# A Little Reality about therapy



## Guest (Aug 17, 2004)

I realize that when patients enter therapy they want to tell their symptoms and have the doctor FIX them. That is just simply literally absolutely not possible.

It?s very important to ?get that? ? mental symptoms are created within the mind, by the mind, in service of the mind. Nobody from the outside can ?fix? that solitary system.

The best it gets is that a therapist can guide you to do whatever YOU can do to alter the way your mind is expressing its distress. And that can?t happen until the therapist gets to know you, and helps you to know yourself better. A therapist is not able to ?treat your dp? ? there is no thing to treat. There is nothing anyone can ?do to you? to change the way your mind is operating.

No matter how many times you describe your symptoms and no matter how much the therapist has read about dp, or has worked with other patients who had dp, or is an Expert on understanding DP?.none of that will enable the therapist to do anything TO you to get rid of your dp. Symptoms are the brain?s reaction to psychic stress. They will go away if:

1.	you find medications that can effectively reduce your anxiety and/or mood disturbance so that your mind can ?restablize? (and then keep yourself out of stress);

2.	you learn behavioral or cognitive techniques to calm yourself and/or keep yourself out of reaction mode to whatever psychological disturbances caused the symptoms in the first place;

3.	you change your psychological defense system (allowing for growth and inner change).

And remember: there is no such thing as ?regular? therapy. There are many different theories and approaches behind different techniques. It?s important to ask before you commit to a treatment:

What approach and/or theory(ies) do you use in treatment?
What time frame are we looking at?

*Short term*: (a set number of sessions) goals will be very different and technique/approach will be very different from a longer-term treatment. It is not just ?less? of the same thing. The therapist will probably focus on helping you to develop coping skills for managing your symptoms (including ways of dealing with anxiety, lowering stress, self-care, etc.) Cognitive techniques often come into play here, teaching the patient to alter their inner self-talk, learning to recognize triggering thoughts that make symptoms worse and how to re-language the inner monologue to reduce anxiety and/or to deal with dp/dr by focusing attention elsewhere.

If you?re limited by an insurance payment plan, you will get Short-term therapy. Period. If you want something longer and with greater opportunity for real change, you?ll have to shell out some pocket money and/or work out a deal with the therapist.

*Long term*: (no set time limit, the objective is to go as long as it takes) This is probably going to be a kind of ?expressive? therapy, and the approach will involve working with the Entire Self. While it?s important to know the patient?s presenting symptoms, the focus of treatment is not going to be about ?attacking the dp? directly. In fact, the approach will not be any different for a patient who comes in with dp, or one who comes in with anxiety, or one who comes in with OCD, or one who comes in with depression, or one who comes in with social phobia. The reasoning is that whatever the symptom, the person has that symptom as the result of:
Poor (or outdated) psychological defenses;
Conflicts/problems within the self and self-image;
Conflicts/problems in relationships;
Old fears/conflicts that never got resolved and are reappearing symbolically (in the symptoms)

Treatment is about working in those areas and learning as much as possible about one?s entire self, conscious and unconscious. Patients are encouraged to put words to thoughts/feelings they may never have expressed before, to bring out in to the light of day (in the room with the therapist) some of their private thinking, and secret fears. It?s a chance to look squarely at some aspects of yourself that have had tremendous impact on how you think, feel and live but that have been operating ?behind the scenes? ? your sudden onset of symptoms was this ?secret operation? finally breaking down, rupturing the coping system you?d been using for a long time: a nice set of defenses to which you?d been none the wiser. But once those defenses fail, they fail hard. And the results are the symptoms that brought you into the doctor?s office in the first place. The patient will want the therapist to just ?fix? the bad feelings and let them go back to how they were before all this happened. Won?t work. Once the defense system collapses, the jig is up, and now things must be looked at and dealt with that had up till now been comfortably swept under the mental rug.

Then it gets even more complicated. For the shorter term therapies, you might be looking at CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy) or EMDR (eye movement desensitization technique) or relaxation techniques, or a myriad of other possibilities.

