Mutterings and Musings

Taking a BIG step

I have just come back from my first ever therapy session. I'm not entirely sure what I expected, but somehow it was and it wasn't what I got. The therapist (I knew she was called Leanne from the letter) chattered at a flyaway speed for several minutes, welcoming me and offering water and a seat, before remembering to introduce herself. When the conversation got around to the recent increase in my medicine dosage and I commented on the current side-effects, she hastened to assure me that they tend to fade after six to eight weeks - I didn't have the heart to say I am a pharmacist and well aware of it When my career did come up later, she didn't do either of the two normal approaches of either getting hostile (a lot of healthcare professionals get very defensive when dealing with a colleague-client) or jumping into the assumption I know everything (another common compliant - GPs in particular are great at dropping in jargon that flies over the heads of equally but differently qualified medical professionals). Instead she just spoke to me like well a normal person.

So of course I started crying.

I am sick and tired of crying. I am sick and tired of feeling sick and tired. And for the first time in my life, I have decided to be upfront and straightforward about myself. I have depression. I have suicidal thoughts. I have an overwhelming very nearly overwhelming desire to strangle people that talk at me instead of to me. Thinking about it, a lot of the time I want to strangle the talkers-to as well.

I also have a strong and passionate faith in my God and loosing my church would be fair worse than loosing a limb. I know plenty of people (myself sometimes included) that will argue you cannot be a 'true' Christian and have mental health issues. Especially depression. Christ died for you, you are part of God's family; how can you possibly be all that and still miserable? Thanks. That shows zero understanding of both mental ill-health and of God.

In an attempt to be more open about myself - something that I struggle to do - I have decided to participate in "Invalid Item"   by A Guest Visitor and no doubt there will be several posts on mental health in the next few weeks as I get used to speaking about it from a patient point of view and not just a pharmacist's. Despite having lived with mild-moderate depression for the past eighteen or nineteen years, it is only in the past few weeks that I have started talking freely about it. And it's somewhat scary.*



In the meantime, I am trying to work my way through some of the Psalms - re-writing them for my own personal use. Below is the first one, based on Psalm 102

STATIC

HeartSong 102  (E) My personalised rewording of Psalm 102 #2148131 by ~MM~

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm+102&version=NIV

*I also have a fear of sounding like one of those so-much-as-look-at-me-and-I'll-vomit-my-entire-life-story-at-you people. If that starts, please tell me x

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