Do you remember how optimistic I was last year when I was
starting the DBT therapies? I don’t have good news. I did not see any progress,
and what was worse, I ended up even more broken than before. Due to certain
issues, I started to believe I was just an incompetent parasite who only asks
others for their attention, help and pity. I somewhat accepted myself as a
sick, wrong creature, so I stopped fighting, losing all the will to go on. I
was ready to spend the rest of my life behind the bars of a mental asylum, just
like a piece of useless trash you clear away in the attic.
Why did all this happen? I remember being told one can’t
fail a therapy, that you can only select an ineffective one. Nevertheless, I still have the feeling I failed miserably. Maybe I
wasn’t trying hard enough, maybe it was all my fault. Or maybe my sickness was
too much for the DBT methods to deal with. In the end, any improvement the
therapies could have brought drowned in greyness. Perhaps I will write more about
it one day, but right now I don’t feel ready to share it.
Since I quit the DBT therapies, I feel the constant presence
of a Dementor [1], who is sucking away my ability and even willingness to be
happy. Everything hurts and even the smallest tasks are a fight. I have to
force myself even to get out of bed or order food (I am certainly not talking
about cooking, work or any complex tasks). Imagine doing nothing all day long,
and then another day, and so on, and so on. I mean real “nothing” – often I can’t
even find the energy to play mobile games, read or browse the web. I just sleep,
and when I am awake, I simply lie there in my bed, motionless, useless.
Then, of course, I feel incredibly bad about myself for
doing nothing and promise to myself that the next day I will do much. But I don’t.
Instead, I end up feeling even worse. And when enough stress accumulates, my
good old friend Anxiety comes for a visit. My heart is forced to race as my
lungs seem to be deprived of oxygen, my stomach turns upside down, and all I
can do is to scream for help.
My condition got so severe that I have been considering
spending some time in a mental hospital again. However, my psychiatrist found a
name for all this: amotivational syndrome [2]. So now we will try to lower my
pills dosage. With the help of my therapist, to whom I have returned, I may
find the way forward, but it will be loads of hard work.
Fortunately, most people around me are incredibly supportive
and helpful, despite my endless negativity, moaning and groaning. Let me
express my enormous thanks to them all, because I am pretty sure I look
incredibly ungrateful. I am sorry I am making my family and friends feel they
are fighting the windmills, but I can't pretend happiness. However, it’s not
all lost. I am still here.
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