The Real LJ Idol Topic 2 - The Missing Stair

[dreamwriters]

For me, a lot of my life lately has been finding the many missing pieces that I'd been searching for, but somehow never realized were staring me in the face.

In late college, I was diagnosed with anxiety, depression and a learning disability that put a lot of my childhood struggles with school and friends into perspective. I got decent grades, but math took me hours because my brain can't process the information as fast as other students. Likewise, that's why I didn't have many friends (and still don't really). For me, a conversation tends to move faster than my brain can take in information and formulate a comment. People tend to think I don't have something to say because I can't interject as quickly as other other people. It's why you get a lot more out of me on blogs and chatrooms: I don't HAVE to keep up with the conversation so much because I can scrollback!

Towards the end of college, I also realized I didn't like the model of psychology I'd been experiencing because it reminded me too much of the therapist who tried to help me in high school that I pretty much lied my way out of seeing (If there's one thing that my struggles in childhood proved, I'm good at pretending).

While I'd never had the issue of being institutionalized, I was still getting exposed to that patienthood narrative of "I know what's best for you; you can't make your own decisions; you might make worse decisions if I let you go" and a constant hopscotch game of medications that either made me worse or seemed to be akin to paying for a something that did the exact same thing a half-tab of Benadryl did for me for twice the cost. I ended up leaving in something of a flounce and going on a summer-long search for something I chose.

I ended up finding a DBT group and I called and did an intake there. During the second session of the DBT group, one of the group leaders offered to be my therapist since I didn't have one and it was a program requirement. That therapist in my opinion was a huge catalyst of change in addition to how the DBT group management was handled which was much more accommodating than the social skills group I'd been in at the other center.

Not long after that, I was introduced to the recovery model of psychology through being introduced to the Boston University Center for Psychiatric Rehabilitation's Recovery Education Program, which made me realize this is the narrative I'd been saying had to exist, but I hadn't been able to find. The Recovery Center insisted I wasn't my disability and encouraged me to explore things that were both interesting and challenging with an attempt to grow into who I want to be. It's been the exact right combination of teachers, tools, peers and practice that I'd needed years ago.

Now I'm on the threshold of another staircase, since the therapist who pointed me this way is now leaving and I'm not sure when I'll stumble upon the next missing staircase, but I'm still planning on going up.