Tia, I am so sorry. This all sounds so stressful.
I also agree that if your current stability depends on:
- avoiding sex because it causes too much distress
- no paying attention to your weight because it causes too much distress
- having to exercise every single day and not being able to drop to 5x/week
- are considering not pursuing a career that seems really fulfilling and meaningful
then you're deeply in the territory of white-knuckling your way to maintaining sanity. And that is not sustainable nor what's healthy and happy. We want you being in a good enough place mentally that you have some wiggle room on all of these. I think it's highly worth going to a psychiatrist and seeing about some depression meds.
Tia, I'm sorry about all of this. I too had to withdraw from o-chem in a postbac program due to stress, and again from a second postbac program eight or nine years later because I realized after having a baby that it wasn't going to happen. If we're being honest, it took me years to get over the disappointment, and it didn't really subside until my life had stabilized a lot. I also reluctantly adopted a performance-enhancing antidepressant regime (AIHMHAZTB) and man, it has drawbacks, but it is uncannily effective.
But my gut response to this is: Christ, you're ambitious. How many projects/careers are you working on at any given time? I am similarly inclined, to the point of being completely unrealistic about the number of available hours in the day, and when projects stagnate or fail I become very despondent. I'm not going to lecture you about that except to say that you may not have a clear sense of how much overhead you're committed to, and how much that organizational load is tugging on your available emotional (and physical) energy. I suspect you've optimized everything you can optimize; it still might all be too damn much.
While it was shitty to go from working in a neuroscience lab at Stanford and planning med school applications to giving the whole thing up and walking away, and I mean it sucked, I'm pretty sure I made the right decision. It is hard for me to see that specifically going to med school, then residency, etc. would be likely to make you happy in the long run, not because you aren't brilliant or capable enough, but because it would devour your bandwidth and impose a rigidity on your life that I think, judging by what little I know of you here, you would find pretty inimical. But I am certainly biased, since I really don't want to open that door again myself.
If you add your email address here, I can write to you and we can talk about more specifics if you like. No pressure! Psychopharmacology does keep getting better, though.
What Heebie said. Or, more literally, I don't have useful advice or knowledge, but I do sympathize.
I still feel like I'm cheating by taking Adderall, but boy does it make life easier.
Above the fold stuff. We did Hello Fresh for a while and like it ok. Now doing Sunbasket which is more interesting. We don't waste food. We also have fewer delivery options. Now to read the rest of the post.
It just reads like you're doing to much and your body is going to make you stop. At least for me, there's a certain amount of uncertainty and effort that can happen in my life without the stress making me shut down and that shutdown would happen at a much lower level of effort than what you are talking about.
Anyway, it sounds awful and I wish you the best.
Seconding 1, 2.last, 3.2, and 8.
The description in tho OP makes it sound like it's worth trying to change something, but from the outside it's hard to know what to focus on. I don't know if antidepressants would help. My feeling is that having a stable job situation will help significantly (my own experience is that I'm much better at dealing with job stress than school stress -- but I don't know how representative that is or even if, in my own experience is largely a product of age since I didn't do grad school).
It sounds like you have several options for what job path you're heading towards, and I wouldn't try to talk you out of them.
Re: Meds
Antidepressants never really helped me in the long run, because I felt more keyed up and restless. But Lamictal, an anticonvulsant used as a "mood stabilizer" to treat depression in bipolar disorder - mostly used for Type 2 though officially approved for Type 1 depression, I believe - has been great. It's now generic and the extended release has been even better than the regular. It's sort of considered something that stabilizes from below, and I think people have started prescribing it off label for depression alone. It's also sometimes used for Borderline Personality Disorder, though the evidence there is not great.
Zoloft got me out of a bad depression in college, but I felt that in the longer run it was kind of destabilizing and made it harder to concentrate.
