Therapy-Hunting

I wrote up a long post about why I'm looking for a therapist, but it basically turned into a whine-fest about the fact that I have to look for a therapist and all that; I ended up talking much more about the stuff that I really do need to be talking with a therapist about, instead of just giving background as to why I'm looking. So I ditched the long whiny post. (Keep yer 'isn't this blog just you whining in place of therapy anyway' jokes to yerself, thank you very much.)

The thing I'm more interested in writing about is the effect that deciding I wanted to check out therapy and the process of actually looking for therapists has had on my psyche. The basic background is this: Enough people I know who go to therapy or have been to therapy have told me that they thought therapy might help me in various ways. I'm not opposed to therapy. I think it's the way to go in a lot of cases for a lot of people. It has been the way to go for me, a couple of times (though I haven't yet gone in any sort of long-term way). When I was 12, I went to a therapist once when my mom was getting divorced--and the therapist herself told my mom that she didn't think I needed to keep coming. When I was 17, and in the midst of the worst romantic breakup of my life (given my journal the past year, saying THAT puts some things into perspective), my mom insisted I go to a therapist. I went twice. First time, just basically poured my heart out to a stranger, and it was great. Second time, wrote the typical 'letter to the heartbreaker that you will never send but it gets things off your chest' thing and then she told me I didn't need to come back. And, in fact, I didn't need to. It was something of a turning point. Kinda silly, perhaps, and cliche, but that worked just fine for me. I also did some group therapy for something I'd rather not put out on the ol' blog (which is quickly becoming less and less anonymous). In all cases, I had good experiences with therapy in general.

So why, I have to ask myself, did I get so upset the other day when I started looking around for a therapist to help me through some of my anxiety and (possibly) depression that I've been feeling for more than a year (i.e. this goes back to before S's and my breakup, really)?

I think the answer is complex, but I know a lot of the roots. One is just the relief that comes from admitting to yourself that you can't go it alone, or that you would rather not, if you have the choice. For me, strong feelings of relief bring tears of a relief. There was more to it than that, however.

One other important factor was my slow-but-strong realizations about just how much depression/neurotic-ness/anxiety/compulsiveness/alchoholism and the like there is in my gene pool. I'm pretty sure that I'm not that different from most people, that there are enough black sheep in every family to keep things interesting, but when I look to my close family, my mother has managed to keep her head above water fairly well, but there's a lot of depression in the rest of my immediate family (and my mom hasn't escaped completely, either). My grandfather was an alchoholic. So was my father. My grandmother was agoraphobic by the end of her life. My uncle had some sort of compulsive disorder such that when he died they found stacks and stacks of newspapers in his house (and worse). And more.

So, being able to better acknowlege this stuff is part of the reason I'm going to try to find a therapist, but acknowleging it is also difficult emotionally. One wants to keep it in mind to use that knowledge in deciding how to live one's life, but one doesn't want to see that sort of thing as fated, or determined, or even a series of stumbling blocks. I am not my mother, my father or my grandfather. Still, I am their offspring, and genetically that means something (it's not clear exactly what) when it comes to depression and anxiety. I want to seek therapy in part because I have seen how unhappy some of my family memebers have been/continue to be, but I don't want that reason to be something that actually holds me back from being happy, some sort of genetic anchor that I'll always be struggling to haul up.

And then there's the emotional weight of knowing that one reason I may need therapy is because I don't have the support network that I used to have. This doesn't mean that I don't have good friends, or even that they aren't there for me or anything. (It's taken me a while to really realize this.) What it does mean is that it doesn't seem like my support network can help me enough here, for various reasons. (Granted, part of those reasons have to do with the fact that there are fewer people I'm involved with day-to-day to help, but mostly it has to do with these problems being bigger than a regular network of good friends can help with.) But this is all hard to face. Not only can I not easily navigate this stuff on my own, I can't navigate it with the people who care about me. (Or, more to the point, I can't do it *enough* for my comfort level any longer.) And that puts me in the precarious position of admitting that I need some outside help...because I may not be able to get that help.

Which brings me to one of the last important emotional factors: The financial cost of therapy. I guess I was used to the 'on-the-cheap' group therapy that I got years ago now, but it's looking like I won't be able to get therapy in the way I'd like because I won't be able to afford it. My insurance doesn't cover it unless I'm in some sort of drug program or I'm suicidal/homocidal/etc. I don't begrudge therapists their fees--it seems logical to me that they ought to earn a living doing what they're doing, and some of the sliding-scale people go low enough that they make the same or less than, say, massage therapists. (Which isn't to say I think one ought to earn more than the other--they seem, in my mind, to be sort of equitable things to do.) The thing is, just like I can't afford weekly massages, there's no way I can afford even the cheapest therapists--and I can't afford even the cheapest on a weekly basis. And so far, even the places that I could afford (say, bi-monthly) aren't available to me--they're full up with crazies like myself. (Which brings me to another conundrum--do I really want to take a low-end-of-the-sliding-scale spot away from somebody who might need this more than I do?)

I'll be able to get some help, I imagine. I won't go weekly, and I will likely have to do some sort of group therapy, which isn't exactly what I was after. And spots may open up at places that I 'can' afford. The point is--it's silly to say it, but I can't really *afford* to need therapy, apparently. And I imagine that it's not much different for a lot of people with more depression/anxiety than I have. The process of seeking out help becomes part of the problem, and that really sucks.