For longer term therapies, you?ve got psychoanalysis, psychoanalytic based therapy, psychodynamic psychotherapy, rational-emotive therapy, supportive, expressive (and more). Within each of those, there are subgroups that deal with very different theories (the analytic based therapies include Classical Freudian (usually called ?drive theory?), Object Relations, Self Psychology, Jungian, Kleinian ? and yes, many more.

If you?re going to do a long term treatment, find out as much as possible about the underlying theory/approach of that particular therapist to see if it?s something that makes sense to you. You can?t go to one ?kind? of therapist and expect them to do a different kind of treatment.

Peace,
Janine


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## Guest (Aug 17, 2004)

jesus there was no way i could read all of that lol, but i got the jist( sp?) of it & your right. My new therapist said to me, " im not going to cure you, you can only cure yourself, im just hear to give you advice & guide you". Hes right, hes probably one of the most intelligent people ive ever spoken with in person.

I just wish i knew how to cure myself in a faster fashion.

btw, JanINe, you got a tatoo???

thats gangsta


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## Guest (Aug 17, 2004)

My reality about therapy is that no fucking mental health professional tells the patient the principle of therapy.

Your post janine is really a very good article on what therapy is and isn't.

I have tried 7 or so therapists and my first question for them was always if they could explain to me what therapy is. The second question always was what kind of therapy they were doing.

None of them could give me an answer to either of those questions, that is nobody of them could even tell me what their job was.

For example an answer they gave me would be: "Well, I am using games/drums to help the patient" or "The kind of therapy isn't that important, the relationship makes it".

I can only guess that they were using drums to find out about the "subconscious" and that the transference is the holy grail, no matter what the real problems and feelings in the here and now would be.

Given the fact that one seeks therapy because of confusion due to personal problems, the patient is even more distant from clarity after posing questions to therapists that are obviously the impersonation of stupidity.

It's like going to a specialist for having a new wintergarden and he even can't tell you the different woodspecies available or types of wintergardens and in the end you have a lousy ugly box of poles because you just didn't know what would have been possible or suitable.

In fact you enter therapy for information in the first place (no matter what the personal problems are, they are to be addressed later, not in the first sessions) and all you get is ignorant psychobabble.

I must come to the conclusion that all those therapists obviously considered only listening to the patient therapy. So to say they seemed to think you get into therapy because you need someone who's listening, and yippie that's therapy and everything is fine.

I don't say that all therapists are stupid, but in my case I only got to know people who just read some psychology books and learned them by heart to just pass the exams to call themselves psychologists/therapists without understanding a single word they had read.
I know that learnin by heart and parroting wise books is a common practice at university especially in the social sciences.

Damn I am still angry about all the wasted time and setbacks I underwent cause of seeking therapy. 
And that's not even the whole problem, some therapists even were abusive, but that's a different story.

Anyway, thanks for reading.


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## dalailama15 (Aug 13, 2004)

I am really sorry to have to say that this has been my experience as well. The first one I ended up with was from the student clinic in a major university when I was a freshman in college back in aught five. The guy was like the chair of the psych department. A couple of years later, when I had to drop out, one of the last things he said to me was: "Well, I help _some_ people."

I understand the anger. When I first found this site, only several months ago, I immediately felt relief --"at last. . . " Then came some anger: "why the hell. . . " The diagnosis, given the things I had been saying over and over was simple. Yet the next to the last therapist, when I pressed her, offered "Asberger's Syndrome." This, after 10 or so sessions--an idiotic guess. Yes, I'm autistic, you dumb c*nt. (Yes, that's how frustrating it is.)

The current. . . ah never mind. Let it go and move on.


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## dalailama15 (Aug 13, 2004)

And on a little more constructive note: I would like to put together a questionnaire to go through with any prospective mental health professional. "Do you mind if I ask you a few questions," would be the first question. Continuing with, yes, theoretical background, and then things like: "Do you regularly read the major journals in the field?"

It would have to be built as tactfully as possible, and of course delivered politely. (And could even be multiple choice, or: "rate your answer from 1 to 5, with one being not at all, two being . . .) 8)

And then, anyone balking wouldn't make the first cut. I probably wouldn't have the guts to wing these questions, but if it was written down in front of me--. . . The more I think about this the more I like it.


