Everyone’s at their shrink now in Old

On this journal site, I often read about people talking about going into therapy needing to go into therapy or being in therapy. That or this is just a small sampling on the Internet and of humanity or let’s just say the first world people. getting mental help is something of a luxury because the poor can’t afford it usually so they stay nuts or in misery. For so many people it’s the thing to do get a therapist get a shrink or go see a pastor or priest that doesn’t know shit and feel the burden lifted. Nice placebo you got there with your God. It is amazing how much of humanity believes it’s fucked up and that others are fucked up. I’ve had a lot of therapy in my life starting from probably the age of seven. I learned later in life that the people that truly need to get therapy and mental help are those that are in denial of being troubled and those that are just some genuine sons of bitches that inflict pain on others. My father was both of those. If ever there was a person that needed therapy and mental help it was dear old dad. He used alcohol and anger to confront his demons. But in actuality he never did. Seeing what adults did to deal with their mental health issues and mental pain or emotional pain I too use alcohol, but I also used recreational drugs, which took the mental English and pushed it away at a distance, but it was still hanging onto me and my substance abuse also made it worse. I used much marijuana when I was young to help me with anxiety, but in recent years, I found that marijuana use can increase anxiety. It was a matter of trying to cure a headache with a hammer. The same with alcohol. I did find a drug in the past couple years that has helped me with what ailed me so long ago as a child. Panic attacks and high anxiety. It was a rabid dog that I was chained to much of my life. I had heard about Prozac being helpful and so throwing a Hail Mary at a time of high anxiety and depression I asked my doctor about it and she prescribed it and I wish I had had the stuff at age 7. Just 20 mg or even 10 would have been enough to change my life and make me able to live with myself and others able to live with me around them. Medicated I probably would’ve done quite good in school and gone on to finish college.

I saw a few psychologist and therapists. Hit and miss with the treatment. I went to one guy feeling I truly needed some help and the son of a bitch asked me if I had ever had suicidal thoughts and if I had them occasionally and I said yes, don’t we all. This dumb son of a bitch reached for his phone to call the police. Ironically, I went into a panic and raced out of there drove home at high-speed hoping a cop would not catch me and decided that was not a good therapist for me. Oddly, I don’t even remember where the hell the guy was. I just remembered the incident. Then there was the woman that said she was a psychotherapist or some damn thing and I would sit in her office and talk to her about life for what seemed like many sessions. I did find out that for several hundred dollars or even 1000 that an alcoholic father will choose the youngest son to be abusive to and I was that youngest son. The therapy sessions ended when I told her I wanted to overcome fears and phobias and she told me she did not deal with such a thing. It was a little upsetting. I don’t remember her name and I’m glad I don’t. I do remember the name of a man that I saw about fears for quite a few sessions, and his biggest healing for me was simply telling me what my father and mother should’ve told me which was that I am just as intelligent, if not more so then the people at the local university. I felt like I suddenly had a brain. Someone telling me that was priceless because he had no reason to be biased. I sought help a couple years ago through the local university after the factory, I worked in for many years closed. I was just terrified in life and feeling I had no purpose or recent live and so fuck it. I wanted to die. My two birds needed me and so I put the rope away and got therapy. This time it was very helpful because over the years I’ve learned things that can help myself as others try to help me. This was when I got on Prozac and I have wondered about what it’s done to my brain, but at least I can go into a grocery store and not become a nervous wreck as I would sometimes do in the past. I haven’t tested it by getting out to places that you trigger me, but that’s OK. I’m getting by in life without being shrinking freaky mess. That is a slight exaggeration.

When I was a child, I was terrified of everything. It seemed, and I had crying fits of pure terror in class. It was only years later that I understood what I was feeling or what was happening to me and what that was was panic attacks. During a panic attack adult don’t usually cry In fear. But a child will, and as such, I was a mess and there was a way of holding me back a year and repeating school years or getting sick psychiatric help. My parents put me in a local Children’s psychiatric Hospital as an outpatient. Gwen spend some time with other crazy fuckers then go out back home like any school child. It was a place of horrors. It was only years later that I realized it was a teaching hospital and a place where research was done on children. I remember discovering with other kids why there were mirrors on the wall of one classroom. We broke into the door next-door to that classroom and found people looking through the glass through the mirrors. Another time, curious about a door where it led we children opened it and entered lecture hall and we caused quite a stir as we walked around gawking at the people, the students and others there. Eventually, the Cowboys came and roped the cattle and pulled them out of there. I wonder what great subject they were talking about in psychiatry in that lecture hall. They were passive kids like me and extremely violent kids like well like others. I have Jim horrifying memories of kids, chasing others down the hall, jumping on them and beating them while an adult tried to save the one kid being beaten. I was never attacked in such a way, but as a joke that was hilarious by some, I was held out of a high window by my legs, looking down on tiny cars in the parking lot below. The happy savages had stolen the keys from the attendant or whatever they were and locked them out of the playroom. I was entertaining because I scared easy and freaked out crying, especially when they hung me out the window. Like in a movie, the heroes broke through the door and saved my ass my hysterical ass that almost dropped into the parking lot. In other ways, I remember it was quite nice going on little field trips to the beach and all while my friends at home had to actually learn stuff at school. I was released a year after being there supposedly because I had made some progress. The doctors gave my parents a reason for my fears that just sounded like bullshit years later. I realize they were wrong and just grasping at straws. Back in the 60s psychiatry was in its infancy compared to how it is now. I do wish they had had Prozac then. Jokingly, I say, my parents probably would’ve preferred something like Klonopan which I tried briefly years later, and it turned me into a zombie.

It is interesting for me to see people that believe they need therapy how depressed they are how they want to die or the world is just too much for them or some such other bullshit that just seems normal now. But I get it if they can get help to alleviate suffering great. Which is what I have tried to do numerous times. Now I believe I’m doing OK and part of that is also simply life experience and maturity. Not getting upset about so much bullshit. Seeing people try to punch my buttons and get me to react and seeing that I just go fuck you I’m tired of this shit. I don’t want to play that game. It’s great therapy the fuck you I don’t care thing.

It’s wonderful there are so many people that are in the mental health field. It’s a good gig. What I was a young man then middle-aged and adult I ate self-help books like crazy. I read religious texts. Cynically, I also realized there was one hell of a market for self-help to try to write something someone will buy thinking it is a nice magical pill. Sometimes people ask me if I’ve read this or that book book and I say yeah I have read that self-help book. It can be addictive. I think for some like how I was in my past seeing a therapist could be a way of life, whether we need it or not. We need we want someone to shut up and listen to us. That is something we all crave, and we are willing to pay for it. Which is a hell of a commentary on our society now.

When I see so many people seeking therapy, I think good hope it helps. There are those times reading the news or encountering family members when I think to myself the people that need therapy the most are often avoiding it.

Happy shrinking dudes.

Last updated April 03, 2024