Lamotrigine makes me less intensely emotionally reactive (and therefore better able to reflect on my feelings) without taking away an ability to feel. With Zoloft, I was initially more bubbly and outgoing and felt better than I ever remembered. With Lamotrigine ER I feel closer to what I think "normal" might be, if that makes any sense.
if you are a commenter I've recently called a troll you should not comment under any pseud.
I might disagree with you on certain topics but I certainly don't wish unhappiness on you or anyone else here. I'm going to comment anyways, ignore if you want.
My wife and I were both biochem majors. She finished with a double major in geology, I dropped out to work when she got pregnant. Fuck O-chem, don't let that shit tear you down. Getting people to fail in those pre med classes is a feature, not a bug. At one time we were both thinking of pursuing grad school in pharmacology or something similar. In hindsight those plans getting de-railed was for the best.
I generally feel good/wired after dealing with people in a lot of distress
Maybe you'd like teaching in a Title 1 school? My wife did a few years in a cancer research lab after graduation. She's been ridiculously happier teaching middle school science the last ten years. You could still code if you wanted. My wife didn't know anything about coding but decided she wanted to have a Girls Who Code club at the school so she's been picking it up on the fly.
Also, if you are a match or science major and teach five years at a Title 1 school the feds will forgive 17.5K of your student loans. Pretty much wiped out my wife's student loan debt.
That does remind me: you may have failed the test, but it is very important that you take into consideration the class average before you decide to drop the class, based on that alone.
- do you know pass/fail rates from this instructor in other semesters?
- how much of your semester grade is based on this test?
- can you infer whether there's sometimes a soft curve at the end of the semester?
So mental health issues aside, I would STRONGLY recommend you talk to the instructor and find out where you place in the class, and whether or not there's a shot at your goal grade, (A? B?) before you take a W for fear of a bad grade.
Taking a W due to stress is an entirely separate issue.
12 is a good point. I got a low exam score dropped (possibly as an ad hoc thing) a couple of times after killing it on the subsequent exams.
12/13: Yes, talk to the prof if you think the prof is friendly, but given my background experience in this field, please don't bother if you don't expect any kind of compassionate response. Organic chemistry professors are very used to tightly wound students being upset over grades and may not be the kindest, most compassionate sorts. I'll spare you details. Withdrawing before the deadline is way better. Second semester organic classes are not just harder but way more cumulative than first semester. It's not about being smart enough; it's about having to catch up and learn new material and put it together.
That said, if you decide (against my excellent advice) to continue this semester (or if/when you go back next semester) and might want a free, experienced tutor, message me elsewhere?
I'd also suggest retaking the class over summer if at all possible. It's nearly impossible to learn anything in the compressed period (which is surprisingly not a big deal in a gatekeeper class you won't really need again), but the curve was significantly more generous and most students I saw were really glad to be able to focus only on the one class rather than a full course load.
I'll comment on the other substance later but figured I'd chime in on the topic I know most about.
Take the Zoloft or whatever. It will turn down the crazy so you can get a handle on things, and then you can taper off if you want or stay on it if you don't. (Source: post partum depression x 2)
Talk to the Prof before you drop. Most of us are willing to help, but we can't fix Ws.
I'm picturing talking to the prof to find out not necessarily if they're flexible, but to gauge if they think you're doing significantly below the mean, or what. Like, how is your homework grade? What kind of mistakes did you make - were you short on time? careless errors? faulty understanding? have the misunderstandings been cleared up or are you still confused on why you missed things?
But I do think it's reasonable to drop, both for mental health and Ydnew's inside take.
Re: talking to the prof/where I am in the class
There is no harm in talking, but I suspect I am not in a good place in the class. If I were to make a big list of factors that led to this that I alluded to in the comments, is that I didn't appreciate how switching schools and professors from first to second semester might hurt me. I took a quick glance at some other tests (because they were all set out visibly even with names) and it didn't look like my standing was good. My last semester class was genuinely easier (though I don't think sufficiently so to explain the difference between an A and failing) and because it was easier there are aspects of my preparation that are wobblier than they need to be to handle this class, and also everyone else who took this professor last semester had a chance to learn how to prepare for her tests. I overheard some students talking about how it was last semester: "You got a 40! How did you manage to get as high as a 40!" In that context, my 58 doesn't look that bad. But I'm on a curve with students who already had time to adjust.
