In the last ses­sion, I explained to my ther­a­pist how I felt more respon­si­ble for and in con­trol of my own hap­pi­ness, and less depen­dent on oth­ers for a sense of iden­tity or ful­fil­ment (things I’d strug­gled with before). I also told him how I’ve been more vocal about my needs, to give my friends a chance to be involved in my life instead of always putting my feel­ings aside, and how I’m lucky that they’ve responded so pos­i­tively to that. I’ve made some major life deci­sions that I believe will lead to pos­i­tive changes, I’ve been pro­duc­tive, and I’m happy for right now instead of being deluded by a hope­ful sense of what the future may hold¹.

When I brought up idea that it may be the med­ica­tion that’s been help­ing me so much, he said it’s good but not that good. Otherwise, he’d be pop­ping pills every time he needed some sort of per­sonal epiphany. Instead, it’s there as a way to help me think more clearly in cer­tain cir­cum­stances, but it doesn’t do any think­ing for me. This came as quite a relief, as I didn’t want to think that I’d be depen­dent on some­thing for this sense of men­tal well-being.

My therapist’s ini­tial goal was to teach me how to take bet­ter care of myself, due to the fact that I had insuf­fi­cient cop­ing mech­a­nisms. Now, he believed I could han­dle that suf­fi­ciently, and after say­ing that I looked “delighted”, we agreed that I didn’t need to con­tinue with our ses­sions any­more, some­thing he’d never said to me before. I walked in and out of there feel­ing good. I like the fact that he respects me, cause he’s one of the few peo­ple who truly under­stand me.

On the other hand, I didn’t par­tic­u­larly care for my psy­chi­a­trist, an hoary man who didn’t seem to have a sense of empa­thy, whom I met for the first time a few weeks ago. As a sign that my expe­ri­ence with him was part of Canadian health­care indus­try, he had no clue why I was there, when it was a doc­tor at the same clinic who had to write the refer­ral for me. At the appoint­ment, I was asked to fill out a ques­tion­naire that included things like:

• Are your par­ents divorced ____, for how long _________, and what age were you ____?
• Father/mother: how much edu­ca­tion did he/she have?
• Please cir­cle the type of socioe­co­nomic envi­ron­ment in which you grew up: poor / lower mid­dle class / mid­dle class / upper mid­dle class / wealthy
• Habits: mar­i­juana ____ fre­quency ____ gms ____

Sometimes he talked over me, as if he wasn’t inter­ested in hear­ing what I had to say, although it’s hard to blame him for that, see­ing as how his role is to mon­i­tor my med­ica­tion instead of deal­ing with any kind of psy­cho­analy­sis. At the end of the appoint­ment, he said I had a lot of options cause I had a lot of inter­ests and intel­li­gence. The only thing is, I don’t think I told him any­thing that would have given him that impres­sion, so it all came out as flattery.

At least I won’t have to be see­ing him for much longer, as I was told that I could stop my dosage, but he rec­om­mended that I con­tinue for at least six months after I start feel­ing bet­ter (not after I start tak­ing it), which means I can’t still can’t drink until some time around Christmas. But by then, hope­fully I won’t have to.

1. One thing I’ve learned is that real­ism is more valu­able than opti­mism (and a lot more valu­able than pes­simism) when it comes to psy­chol­ogy. [↩]