Chapter 6 • Meeting My New Psychiatrist and Therapist

Since being out of my outpatient program, I started seeing an outpatient psychiatrist. She was a very interesting woman, very quirky. Her style and presence were just not something I was not used to. She was kind, though, and I felt we had a good connection. Plus, in her waiting area, she had a huge Peter Max poster, which I loved!

The first day we met, she dedicated an hour to our session so she could go over my hospital records and simply get to know me and my background.

We talked about my childhood and how my mother was an alcoholic drug addict who also had a bipolar diagnosis, my now ptsd from the psych ward I was in, as well as from the sexual assault.

She asked me if I ever experienced mania or depression episodes before my first nervous breakdown. I said with the childhood I had I experienced depression and wished I could die so I would not have to live the life I was living every day. She asked if I ever attempted suicide I said no, I never thought to end my own life ever. I just prayed God would handle that.

Her theory on my mental health was she honestly didn’t believe I even had bipolar and she thought that the ecstasy I took prior to my nervous breakdown lead my brain to be manic and the hospital should have simply weaned the ecstasy from my body to allow my body to naturally calm down and stabilize.

She said she’d like to work with me, but eventually she’d like to discontinue my psych meds to see how I do. I told her I thought I needed to be on these for the rest of my life. She said she didn’t believe I needed them, seeing she doesn’t think I had bipolar disorder.

I felt a sense of relief that maybe I could be freed from the need to be hooked on psych meds, so I was very excited to know my psychiatrist was going to get me off them.

When our session was up, we set up a follow-up appointment for the next month.

When I got home, I didn’t feel the need to open up about how my session went with my parents. They asked me how it went, though, so I just said it was fine. I assumed if I went into detail, they would have made a huge argument over it all, so I thought saying nothing was best.

Seeing I also needed to see a therapist as part of my discharge plan, I needed to start sessions with a therapist. She was local, which was good, so I didn’t have to drive far.

I remember my first visit. She held sessions in her house where she had an office for clients to have sessions.

She was an older woman, maybe mid 50’s. She was very kind and seemed compassionate. For whatever reason, even though I opened up occasionally in my outpatient program, I still didn’t feel comfortable talking about my feelings with this woman, so basically, every session, I stayed silent.

On our first session, though, seeing she asked me a plethora of questions, I was able to answer most of them. She asked for a brief history of my childhood, how my relationships are with my family now, do I have supportive friends in my life, am I having any suicidal thoughts or do I self harm or have thoughts to self harm, and other more personal questions.

Our sessions lasted an hour, which seemed to drag on. She had a clock both of us could see, and I just stared at it during our sessions, just waiting for the hour to be up.

As much as I’ve now grown to love therapy and find it to be an extremely important piece of my recovery journey, I simply did not feel that way at age 18. I felt it was such a chore to open up to a random woman, and I just didn’t feel it was at all beneficial for me to continue to do. My parents insisted I go so I had no choice but to.

So every Monday, I had to meet with my therapist at 3 pm. Every Wednesday, I met with my psychiatrist. All of this seemed like a huge inconvenience to my life and I wished more then anything I never met Don, because without him ever being in my life I never would have had a nervous breakdown leading to being diagnosed bipolar. I was just keeping in mind that my current psychiatrist planned to eventually get me off my meds, so just maybe therapy would end once the medications stopped.

Everything about having a mental health diagnosis seemed to be such a huge inconvenience to my life. All I thought was that none of my friends had to live the life I was now forced to live. Nope, instead, they all got to go off to college and live their lives as normal adults, and here I am being the odd one out. I was just so angry at this whole situation. I just prayed that my psychiatrist was right and hoped I could eventually live without medications and start my life over as a normal person carrying on a normal life.

I did remind myself, though, since my parents weren’t informed of my psychiatrists’ plan to get me off meds, I didn’t tell my therapist either because she kept my parents updated on my treatment with her.

I just carried on my life as someone with bipolar until just maybe my psychiatrist could save me from having this diagnosis.

I never imagined my life would ever have become what I was now living, but who can predict one day they’d be sexually assaulted, forcing them into a psych ward and having a completely altered life. No one predicts the awful things that happen. I just prayed I could eventually go back to normal, but only time would tell if that would ever happen.

As of now, this was who I now was living the life I had to live, and there was simply nothing I could do to change it. Life isn’t fair all the time, and accepting that was just what I needed to do.

To be continued…..