There is no one to "take it up with."

Mostly what I gained from therapy...was a life lesson that this is the wrong path. It was unpleasant, and costly. I experienced real loss from having gone through it. Just the years wasted alone, important first years of my late teenager hood and early adulthood.

Can I say I benefited from it? Perhaps in a tough love kind of a way? Can I honestly say I gained no character from it? No toughness, no enhanced ability to adapt? To me it felt like pretty wasted adversity. I picked therapy over trying other things. Therapy is what you are supposed to do. You're in good hands. What do you know, you're the one with mental problems after all.

And then you go to therapy and it's like...why are you here? What kind of patient are you? What can you do for me? I mean, what's the problem? You can't talk to people? You're lonely, you can't get a job?

Have you been doing the exercises?

Shall we run over the psychological concepts again? You see...your beliefs influence your thoughts influence your behaviors influence your beliefs influence your thoughts influence your behaviors...draws a circle with words and arrows going around it

Do you know what a schema is? Well let's talk about schemas...oh look here, I see you have a "I'm a bad person" schema. We can work on that! See, now that you have this insight it doesn't have to hurt you! You're more aware now! You don't have to let it have power...

And the logic checks out doesn't it...if something else can help you...trying something else...running away from your family. Doing yoga. Trying a new hobby. Joining the military. Entering a romantic relationship with someone well...then therapy's not really for you, is it. There's not enough wrong with you, we are trained professionals here. There are people out there who hallucinate things. There are people out there who express the constant, unremitting wish to die, who just lie in bed all day.

It's not like they even want those patients either.

Patients like me--they think I need an SSRI, and they think I need 50 minutes a week to be nudged and guided by a special, educated, trained person...who's going to say some magical words to me.

And I need to buy a workbook and write in it like a second grader.

When I was younger, I was under this impression that ok, I'm NOT functioning. I'm not happy, plus, I'm not doing what I'm supposed to do in society. I'm not really cutting the "social" part of school, but you don't really get penalized for that. And I can't fucking work. Sorry, that's kind of low on the list of society's problems it should be concerned about. There are more helpless people than you. And more disenfranchised people than you. Are you in prison yet? Well then we don't care.

One of the things that helped me was getting a job. Financial freedom really helps you cope with life better, what do you know? Even if it took years to get from getting a real, on the books, W-2 job where you pay taxes...to actual financial independence. How did I get my first job? Well, someone had to tell me that if you have official diagnoses, you can qualify for the DOR in the United States. And then they make you a tax break, so that you have that going for you, an employer has that incentive to hire you financially, even if you offer less because of your anxiety and difficulty socializing properly.

No one ever told me this in school. None of my therapists told me this. This was someone I befriended who I met online who was severely bipolar and who was very familiar with social services.

What have I learned? What do I know now I didn't know then? It's a song and dance. If you feel like you can't find relationships with people...friendships, whatever....there's no one's role, no one's job in society to talk to you and listen to you. You'd think therapy would do that, but it has so so many restrictions. Sure, you can talk to them, what you're supposed to do is go to therapy and say "I am experiencing difficulties. I had a panic attack at the supermarket. My mother was very critical of me." And then at great expense, you get some carefully chosen words, delivered in a very deliberate way, that are supposed to help you get back on track. They tell you...not to dwell. Or they tell you not to internalize other people's criticisms. Don't assume you know what other people are thinking. That must have been awful. There there. Btw there are 5 minutes left in the session let's talk about how I'm going on vacation and I will be gone for three weeks, when shall I pencil you in?

I'm not even here to claim that there's some easy solution to people who can't cope with life or who can't function in society. I don't believe that, at least.

And I think the cynical belief is true--society is a competition, and it's set up for a certain amount of people to fail. There is a lot of incentive to gain things at the detriment of others. Useless mentally ill people are for one, a source of funding. Government, or out of pocket. Or they're something to practice on, to gain insight from. People to make you feel better about your life. An opportunity for you to make meaning out of all the bad things you've gone through. An opportunity to be strong for someone. And an opportunity for you to make a living out of picking and choosing who you want to deal with, and sitting and talking, and influencing vulnerable people for a living.

It's a lapse in logic that if you're failing in society, that there's this role-therapist- that will help a kind of person like that "get up to speed" as much as possible anyway. It's like...if there's a race, and a certain amount of people didn't finish it...that there's some place you go to where they're going to help you get strong enough to finish it. When really, they did not make the race easy enough in the first place, or you deliberately were not adequately trained for it in the first place because you weren't worth investing in.

So yeah, I have some ideas about what's wrong with therapy. About what could make it better. Or things you can do besides therapy that might help in some way.

But mostly, I just want to express...that gosh. I really wish I hadn't picked that road. I feel so dumb. What was supposed to be the smart thing, the responsible thing to do was so dumb. Such a mistake. I think back on my life, and I wish I had a guardian angel or something to swoop in before I made that decision. "Is this a good idea?" I ask. And they would say: Here's what you gotta do, kid. Don't go to therapy. I know, you would like some job that you can perform, given your limitations. You could manage to get by like that. You want your independence. And hey, society only has so many jobs you can do within your limits and there's a lot of competition. Focus on detaching yourself from your family and gaining independence. Let me tell you, as your guardian angel...in this "ghost of Christmas past from the Christmas Carol" sort of way...there are so many other paths you could go down that would result in more happiness.

I'm not joking when I say...had I picked homelessness (I did end up becoming homeless btw just not at 18)...had I picked getting pregnant...had I picked the military...had I picked breaking the law and ending up in prison...had I picked teaching English abroad. Had I picked being a prostitute...had I picked being a migrant agricultural worker...like all these things that are supposed to be a waste of potential, or mistakes...it would have been better than the path I went on. With the exception of like, not getting addicted to hard drugs, not getting into like a disabling car accident or something while high...like if you don't make those kinds of mistakes, make ANY other mistake. You worry you're not going to obtain your goal--a job, your independence...so you can create your own identity and begin to heal from your wounds from childhood...and you might not. For a lot of people, getting a job and obtaining financial independence is mundane. For you, it might take years, but whatever mistake you make--don't do the thing where you call that therapist's office, and make that appointment.

I speak for myself, because this is supposedly the safe place where you can deviate from the party line. In a world where it is supposedly a punishable, reckless act to ever NOT suggest someone go to therapy. I'll just say, it's what I wish I would have done.