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## nicon (Aug 19, 2004)

I would like to add quickly that for me therapy has worked (analysis) it has taken years and I still have a long way to go but it has worked and continues to work, and that is improvmrnt on self respect, in relationships, and responsibility, it has never been dp sepcific, but its worked


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## Guest (Sep 4, 2004)

Hey.

I'm no expert here, but I just took a graduate class in Therapy Ethics. You have every right to question the therapist about techniques, schools of thought, etc. I like the idea of your own questionaire -- any confident and ethical therapist would probably be impressed with your motivation, I would think.

If you start questioning a therapist about these things, and they give you shi**, you might want to remind them about "Informed Consent" -- the legal term that states that before you sign the paper they give you at the beginning, you have a legal right to know these things -- if they still refuse, then you REALLY don't want to be seeing them. Pain in the butt with managed care, of course, but there you are.

Susan


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## Guest (Sep 4, 2004)

Aboslutely agree. You have EVERY right to ask what theory/school of thought they work with, and what are their basic ideas about treatment and approach.

But...you have to also do your own homework. No one can walk into a therapist's office and say "okay, what theory do you work with and please explain what that theory means compared to the other theories." LOL...not reasonable. They're not college teachers.

If you are familiar yourself with the different forms of treatment and have done your own reading, then a simple question and a brief discussion with them will let you know if their ideas match your own.

We can all say "well, why should I have to know all that myself??"

It's your brain.

Your life.

Your potential for a great life or a less than functional one.

Do whatever you need to do to take care of yourself.

Peace,
Janine


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## Guest (Sep 4, 2004)

Why isn't it reasonable to ask the therapist up front to explain in detail what theory they embrace?

I mean, I did read a lot of stuff before I went to the first therapist but still I wanted THEM to tell me with their OWN words what thoughts are motivating them doing therapy.

And even if someone enters therapy without any idea what there might be to know, it is this particular therapist they are going to spend their time with in a therapeutic setting and the patient certainly has the right to hear it from the therapist what he is doing in general and what building of thought there is behind it.

This has nothing to do with the fact that the therapist isn't a teacher.
But they still have to tell the patients the rule of the game.
What's the point behind reading a lot of psychological stuff, contacting a therapist, having several sessions and still not knowing what it is all about because this stupid listener isn't even able to form a coherent sentence about what the idea behind his job is?

The therapist has to tell the patient the whole concept of therapy, otherwise the patient is just a ball that is played with and it is not enough to be like "you'll find out about it having more sessions".

No patient will find it out alone and what's the point behind therapy when it is all up to the patient, what there is to know about therapy, how to get well, strategies etc.. In this case nobody would need a therapist.
Just sitting and listening doesn't make a valuable session for the patient, now does it.

Obviously therapy comes down to this: the patient talks about his life, ideas, perceptions, circumstances- and the therapist offers directing, encouraging or correcting thoughts to it all.
The unuttered creed behind it all is that the patient has a "false" mode of thinking, and by changing this ( assuming that the therapist "knows" it all better) the patient gets well again.
So seeking therapy is not unlike seeking other parents cause the real parent's manipulative behaviour lead to "false" thought patterns, and the "therapist parent" has to re-manipulate it again.

I mean after all I've read and experienced so far-- I don't see the point behind therapy if not manipulation, even if it comes in the form of therapy-- whatever that is.


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## Guest (Sep 4, 2004)

I'm thinking, I, that you and Janine are basically saying the same thing, so I'm wondering why you sound defensive. YOU'VE done your homework and therefore deserve to be given full disclosure and respect. (not that, in my opinion, anyone deserves less ever, but you see my point.) I think that you could safely request a full disclosure of a therapist's philosophies and reject that person accordingly if they refuse or adhere to a school you don't feel is helpful to you. Only you know for sure. (And this is 20 years of various therapists from Cognitive to Existential  -- basically since I was 17 and realized that most people weren't as unhappy as me.)

I'm hoping that this might make you feel validated.

Susan


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## Guest (Sep 4, 2004)

Damn, 20 years of various therapists, I would be six feet under by now if I had put up with that. You must be a steady person. Or maybe I was just unlucky with all those therapists and your experiences weren't so bad.

