Before I thought that a good psychiatrist appointment was something like “Oh you are magically cured, let’s take all the medications away and never see each other again as you are absolutely fine and you’ll be that way for ever”. But as you can read in the irony of the sentence, that is as far from reality as flying unicorns made of glitter. I’ve learned, the hard way, that a good appointment is that in which you can be honest about your journey, in which you can open about your darkest thoughts and don’t feel judged for having them. Is also those in which you can feel the person that listens, psychologist or psychiatrist, really cares about you for far more things than the mere paycheck you give them for the consultation and wants your well-being. It’s not a matter of how many medications you have added or substracted from your list at the end of the appointment, because that isn’t an objective measurement as much a people think it is, but rather your overall feeling of making any progress or at least, admiting with acceptance and grace the downfalls that come along the way. I’ve had appointments in which I’ve had medications removed, causing me absolute joy, only to find myself admitting that in that particular moment I wasn’t ready to take that space. Maybe some of us have to take our neurotransmitters in the shape of a pill and that’s okay.
I have also found myself accepting the non linear shape of recovery. Man, that’s a tough one. Because I can’t put in words the feeling of being better after going through a rough patch, and the paralizing fear of even thinking of not being that way for ever. And when the day comes, because it’ll eventually come, it’s horrible. You feel like a failure and like all of your effort was for nothing, and as our mind likes to trick us, we feel that THIS is the worst we have ever been even if that isn’t true. In my case I do feel that every time a relapse comes my way it’s somehow harder, not because I’m worse than ever, but because the amount of days that I spend feeling okay has increased. So you start feeling that you are finally yourself and that life has a more everlasting meaning and BAM, crisis again. It’s unexpected, even if you have gone through that 1000 times, you never believe it can happen again.
But as true as that might be, every crisis you are stronger, you are wiser, you have thicker skin. And that makes it easier to breathe again and come faster to the way life was before. In that way every downfall (as miserable as it feels) is a learning opportunity that is very valuable once you are able to look at it with some perspective.
It has been, still is, and will be a tough journey. Because every day you have to train your mind, you have to interiorize the lessons of the day and many times, you have to adapt to the unexpected and make the most of the saddest and toughest situations. We have to embrace our new normal.
