head and feel like they are never going to stop and never going to end. I used to be able to go to counselling and switch it back off again in between sessions. Now it doesn’t leave me, it stays there all week between sessions. It feels like I need more counselling, that what I do have just isn’t enough because it all feels too intense. I have gone deeper in counselling before and it didn’t feel like this. I have talked about events that have been far more painful than anything that has come up recently, and yet not had this response. And all that is different is the medication. And it’s a really jard one, because in a weird way, I now feel like I need to feel these things. That I will only really be able to face everything when I can do so while feelings and not being numb. That if I numb it with medication it would somehow stop it being fully processed.
But this has also got me thinking about clients and what we ask of them. I have all this understanding about counselling, about what to expect, about the process… and yet in between each session I find myself struggling to survive with what is coming up. What is that really like for people who are just told that talking will help but don’t have the understanding. Do we just expect them to be OK and get on with life all the time? Do we truly take into account the effects of any medication they are taking? I do always know what medication my clients are on, it is part of the initial assessment questions that get asked. I look up those that I don’t know to try and make sure I have an understanding of them. But again, do clients also need to be able to feel? Is it healing to be able to really feel?
I’m not sure I really know what the right way is or what the answers might be. I know it certainly feels right that I am feeling more, but is this just a way to torture and punish myself or is it something that will really help in the long run? And I certainly don’t expect anyone else to come to the same conclusion that this needs to be done. But can we really get over all those things that we want to avoid of medication is just another way to avoid them?
Fragmented Therapist 