....... 20 years of various therapists............ just thinking of that makes me shiver................


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## Guest (Sep 4, 2004)

Actually, I enjoyed a good percentage of my therapists. I just moved around alot after college and had to start fresh every time I found myself in a new place on the East coast. Of course, some were better than others, and ironically and in hindsight, I'd have to say that my best one was my very first. Good thing, since that was when I was at my most dysfunctional. Quite the low self-esteemed head-case. (yeah, like that has changed much -- I've just learned to act more functional through trial and error...but I guess that's a form of healing from a behavioral perspective.

You poor thing. I'm so sorry that you've had such bad luck with therapists. No wonder you're feeling a little defensive.

Susan


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## Guest (Sep 4, 2004)

You are really cute, may I say that.

That's the first direct sympathy I get for my bad therapist experiences.
Actually I am used to assignments of guilt when I mention how broken I am just because of that. It's been really bad.

I would like to tell you that your latest reply is definitely a relief to me.
Comes surprising, so thank you!


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## Dreamer (Aug 9, 2004)

You'd think that having a crazy M.D. psychiatrist for a mother would have helped me in this process. But I was begging her for a referral to a shrink for several years before she "gave in" and sent me to her mentor and told him crap to take her off the hook. Said I smoked pot. I hadn't.

Because both of my parents were doctors, I believed everything any doctor said or did. They were "Gods" ... I had a whole mix up in my head though w/my mother ... she attacked me with psychoanalytic jargon, and "you're a bag of genetic garbage."

I am also angry now about not saying at the beginning of treatment, but how could I when I was 15, or even 20 when I found whom I feel was my best shrink .... that's 25 years ago. I left my home state after university so saw him no longer.

But I agree with the concept of saying... what is my diagnosis, what can we do about it, how long will the therapy take -- do we set a goal to accomplish X, Y, Z or what? I NEVER asked that. I took much of what was said to me over the years by various therapists as Gospel.

I'm also angry with wasted time.

I HAVE learned through therapy, and much reading about DP, through Andy's and this board, etc. Facing my past now in writing about it, what nutty thinking I have, and how the anxiety of that thinking makes my chronic "baseline" DP unbearable in many situations.

Youth is wasted on the young, and it is very difficult self-educating when one is seeking the profession/career one really wants.

The best therapists have indeed have helped me see my destructive and distorted thinking patterns. It takes conscious effort on my part, very hard effort to work against these thoughts.

And it is so hard to extract that part of me that is my mother ... that part of me that makes me doubt myself, even when I'm right about something.

It is frustrating indeed, and I didn't even know I was destroying my father financially for all the shrinks I saw over the years. He was humiliated to tell me he had gambled away his money.

And, the worst. I have been VERY lucky to be diagnosed correctly, or rather all of my MD psychiatrists have known what DP IS. For those who have been misdiagnosed, I have my deepest sympathies.

And I STILL battle with the Nature/Nurture debate, though I know there is no one answer. It is both, combined, particularly in my case. Abusive dysfunctional family -- horrible ENVIRONMENT. Parents with mental problems themselves -- GENETIC LEGACY, PREDISPOSITION.

Even my extremely biologically oriented psychiatrist ... last one I left behind in L.A. said he had no clue what % is Nature or Nurture ....

I tend to lean towards the biological models as they are far more tangible to me, but I do see the great value of a very good therapist. My first long term therapist helped me learn one of the most important things, that I was not the "crazy defective person" in the family. I was the sanest one.

I hope all of us find ourselves out of this maze as soon as possible, or continue to learn to cope regardless.

Best,
D :shock:


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## Dreamer (Aug 9, 2004)

You'd think that having a crazy M.D. psychiatrist for a mother would have helped me in this process. But I was begging her for a referral to a shrink for several years before she "gave in" and sent me to her mentor and told him crap to take her off the hook. Said I smoked pot. I hadn't.

Because both of my parents were doctors, I believed everything any doctor said or did. They were "Gods" ... I had a whole mix up in my head though w/my mother ... she attacked me with psychoanalytic jargon, and "you're a bag of genetic garbage."

