thank you so much. just to clarify im not a minor, im just on my parents insurance.
i m very deeply insecure and adverse to change in routine. i feel like ive settled into a routine with the therapist and i always answer each "anything you want to tell me" question with bs and its fine. and yes its a bad habit. next session i will try to fix.
ig i feel stupid bc i am a young college student whose tuiton my parents pay for who has nothing wrong with their life. my parents arent abusive theres nothing wrong with my past. i just am sad, and am suddenly just motivated before crashing down. deeply im scared that the only answer might be medication. an extra expense to put on my parents who already think why am i going to therapy theres nothing wrong in my life.(actually lowkey my parents thinking theres nothing that wrong might be a key reason why i have the mindset of im not that sad or even depressed). not to demean medication i just would feel so bad if it was the only answer that i had ti take everyday for the rest of my life. and even worse what if the medication doesnt work and it is all in my head.
tldr anxiety abt medication
on periods of manic happiness. i think im over exaggerating. i cant tell if its correlation at all but i will be thinking "this is the best day ever" and find everything funny. and then nothing is funny and im crying. ill have great weeks of motivation and finishing all my work and then stop for a week. but i cant tell if these are extreme enough that they necessarily predict my next binge of being a sorry arse and not showering.
no medication
yeah ig i just needed second confirmations on its okay to talk about sh in therapy. bc well ive never told anyone the frequency of it(i mean arm scars r pretty hard to hide) but like more accidental looking marks get passed up.
maybe i will talk to my therapist abt seeing a different therapist, thank you. i keep going to extremes of cutting off all my friends and family(+therapist) when not feeling too good.
i understand how you feel. in many ways i had a good childhood, no obvious reasons for me to struggle. i felt a lot of shame that i struggled so much when there was no big source of hardship or trauma i could blame for my suffering. i felt like i was burdening my parents because they financially supported me. so i stopped going to therapy, stopped taking my meds. looking back, i regret this a lot, it made my mental health worse for years.
here is what i learned about my condition: there is a chemical imbalance in my brain. the chemicals that make other people feel stable and happy and functional, are chemicals my brain doesn't make enough of. so of course i feel like shit all the time, of course it's difficult for me to function. and, my brain literally has a different physical structure compared to healthy people's brains. in people with my condition, the way the different parts of the brain communicate are impaired, and some regions of the brain are physically smaller or larger than healthy people's.
yes, i could try to tough it out and keep suffering. or i could give my brain the chemicals it needs, the chemicals that other people's brains make naturally. taking meds means i only struggle a normal amount, instead of struggling all the time. does this make sense? it is not my fault if my brain doesn't work right, just like it wouldn't be my fault if my kidney didn't work right.
i understand your concern about being on meds for the rest of your life--but you don't have to do that. a lot of people just go on meds for like 6 months or a year. i think it is better to take things a day at a time instead of trying to think many decades into the future. my perspective is, if you are suffering now, and therapy isn't really helping, meds are a good option to consider.
i say this because the manic happiness you describe, followed by depression, sounds similar to what one of my best friends used to experience. it made life very difficult for him. every couple months he'd have this cycle: he would have really productive, creative, happy, energetic, hilarious days, sometimes he would get a little bit out of control and spend lots of money or make impulsive decisions. then he would get deeply depressed and couldn't get out of bed. then he would get a little more functional but still pretty depressed. then he'd feel upbeat again. and then the cycle would repeat.
it turns out that those "best day ever" weeks use up the brain's dopamine and norepinephrine, which are the neurotransmitters that make you feel happy, energetic and motivated. once the brain is depleted of those chemicals, of course he felt like shit and couldn't get out of bed. he talked to a psychiatrist and they put him on a mood stabilizer called lamictal/lamotrigine. after a couple months of being on this medication, he noticed that this cycle wasn't happening anymore. he felt more stable and productive, because he didn't have weeks and weeks of laying in bed.
for him the cycles started out pretty mild, but the highs and lows got more and more intense over time. if your symptoms are causing suffering, it might be worth talking to a mental health professional about cyclothymia or bipolar ii, and maybe consider trying a mood stabilizer. if you don't like it, or if it doesn't help, you can go back off of the med. one thing: people who have these highs and lows should not take ssris. ssris actually make the condition worse, because they can cause more frequent or more severe manic episodes, which deplete the brain of happy chemicals.
about talking about sh in therapy: even though you're on your parents' insurance, since you are a legal adult, your therapist legally can't tell them anything (unless they think you are in life threatening danger). it is common for people to talk to therapists about sh, it is likely that your therapist has had other clients who sh. but if you don't really connect with this therapist, and you don't feel like you're making progress, i would get a new one, especially if you can find a therapist whose specialty aligns with the issues you deal with.
i wish you the best of luck!
