I remember my therapist telling me that I had a crisis of meaning that she attributed to my depression - that I won't do anyhing unless I have a very good reason to. I was very confused about what she meant by this. Doesn't everyone has a reason for doing something? People don't do stuff just because, there's always a point to their actions, some sort of motivation, even if they themselves don't know what that is. Right? Isn't this just common knowledge? Am I going insane?
Recently I found a name for what I suffer from - chronic fatigue, and I suddenly understood that my therapist meant.
I have so many things I need to do and so little capacity to do anything at all, that doing something that doesn't give me either immediate results (like showering -> getting clean) or absolutely guaranteed future results (like exercising regularly -> feeling better physically) is a waste of energy. When you live with such a condition, every action, even the smallest one, is always weighed on the scales of "what would it cost me" and "what would I get out of it".
But of course a professional would never believe a patient when they say "I just can't do it, I don't have the capacity". So there must be another reason for why I couldn't be productive, like loss of meaning and lack of interest caused by depression. As if wasn't constantly aware of how much I wanted things and how much they meant to me, exactly because I couldn't do them.
I had so much misunderstandings with this therapist, and it always baffled me, because from my point of view, I talked about very simple things that I said very plainly and openly. And now it dawned on me. It's not that she didn't understand very simple concepts like "motivation" and whatnot. She just didn't believe me. She was confused because she kept looking for the "truth" behind my condition and couldn't find any.
"It wasn't that she didn't understand what I was telling her, it was that she didn't believe me" is one of the best and most succinct summaries of bad therapy I've ever come across. Thank you.
tangentwithtanner
titsay
gummygunk
areudirty