I am also angry now about not saying at the beginning of treatment, but how could I when I was 15, or even 20 when I found whom I feel was my best shrink .... that's 25 years ago. I left my home state after university so saw him no longer.

But I agree with the concept of saying... what is my diagnosis, what can we do about it, how long will the therapy take -- do we set a goal to accomplish X, Y, Z or what? I NEVER asked that. I took much of what was said to me over the years by various therapists as Gospel.

I'm also angry with wasted time.

I HAVE learned through therapy, and much reading about DP, through Andy's and this board, etc. Facing my past now in writing about it, what nutty thinking I have, and how the anxiety of that thinking makes my chronic "baseline" DP unbearable in many situations.

Youth is wasted on the young, and it is very difficult self-educating when one is seeking the profession/career one really wants.

The best therapists have indeed have helped me see my destructive and distorted thinking patterns. It takes conscious effort on my part, very hard effort to work against these thoughts.

And it is so hard to extract that part of me that is my mother ... that part of me that makes me doubt myself, even when I'm right about something.

It is frustrating indeed, and I didn't even know I was destroying my father financially for all the shrinks I saw over the years. He was humiliated to tell me he had gambled away his money.

And, the worst. I have been VERY lucky to be diagnosed correctly, or rather all of my MD psychiatrists have known what DP IS. For those who have been misdiagnosed, I have my deepest sympathies.

And I STILL battle with the Nature/Nurture debate, though I know there is no one answer. It is both, combined, particularly in my case. Abusive dysfunctional family -- horrible ENVIRONMENT. Parents with mental problems themselves -- GENETIC LEGACY, PREDISPOSITION.

Even my extremely biologically oriented psychiatrist ... last one I left behind in L.A. said he had no clue what % is Nature or Nurture ....

I tend to lean towards the biological models as they are far more tangible to me, but I do see the great value of a very good therapist. My first long term therapist helped me learn one of the most important things, that I was not the "crazy defective person" in the family. I was the sanest one.

I hope all of us find ourselves out of this maze as soon as possible, or continue to learn to cope regardless.

Best,
D :shock:


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## JasonFar (Aug 13, 2004)

> It is both, combined, particularly in my case. Abusive dysfunctional family -- horrible ENVIRONMENT. Parents with mental problems themselves -- GENETIC LEGACY, PREDISPOSITION.


Dreamer, what makes you think that looking at your parents there was a genetic legacy? I mean, I've seen you meditate on this nature/nature debate quite a bit, and from MY pov, it's an impossible question you are asking, ESPECIALLY considering that your SEVERELY ABUSIVE upbringing would make it impossible to say "how much" nurture might be involved. Even if you were 100% biologically fine (which is something we'll never know, of course), you probably would have turned out with a hoarde of problems nonetheless. I'm in the same position, as I was brought up by an oft abusive family situation (not to the extremes of yours, I don't "think"), but then, recall being an anxious child, so I say, welp, I was probably prone to this through some biological imbalance. But then again, who's to say we as children simply didn't know instinctively that our mothers, our fathers, WEREN'T REALLY THERE FOR US; I'd say that's enough to bring on an anxiety disorder at a very young age...

Anyway, just rumbling. As far as your parents giving you that "genetic legacy", as I could say mine have too (since they are beyond everything neurotic), but then again, who's to say they weren't simply "normal" biological creatures annihilated by terrible environmental circumstances as we went through.


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## JasonFar (Aug 13, 2004)

> It is both, combined, particularly in my case. Abusive dysfunctional family -- horrible ENVIRONMENT. Parents with mental problems themselves -- GENETIC LEGACY, PREDISPOSITION.


Dreamer, what makes you think that looking at your parents there was a genetic legacy? I mean, I've seen you meditate on this nature/nature debate quite a bit, and from MY pov, it's an impossible question you are asking, ESPECIALLY considering that your SEVERELY ABUSIVE upbringing would make it impossible to say "how much" nurture might be involved. Even if you were 100% biologically fine (which is something we'll never know, of course), you probably would have turned out with a hoarde of problems nonetheless. I'm in the same position, as I was brought up by an oft abusive family situation (not to the extremes of yours, I don't "think"), but then, recall being an anxious child, so I say, welp, I was probably prone to this through some biological imbalance. But then again, who's to say we as children simply didn't know instinctively that our mothers, our fathers, WEREN'T REALLY THERE FOR US; I'd say that's enough to bring on an anxiety disorder at a very young age...