I also have messed up other sources of points already -- I managed not to realize there was homework till I had missed a chunk of it -- and there were some other things also about executive function problems I'm having too tedious to explain.
I also just don't think orgo is the kind of class where there is a ton of help or wiggle room available. A major point of the class is to stress you out and see how your relative standing shakes out under those circumstances.
Second semester organic classes are not just harder but way more cumulative than first semester.
Yes to this. Another thing that went wrong is I said to myself, oh, I should do orgo consistently over winter break. Then I didn't do that in part because I couldn't see a second semester syllabus, didn't know what textbook I would be using, etc. It turned out that I really should have listened to the me who told myself to do orgo consistently over winter break, and it was the same textbook, although I missed a chapter which I had to catch up on, etc. I just started forgetting stuff I really needed to remember. It's likely that the students who were in this class last semester got this excellent advice explicitly and knew what book they'd be using.
When I drop, because I think it's the right choice, I need to make a big point to work through the whole book, and bust out my Anki flashcards and really make sure I am constantly reviewing the things I need to remember .
Christ, you're ambitious
It just reads like you're doing to much
There is truth to both these things but at least right now it's more about how my attention is divided/confused than about the actual amount of work I'm doing. I don't think the real obstacle to good performance right now is not having time to study. If I were in a good mood and remembering to take my Adderall and running my pomodoro timer and everything else, there would be plenty of time.
were you short on time?
Among other things, I was definitely short on time, and I am also kicking myself because I have an accommodation to take the test in a quiet place, but I did not get around to having her sign a form I needed her to, and I might have lost a full letter grade to her constant announcements during the last ten minutes of the test period. The announcements were frequent during the rest of the test too. I also don't think I was appropriately medicated; today I took 10 mg of Adderall and that felt like the right dose but in the past I have taken 5. Maybe the right dose for me is just increasing.
My doc put me on 20 mg 2x/day but 10 feels fine. It was implied that 20 is a standard grownup dose, though.
Really sorry about all this, hope it all goes away. I'm hesitant to offer any advice since you know a whole lot more about these issues and certainly your own life, but i think if you are the kind of adhd person who's prone to being overambitious and overextending yourself you have to always be vigilant and I kind of have a feeling you are. Don't juggle more things in your life and have more projects than you have to for starters. And please take your dang meds!! And probably experiment with dosage and take ssris but wth do i know
I also want to say that a few posts or statuses from you played a significant part in making me suspect i had adhd and getting a diagnosis, and now i feel incredibly dumb and shitty for never thanking you or telling you that, thank you, you literally changed my life
because it would devour your bandwidth and impose a rigidity on your life that I think, judging by what little I know of you here, you would find pretty inimical.
There is truth to this too, and it's a concern my mother expressed. FWIW, one of my current bosses and my old boss, both psychiatrists, thought medical school was a good idea for me. Neither of them know the extent of my mood problems, but my old boss can probably intuit it. And they thought I should do it partly because if you can get through it, the power and freedom to do lots of different kinds of interesting work is a big reward. My old boss's large concern with me and medical education was that I would be really bad about shutting up things I thought were fucked up in a hierarchical system in which it is often necessary to shut up; I'm sure you all can, um, imagine why he'd say that.
thank you, you literally changed my life
I'm so happy! Also from one person with ADHD to another, how can I judge something coming late! But seriously, there's nothing to forgive.
