“I’m never going to get out of here alive. That’s what I told the psychiatrist during my tenth admission to the inpatient psychiatric hospital. I don’t really know for certain if it was the tenth admission. I stopped counting. I could also say that I had stopped hoping, but that wouldn’t be accurate. I had never experienced that thing called hope. Depression is what I had always had—a deep, dark, bottomless pit of despair, taunting me with no way out. No one overeats for no reason. I had 400 pounds of reasons I wasn’t dealing with.
“Let us carry the hope for you until you can carry it yourself” the psychiatrist said to me.
I started going to individual therapy at the Carson Center with a therapist name David. I came in with Major Depressive Recurring Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder and Anxiety with impulse control. I began the Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) program that teaches skills to help regulate emotions to deal with intense feelings and to interact with others effectively. I learned to be honest with David and DBT group. We worked through situations together. We set goals. We fought. He made me angry. I definitely made him angry. There were a couple of times I wondered if when I came back, someone else would be sitting there instead of him, but he was always there. We made a relationship built on trust and respect.
I could feel that I was getting better, but I still didn’t’ have energy to do much. I told my Carson psychiatrist that I was feeling less depressed but that I thought the meds were making me too lethargic. So we made a shift with them and that made all the difference. I had more energy, it was easier to lose more weight, I even went back to school. I finally became abstinent in my 12-step program. Overeaters Anonymous. OA is a program for people who want to stop using food to hurt themselves. So far, I’ve lost over 200 pounds.
When I first started at the Carson Center I wanted my therapist to wave his magic wand and to make me better. I was angry HE wasn’t working hard enough to fix me. But I am the one who has to do the work. I need to go the meetings and do the worksheets and follow the plans and get honest.
Now I only have Minor Depression. Not only do I have hope I’m here to give it: A diagnoses is not a life sentence. You know how it can be on a fall day, right after a quick rainstorm, when you are looking real hard of the rainbow on the horizon, looking all around and suddenly there is the rainbow? Hope is like that. Keep working, keep looking and there it will be for you. You don’t have to do this alone In fact we can’t really do it alone. Come on over — we’re right here for you.
By Anonymous
Edited by JAC Patrissi
