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Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.orgShown: posts 1 to 2 of 2. This is the beginning of the thread.
Posted by SyntheticSoul on August 23, 2006, at 14:18:51
I am going to take a risk here by throwing some observations about healing on the table.
I don’t post here much, in fact, I think I have posted just a handful of messages since I joined last year; however, I have spent, and spend a lot of time on this board reading, observing, and following your stories. I watch your ups and downs. I observe your triumphs and feel your pain when they sometimes slip away after the medicine stops doing its gig. I have struggled with debilitating depression for the better part of my life, I am now 35. I have run this course, taken all the meds, popped the supplements, and probably read far too much. In my search for peace I have tried nearly all forms of therapy available, dug up and examined each new explanation, heck, I even went to an exorcist once when it got unbearable and nearly psychotic. Needless to say, I have learned a couple of things about mental illness and healing over my long sentence with it.
I am not interested in sounding like an authority or like I have the answers; however, a few patterns about healing become apparent after reading post after post here that I want to share. First would have to be the strength I see in so many of you--even those of you who come to basically collapse with resignation week after week. I have watched a few of you become like the fabled Phoenix and emerge from ash. The most interesting part of that process is not always how you did it, but what you now are like. It’s like watching a Veterans Day parade sometimes. You learned along the roughest roads that you were actually powerful and had fire in you that just took all those years of waste to discover. Sure you might be back in the hole next week, but at least you know more about that hole this time around. It’s the defiance I love the most. Healed people seem unashamedly defiant. What little payoff these illnesses bring belong to them and don’t you dare think you can negate or diminish their experiences. You took so many bullets and bruises that all you could possibly do was wake up, brush, clothe the kids and get to work to see if today would be different. It often was. And tomorrow may be different, also.
I want to be respectful of board rules and regulations, I don’t want to offend, but it looks to me, and was true in my case, that healing really started not through talk therapy directly, but after exhausting every possible option available. The light seems to go on when you realize that some unseen thing, whether God or just blind force, is putting the weights on your chest just waiting for you to lift, to push, to hurt and struggle with the bench-press designed to turn you into something like Neo in the Matrix. Oh yeah, Neo is in there, but he doesn’t come out until you learn the karate. I am not suggesting that healing is a matter will. I have taken on more than one family member directly over such suggestions. No, it’s more than that. Unfortunately, I see a number of healed people ultimately leave Babble because they got chastised or banned for simply doing what healed people well: telling it like it is and making no compromises with hard facts. That’s unfortunate. Mostly because it enforces the idea for those new to this journey that if someone just coddles or protects them they will somehow emerge better off in the end. I don’t know for sure, but I doubt many people heal who have a primary interest in keeping their feelings from being hurt or their ideas from being confronted. This is a war, after all.
Take it or leave it.
Posted by finelinebob on August 23, 2006, at 23:16:31
In reply to Healing, posted by SyntheticSoul on August 23, 2006, at 14:18:51
"Neo, sooner or later you're going to realize just as I did that there's a difference between knowing the path and walking the path."
-- MorpheusYou've made some intriguing observations. Yeah, I'd like to think that I'm one of those who are "unashamedly defiant." And I also agree that, at some point, people need a good cold shower of reality.
But you've got to be in a safe environment to be ready for that, and that's half the struggle -- getting to that place.
When I was an undergrad, when I was about at my nadir, I tried to get help from various univeristy (big one in the state that looks like a hand with a football stadium that holds 112,000 people or so) clinics and mental health programs. I got six to nine sessions per clinic or service, often with some doctoral clinical psych student or (worse) some med student on a psych rotation. Each service stripped away another layer of the "onion" of lies and defense mechanisms I spent 20 years constructing until I ran out of services that would see me, and I was left with nothing but my naked inner self and no support anywhere to deal with it.
But that wasn't the problem -- being able to see the real me. The problem was I still had a distorted view of my reality, and laying bare who I was gave that distortion free reign. It was NOT a pleasant period of my life.
So, there's a difference between "knowing the path" and "walking the path".
You can't face the truth about yourself until you can see yourself truly. And that last bit is by far the hardest part of healing. You can come to "know" that you're not the hateful, weak, sick, whatever monster you think you are but, instead, a wonderful human being who is so much stronger than any "normal" person because you've been through the fire and survived. But "walking the path," living your life believing the truth about you ... that's another story.
You may be hit with the truth of who you are before your vision has cleared and your eyes see truly, but to have the courage to take that first step down the path means starting from a place of comfort and care, of strength, of sanctuary. You recognized it yourself as the point where people seem to change, to turn things around. Whether you find that from meds, talk therapy, some spiritual guidance, whatever -- you still need it.
This is the end of the thread.
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