Just Friday one of the people I was freaking out to at ballet turned out to have ADHD and we were bonding about that and I was showing her my wallet-key assemblage. She was pretty excited about the retractable keychain/badge holder clip thing. I fear she was not fully taking in the power of the large colorful easy-to-lay-eyes-on wristlet, but everyone's gotta take their own journey.
Also from one person with ADHD to another, how can I judge something coming late
OK, LMAO.
Those things sound brilliant.
I feel like supermarkets should start getting into the meal kit thing. They have all the ingredients right there!
They have over here. Not assembled on demand, but raw ingredients for a meal all packaged together.
Oscar Mayer lunch meat makes my stomach feel bad.
19/20: For some reason, there's a difference in order of topics that are covered across the two semesters, so it can be extra hard to change across schools. Typically within a school, professors agree to follow the same textbook and cover consistent chapters in first vs second semester. IME, the biggest difference in classes isn't really style of lecturing (although classes with lecture/discussion format are better) but in style of grading. In courses I taught most often, we had well-developed systems of partial credit, even on multiple choice questions, to reward students for showing what they did know. Some folks grade all-or-nothing, and their grading curve ends up poorly differentiating students in the B/C range.
It sounds like your decision to withdraw is made, but I want to recite the talk I and every professor gave students who did poorly on their second exam in second semester and came in to discuss withdrawing from the course: Student, the first third of the class builds mostly on topics you learned first semester and includes some material that won't be used often later in the class. The second exam will look like the third exam and the final in terms of both material and the type of questions you will be asked and will rely on mastery of this material. We work hard every year to make sure you receive your grade on this exam before the drop deadline because we want you to have this important performance indicator while there is time to withdraw. Some students are able to improve their grades for the third exam and final, but historically, most do not.
That said, next time, there are probably three very helpful TAs sitting at totally empty office hours who would love to help you! There are probably more for other sections. I would help students design flashcards, work old exam problems, help with upcoming homework, on and on. I also ran huge review sessions before the final summarizing literally everything they would need to know for the exam (those were well-attended).
I was probably a shitty TA. In my defense, I still have trouble explaining shit to people.
I'm a little bit impressed with myself for spending 15 years at medical schools and never once being helpful to someone who didn't already have an M.D.
Student, the first third of the class builds mostly on topics you learned first semester and includes some material that won't be used often later in the class.
It definitely felt like part of the problem was that more of the test than I anticipated was testing how well we remembered Orgo 1. But my chance to leave with a W is going to go away before the second midterm even happens, let alone is graded.
That said, next time, there are probably three very helpful TAs sitting at totally empty office hours who would love to help you!
I think part of my block about this (and I took in your offer and was grateful and may take you up on it) is that my subjective experience is not of not understanding the material. I read the book and do problems and it all seems pretty clear. When I'm doing homework questions, I either get them right or don't, but when I don't I look at the explanation and I understand why I didn't. Occasionally I get to the point of really feeling like I don't understand some problem, and I write out a question and plan to go to office hours but I figure it out before that happens. On this test there were definitely some questions where I realized that there was something relevant I didn't know, but it was an unknown unknown and so I didn't know to ask about it.
I am probably incorrectly discounting the degree to which I'd remember something better if I encountered it in an interpersonal context as opposed to just working on my own, but it's hard to know how to approach office hours if I don't have a question.
