conversations with my psychiatrist, ii
I saw my psychiatrist for the first time since September.
It was a heavy session – heavier than my last one. It was partially my fault, though. I missed my December appointment. I abruptly stopped my medications, which triggered a cascade of unpleasant withdrawals - sadness, violent emotions, insomnia. But there were reasons, or at least, reasons I convinced myself made sense back then.
I thought I got better (Pro-tip: don’t quit your anti-depressants because you feel better. You feel better because of the medication). Other times, I felt like I was punishing myself - an endurance test of some sort. If I could just push through this pain by my own, I would prove my resilience, that I was strong enough to survive without the pills, that I didn't need them to function like a normal person. It was a strange, self-destructive impulse, rooted in stigma and shame - a way to deny myself the support I knew I needed.
The problem is me, I told my psychiatrist. I don’t want to deal with myself. What bothers me about this whole mental health struggle isn't the lingering sadness, the emptiness, the persistent fear of abandonment. It's about me, how much I hate existing with me. It's the overwhelming realization that I can't escape myself.
This is not a deep, introspective post where I miraculously learn to love myself. I will not be sugarcoating, no matter how raw, vulnerable and uncomfortably negative I may sound. I hate dealing with myself. Sometimes it feels like there are two conflicting voices within me. One urges me to push harder, do more, be better, calmer. The other is angry, afraid, bitter, pulling me back into a cycle violence and self-criticism. I am in a perpetual argument with myself, one with no compromise or resolution that satisfies both sides.
My psychiatrist challenged me: how do you expect to progress if you don’t learn to make peace with yourself?
He’s right, and I hated he’s right. If the depression is gone yet I still can't exist with myself, what’s the point? Sometimes I wish I can live without the parts of myself that I resent. Sometimes I fantasize about breaking myself apart into bits and pieces, remove the fragments that I hate, and build myself from the parts I love, brick by brick, so that there only exists the good in me. But I can’t run from myself, now can I?
You need to co-exist with all of you, he said. You can modify your behavior to a certain extent with therapy, but first you need to accept yourself as you are.
I was in tears at that point. It felt impossible, given how long I have been fighting with myself. How could someone like me imagine self-acceptance as real, when every part of myself is in constant conflict? But maybe that’s where the real work begins: A little bit of understanding, even for the parts of me that I hate. Not erasing the parts of me I wish didn’t exist, but learning how to live with all of me.
If I can just sit with those parts, no matter how uncomfortable, maybe something better can begin to grow, slowly and steadily.
I will not lie to you: It's been three days, yet I'm still avoiding myself, still trying to come in terms with what to do next. In the end, he doubled my dose. I let go of the idea of pushing through on my own and admitted to myself that, right now, I need the medication to survive. There is no shame in that. He asked me to take care of myself. I see him again in May.