Anyway, just rumbling. As far as your parents giving you that "genetic legacy", as I could say mine have too (since they are beyond everything neurotic), but then again, who's to say they weren't simply "normal" biological creatures annihilated by terrible environmental circumstances as we went through.


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## Dreamer (Aug 9, 2004)

> Dreamer, what makes you think that looking at your parents there was a genetic legacy?


Dear Jason,

I know for certain my father, had OCD Hoarder/Clutterer illness, was anxious and depressed some times. I can't go into the detail of it, but it limited him in many areas. Seems he felt most in control in a surgical suite cutting out cancerous lungs.

Don't smoke folks, I've seen all the medical pics! 

Also, my mother. No one knows what was wrong with her, but it was some form of Personality Disorder at minimum, such as Paranoid, and there is some thought she was a very high functioning Borderline.

Before she became a psychiatrist, as an internist married to her first husband, she was seeing a shrink. This is back in the early 1950's. I had an odd chance to talk with her first husband, a shiester attorney, LOL... loooooong story... my life is a soap opera.

I asked him "what was the diagnosis"? And he said, "I don't know, some sort of rage disorder."

My mother was extremely eccentric, independent, vicious, and yes brilliant, but she had NO friends, hated "weakness" oh, I could go on and on.

Bottom line, I believe I could have easily inherited a predisposition to anxiety at MINIMUM from my father. He was very messed up in many ways, though he wasn't abusive. My mother was off the wall, and I have a consensus about that from relatives, friends, her colleagues, numerous "witnesses".

And I guess the Nature/Nurture debate rages on for me as:

1. I was raised arguing it with my mother
2. There ARE kids who grow up in severely dysfunctional homes and come out w/out DP/DR, anxiety and depression.

I don't think I would have come out completely unscathed PSYCHOLOGICALLY, but I believe that SYMPTOM WISE I may have never developed GAD or DP/DR. I see mental illness on 2 levels.

It is frustrating for me, but it is a huge core issue in my life that my mother introduced early on. Talking about me, my father, her patients ... making fun of all of us, saying we were genetic aberrations, or in the next breath pulling psychoanalytic jargon out of a hat to attack ALL of us.

I wasn't her only victim.
I'd love to talk to even one of her patients.

Best,
D :shock:


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## Dreamer (Aug 9, 2004)

> Dreamer, what makes you think that looking at your parents there was a genetic legacy?


Dear Jason,

I know for certain my father, had OCD Hoarder/Clutterer illness, was anxious and depressed some times. I can't go into the detail of it, but it limited him in many areas. Seems he felt most in control in a surgical suite cutting out cancerous lungs.

Don't smoke folks, I've seen all the medical pics! 

Also, my mother. No one knows what was wrong with her, but it was some form of Personality Disorder at minimum, such as Paranoid, and there is some thought she was a very high functioning Borderline.

Before she became a psychiatrist, as an internist married to her first husband, she was seeing a shrink. This is back in the early 1950's. I had an odd chance to talk with her first husband, a shiester attorney, LOL... loooooong story... my life is a soap opera.

I asked him "what was the diagnosis"? And he said, "I don't know, some sort of rage disorder."

My mother was extremely eccentric, independent, vicious, and yes brilliant, but she had NO friends, hated "weakness" oh, I could go on and on.

Bottom line, I believe I could have easily inherited a predisposition to anxiety at MINIMUM from my father. He was very messed up in many ways, though he wasn't abusive. My mother was off the wall, and I have a consensus about that from relatives, friends, her colleagues, numerous "witnesses".

And I guess the Nature/Nurture debate rages on for me as:

1. I was raised arguing it with my mother
2. There ARE kids who grow up in severely dysfunctional homes and come out w/out DP/DR, anxiety and depression.

I don't think I would have come out completely unscathed PSYCHOLOGICALLY, but I believe that SYMPTOM WISE I may have never developed GAD or DP/DR. I see mental illness on 2 levels.