So, the mental health + school stuff. I've been extremely lucky in that respect, so I might be downplaying how hard it is with an extra degree of difficulty. Every part of your life that isn't school shrinks. The folks I know who are docs wanted the end result so badly they'd have walked through fire if that would have gotten them an MD. Is that you? I am sure you could make it through every hoop, but do you want the end result so badly you sacrifice nearly every other aspect of your life? You won't get much exercise; you won't be able to eat well. You'll look confused when people ask if you have hobbies. You'll make and cancel a ridiculous number of doctor's appointments because your schedule changed on short notice. You'll live on adrenaline and get super sick with what should have been a normal cold, then take the time you need, then cycle back. In short, at some point, your body and brain will literally not do what you want, no matter how badly you want them to. You'll lose words in conversation; you won't be able to problem-solve. You'll end up with a nerve injury that won't seem to heal. I mean, you're clearly passionate and work incredibly hard; can you pull yourself away from that kind of void? I have a tendency to think if I just work a little harder, I'll get over the hump and get some breathing room. It's usually true, but when it's not, I just work harder and harder until I just . . . can't . . . I'm working on recalibrating, but it's a hard habit to break.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that what you're experiencing is probably not going to fix itself and will continue to happen when you experience a certain set of conditions. I suspect med school is exactly those conditions, as is (some iterations of) grad school. I don't know what the durable solution is, but I know that it will be really hard to take care of yourself if you don't find a more global solution. I think it may be slightly different than ADHD or depression, more a "driven overachiever" thing, but I really hope you can crack the code, because it will let you pursue what you love without it damaging you.
37: Do get in touch; I liked tutoring. I have vague notions of contacting our local U but am not sure exactly how I'd want to proceed. It's probably silly to suggest what is going wrong in a thread here, but this is a very common thing students have. For office hours, there are a bunch of ways to approach it. First is finding a TA who gets you. I was often the only female TA for a class, and so I worked with a lot of female students who just didn't "see" 3D spatial relations, where the male TAs were just like, "Can't you just SEE it?" whereas I literally could not for years and had to find a bunch of strategies that worked for me. So, go to more than one to figure out who clicks. Second, sometimes students would just say they felt pretty good about the material but wanted more practice problems that would look like exam questions (homework problems were often more limited in scope and exams required you to put together a lot of topics on the fly). So, I'd make up problems and we'd work them. Or they'd just ask for a review of a topic, and I'd highlight patterns they may not have recognized or link new material to some concept they'd already mastered (lectures often don't allow enough time to do this well). Sometimes, we'd go through their graded exams to see whether I saw something in common in what they were missing and could suggest a strategy to address it. (For example, for people whose performance flagged on the last questions even though the early ones showed good mastery, I'd tell them to start at the end, where the highest value questions were and sacrifice a few low-value multiple choice questions if they were pressed for time or just out of brain power.) At any rate, I think there's some value in having more interaction about the material to try to suss out some of the unknown unknowns before you get to exam time, and office hours are frequently a good time to do that and cheaper/easier than trying a private tutor. (That said, some kids absolutely needed a private tutor. The ones I tutored nearly all had some kind of attention issue that would have rendered the mild chaos of office hours totally useless for their needs.)
The folks I know who are docs wanted the end result so badly they'd have walked through fire if that would have gotten them an MD. Is that you?
mmm...I really want a license. I want that more than I want any other career outcome. The future without one seems dark to me. I was talking to a friend about all my career anxieties a few months ago, how even software seemed potentially dubious since it's somewhat sexist and incredibly ageist, and he was not in fine fettle in terms of saying the right thing, and trying to reassure me that I could get some kind of PM type job at a tech company. Since he wants that kind of work, I could not communicate the extent to which I thought being a middle manager at a private tech company, not *even* a developer who at least got to work on interesting technical problems, seemed crushing to me.
There are other ways to do it but they still all involve school. Maybe it's me in the sense that if what I have to do is tolerate suffering, fine. The problem is that the nature of my problems sometimes means I can't will myself to focus on work. It's not really about being unable to trudge through a lot of psychic pain, but more concern that I actually can't jump high enough to make it through the hoop, given my mental state. And then the other concern is that it is not just a matter of whether I can tolerate misery but whether choosing to constitutes a serious hazard.
My best friend is also a primary care doctor, and I don't think she wanted it more than anything. She just kept putting one miserable foot in front of the other until she was done. She also thought medical school was a fine plan for me, and she does know about my mood problems. But maybe doctors are all just very biased; if they did this painful thing they need to tell themselves it was worth it, and that means telling other people to do it too.
