Therapy - Part one

So the other day, I met the new therapist. She had come highly recommended and I decided to be cautiously optimistic that she would be more helpful than the marriage counselor that DH and I had seen.

I was asked to arrive 15 minutes before my appointment so that I could complete a bit of paperwork. After filling out the standard data (insurance info, health history, etc), I was handed a paper with about five lines on it that said:

Using the space provided, please write down the reason that you have decided to meet with the therapist. Please write down the first thing that comes to mind. Do not worry about details. Do not worry about how it sounds. Please do not write more than will fit in the space provided.

Ummm... I had no idea what to say. I know why I'm there, but being asked to dilute it down into a space big enough for about three sentences. With only about 4 minutes until it is time for my appointment. This is hard for me. You may not have noticed, but I tend to be wordy.

But feeling a lot of pressure, I wrote(in very small print):

My husband had an affair last year, and I can't seem to recover. Sometimes things seem to be improving, but then the bottom seems to drop out. I can't control my thoughts and it affects every part of my life. I used think of myself as a happy person, lately I question who I am.

I hand the clipboard back to the receptionist, and about three minutes later, I am brought back to a room. The therapist introduces herself as Kathleen, and invites me to sit in a fairly comfortable chair. She then explains that often the biggest stumbling block when meeting with a new patient is having them get comfortable enough to verbalize out loud the reason they are there. She says that they have had great luck with having people write a short statement.

She then read aloud what I had written, and asked me to bear with her. She said that most people want most to talk about the first and the last thing they write down, but what she usually starts with is the middle. She was particularly interested in the fact that I felt like I couldn't control my thoughts and she asked me questions about that for about fifteen minutes. She also asked me a long series of questions regarding changes in my mood and what triggers them. She then told me that she was making sure that I didn't have any underlying psychiatric issues or PMDD (premenstrual dysphoric disorder) which is apparently like PMS gone out of control.

She said that from what she could tell in that limited time, I have a bit of sub-clinical depression, which means that I am depressed, but not so depressed that I can't function. Well, duh.

She said that she doesn't recommend medication for this level of depression, because it is usually caused by a life situation and not a chemical problem in the brain. Once again, duh.

However, she said that living with this kind of depression for an extended period of time does cause different chemicals to be released that keep you in a depressive state even after things start to improve. To combat this, she wants me to exercise.

Yes, my therapist wants me to exercise. She was very specific about what she wants. Every day (seven days a week!) she wants me to do something aerobic which causes me to break a sweat. Then she wants me to maintain that level of activity for 20 minutes. That's all. It can be anything I want. Walking, running, biking, swimming, stairs, elliptical machine. Anything at all that makes me break a sweat.

She promises that if I actually do this, in 2 weeks when I see her again, I will feel a difference in my mood. I'm sure this is true, but I would much rather have someone wave a magic wand and make everything better instead.

This part of the meeting with Kathleen took about half an hour, the rest of the time was more like what I expected to do in therapy. I talked. She listened and asked questions to clarify things.

And I will write about that in my next post.