It is frustrating for me, but it is a huge core issue in my life that my mother introduced early on. Talking about me, my father, her patients ... making fun of all of us, saying we were genetic aberrations, or in the next breath pulling psychoanalytic jargon out of a hat to attack ALL of us.

I wasn't her only victim.
I'd love to talk to even one of her patients.

Best,
D :shock:


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## Guest (Sep 11, 2004)

Everytime I see the Hairball in this forum, I get a knot in my stomach for a second, lol....afraid she'll be poking eyes in the name of Freud, grin...

I agree with Dreamer here though. Think about it this way: if Dreamer and I had been switched at birth, grin...and the little baby my mother took home was HER (where they would dote on her and overstimulate her and overprotect her forever) and I ended up going to the big pretty doctor's house in the mid west (where I would be abused and ignored much of my life), we would still BE us, with the same set of biochemicals in our genetic makeup.

We would each have grown up under the influence and caretaking of the same dysfunctional people, but would our symtpoms have been different? Would I have reacted with depression to the doctor's verbal abuse? Or would I still have been a cutter?

Would she have been immune to depression when raised in my odd house? Or would she have STILL reacted to their intrusiveness with her ingrained depressive gene, and where I was cutting my skin to make them go away, she might have cried and slept too much (as she has been known to do now)

We cannot know re nature/nurture. But at least HALF of why I had dp was because my BRAIN is set/wired to dissociate easily. And I am positive the only reason I did NOT develop depression in my home is because my brain was NOT wired for it.

Peace,
J


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## Guest (Sep 11, 2004)

Everytime I see the Hairball in this forum, I get a knot in my stomach for a second, lol....afraid she'll be poking eyes in the name of Freud, grin...

I agree with Dreamer here though. Think about it this way: if Dreamer and I had been switched at birth, grin...and the little baby my mother took home was HER (where they would dote on her and overstimulate her and overprotect her forever) and I ended up going to the big pretty doctor's house in the mid west (where I would be abused and ignored much of my life), we would still BE us, with the same set of biochemicals in our genetic makeup.

We would each have grown up under the influence and caretaking of the same dysfunctional people, but would our symtpoms have been different? Would I have reacted with depression to the doctor's verbal abuse? Or would I still have been a cutter?

Would she have been immune to depression when raised in my odd house? Or would she have STILL reacted to their intrusiveness with her ingrained depressive gene, and where I was cutting my skin to make them go away, she might have cried and slept too much (as she has been known to do now)

We cannot know re nature/nurture. But at least HALF of why I had dp was because my BRAIN is set/wired to dissociate easily. And I am positive the only reason I did NOT develop depression in my home is because my brain was NOT wired for it.

Peace,
J


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## Dreamer (Aug 9, 2004)

ROARING! 



> Everytime I see the Hairball in this forum, I get a knot in my stomach for a second, lol....afraid she'll be poking eyes in the name of Freud, grin...


L,
D :shock:


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## Dreamer (Aug 9, 2004)

ROARING! 



> Everytime I see the Hairball in this forum, I get a knot in my stomach for a second, lol....afraid she'll be poking eyes in the name of Freud, grin...


L,
D :shock:


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## Universal (May 30, 2005)

JanineBaker said:


> If you?re limited by an insurance payment plan, you will get Short-term therapy. Period. If you want something longer and with greater opportunity for real change, you?ll have to shell out some pocket money and/or work out a deal with the therapist.


why can't i get long term therapy with the help of an insurance provider?


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## Sojourner (May 21, 2005)

Last I heard, insurance covers something like 20 visits for psychotherapy, but check your policy.

Check out Catholic Charities in NYC and see if they provide therapy on a sliding scale.


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## Universal (May 30, 2005)

Sojourner said:


> Last I heard, insurance covers something like 20 visits for psychotherapy, but check your policy.
> 
> Check out Catholic Charities in NYC and see if they provide therapy on a sliding scale.


should be like an unlimited amount since they're gettin their money anyway


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## Guest (Nov 22, 2005)

JANINE I WISH YOU WERE MY THERAPIST!!!!

eROS


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