Sympathies, Tia. That sounds awful.
I like my primary care doctor because he always points out how slowly I've been getting fatter before he starts me on Lipitor.
Sympathies,Tia; it sounds like a rough few months! Can you remind me again why you've chosen To pursue med school, in particular?
Can you remind me again why you've chosen To pursue med school, in particular?
So here are the possible tracks.
1) Clinical psychology: the most logical, were it not for the fact that there is no good program for me in terms of research interests in the New York City area, where I am committed to staying. There were a couple of faculty that could be okay if I squinted, and I pursued the possibility of working with both of them, and neither worked out. I also was in serious conversation with one PI at McGill (Montreal was one of the few places I could imagine moving) but he ghosted me, and maybe it was for the best, because I don't really want to move.
2) MSW: Non trivially long and expensive path to licensure without setting you up to make money in the end. I mean, you can make a good living if you maintain a full-time private practice but I don't think that's how I would be happiest or most effective as a therapist. My own therapist, an MSW, told me not to get an MSW unless I could go to Hunter, with it's comparatively low tuition. It is also not a research credential, and I am still trying to/still interested in working in academia. (A commitment I didn't list the continued attempt to work on this goddamned paper which I am, unsurprisingly, not making a ton of progress on.) I am not super interested in the MSW coursework and it is hard for me to push myself through things I'm not interested in.
3) Medical school: extremely miserable and demanding while you're doing it but once you're done, you can make a lot of money for not much work* and do a lot of different kinds of work. An MD is a research credential. The effort it takes to support yourself and pay your debt leaves plenty of space for whatever service work or research you're interested in. I am interested in the coursework. I'm interested in organic chemistry!
*This might make some doctors laugh in rueful disbelief. This does not describe the life of my best friend the primary care doctor. It is, however, true of psychiatrists in Manhattan. Not even extremely sweeping health care reform would touch this; as long as there are a lot of unhappy rich people in New York, there will be plenty of appetite for paying for therapy from the highest status providers. Heck, I know not-that-rich people who pay a lot of money out of pocket to see their psychiatrists, even see their psychiatrists for weekly therapy. It's just very high priority to them or their families to get them to the mental health provider they feel helps them the most.
extremely miserable and demanding while you're doing it
And actually, the miserable part is maybe not even that long. As far as I can tell, psychiatry residency is not bad if you can get into a good one.
45: psychiatry residency is pretty lifestyle friendly. The psychiatry people who are taking insurance do work really hard.
Wait. People see psychiatrists for weekly therapy just because they've gone to school for longer than others?
Also I kee reading MSW as masters of social work. Isn't the LMFW or something also something I've seen that lets people be therapists?
So the end goal is to be a therapist? That does sound like a wonderful fit for you. I'd be a little jealous, as I've always harbored a shadow life-not-traveled of that career.
(Therapy plus research is not my shadow fantasy career. Just the therapy part.)
48: MSW is the degree here if you want to be an LICSW.
They have LMHC with other counseling degrees but they don't have a temporary licensure that allows them to see Medicaid patients until they have finished all supervision - at least in MA.
47: People who see psychiatrists for therapy can also have the same person prescribe their meds. While split treatment works fine for most people, there's arguably a benefit to somebody prescribing meds who has a full picture of the patient's mental life. But it's a luxury for most people.
Wait. People see psychiatrists for weekly therapy just because they've gone to school for longer than others?
