Posted by Shelley in Seattle on March 9, 1999, at 13:36:04
In reply to I need support...., posted by JennyAnn on March 8, 1999, at 20:27:16
Hi, JennyAnn ...
Have you ever read any of Lauren Slater's books? Prozac Diary, and Welcome to my Country (specially the latter) address some of what you are feeling. She is now a psychiatrist after having spent years going in & out of hospitals for her manic-depression. She tells the story of how she ended up being assigned a patient in a place where she had been hospitalized years before ... and how it felt to be on the other side. She spoke of the compassion she was able to have for her patients that was absent in her own care, etc. I think you might really enjoy this book. She presents it well.
While I don't particularly care for the tone of Elaine's post (though I DO understand the exasperation around the subject that she feels -- just maybe this wasn't the message most appropriate for those comments), I do see her point and I made the same point in another of my posts ... We do go to the doctor for other things that ail us, and even doctors get sick (or whatever) and have to go to a doctor themselves! And I think your experience could prove invaluable in helping you to understand your clients' plights. I had a therapist who had never been depressed, and I wondered how I could convey to her that empty black hollow feeling that resides in the pit of my stomach when I am depressed (etc.), whereas if she had ever been depressed she would have a compassion that words don't quite convey. You are in a unique situation to really use what you may have seen as a 'bad' thing in your own life to help others in your chosen profession.
There are still some parts of me that want to understand it away and make sense of it all... however, we are usually unable to think our way out of something when our 'normal' thought process is affected by depression. We don't see things the same way when we are depressed, even if everything is just the same as it ever was.
I hope I didn't babble too much hot air here, I just wanted to try and help a bit.
Please hang in there ... I often feel alone too, but then I come here and find a post or a reply that I can really identify with and then I know I am not alone in my struggle. You aren't alone either. :-)
Feel free to contact me if you like (shelley@earthling.net).
Take care, JennyAnn!
--Shelley
poster:Shelley in Seattle
thread:3499
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/19990301/msgs/3518.html