Yes. Many people do this. To be fair, there's a reason to do it besides the fact that it's a Veblen good, which is that you can get your meds managed by someone who knows you well. (Oh wait I see BG made this point.) But I also know psychiatrists who do therapy and don't do med management! I saw one of them once but then was like, what the hell I can't afford this? But you know what, she was great, *and* I don't think I understood my own out of network coverage at the time, and if I had, considering that she was willing to come down to 300 an hour for me, and considering that at the time I had decent disposable income, I might have decided that 400 a month was worth it to see her. Some people go to psychiatrists for 3x a week psychoanalysis! "Psychiatrists don't do therapy" is a misconception held by middle class people, because psychiatrists who make their money taking insurance don't do therapy. People with money go to psychiatrists for therapy, and sometimes poor people go to psychiatrists for therapy, because the psychiatrists who don't take insurance are often interested in trying to serve other people than the very comfortable. In my clinic my boss sees all the Spanish speaking patients. I'd love to fix up my Spanish once and for all and be able to do this as well. It is badly needed in NYC.
There are other kind of master's degrees that can be a path to a license but they all have all the disadvantages of the MSW, with fewer advantages.
So the end goal is to be a therapist?
Yeah. That's what I mean when I say I want a license. I'm a therapist now but in a very unstably employed sort of way. I want some kind of professional status, to be able to see all kinds of people, to eventually supervise, etc. I was at a CRAFT training last summer and I met this sixty something woman who good god was like the ghost of Christmas future. She even had my same name. She was visibly queer and wore colorful gender-complicated clothes the same way I do. In fact she gushed a bit about a dress I was wearing. It was just after Pride weekend and she immediately picked me out as someone to chat with about Pride, about festivals similar in character to Burning Man, etc. Anyway, she had also dropped out of a clinical phd program, and had also kept working in the field, and she had turned *totally obnoxious*, asserting expertise and opinion-as-fact with way too much vigor, in what was obvious overcompensation for an entire career of low professional status. I had already seen this potential future for myself, and I've been trying to address the issue, but it sure underlined the problem to see it embodied in a human being. Also I want to be able to make enough money to feel decently safe and comfortable, which I don't right now.
I'm sure you'd be a good therapist, heebs. But you're a teacher, which requires skill at one-on-one interaction with upset people, so you can still exercise thoe muscles. Honestly my single best moment when I was an adjunct was when one of my students came to tell me she was suicidal and discuss whether she should withdraw for the semester. I was like, finally, something I know how to handle!
I bet I would make a really shitty therapist, but I might be able to create a practice around telling people they need to work less.
50: Down to $300! In MA $300/hr is full cash fee for psychiatrist doing therapy. $175 for a good social worker and a psychologist is around $250. Maybe there's somebody out there charging $350.
Some really old school analysts refuse to prescribe meds.
Tia is right about rich and low fee services outside of insurance. Also most residents are trained in some psychotherapy and they will see patients through insurance.
That said, Boston and San Francisco are very different from the rest of the country when it comes to psychiatrists seeing patients for therapy and not taking insurance. New York is in its own league when it comes to psychotherapy.
"New York is in its own league when it comes to psychotherapy."
Yep. I don't know a single person in London who is in therapy and it feels sometimes like I barely know anyone in New York who isn't.
That works better than "therapist." I have no credentials.
But I feel guilty about not being in therapy! I keep on meaning to and then I don't get around to it.
Also, I'm mildly dismayed that you can tell I'm not in therapy. It shows?
61: You are unusually down-to-earth and sensible for a New Yorker. So, yes, it does.
61: After all these years, I assume we know all your secrets.
61: You are unusually down-to-earth and sensible for a New Yorker. So, yes, it does.
LB is down to earth and sensible and deserves the compliment. However, this qualifies as being quite unpleasant on a post about seeking treatment for a mood disorder, and I asked each and every commenter to do their best. Please knock it off.
The arc of history bends toward humorlessness.
64 endorsed, barring the complimentary bits which I'm not in a position to speak to. (And I kinda drew that reaction by trying to be funny, which I apologize for.)
65: No shortage of those this year.
But now I'm craving his ears.
Ok, I'm just going to lock comments on the post. I'm grateful for the advice and support that was useful, and lk and ydneW, I'll reach out to you. It's not okay for me to talk about depression and suicidality and have men around who don't care about the boundaries I set around it.