From Both Sides of the Couch

This Mother’s Day was the tenth one for my brother Jake,* and me without our mother. Yet my father didn’t even so much as pick up the phone to inquire how I might be faring on this sad milestone. Several of my friends did, as well as my brother which I greatly appreciated. But my father; he’ll never change. Read More

As other bloggers on this site have, and other therapists’ have, I had difficulty swallowing Jonathan Alpert’s recent op-ed piece which appeared in the Sunday, April 22, 2012 New York Times (“In Therapy Forever? Enough Already”). Read More

Five years into our treatment my psychiatrist Dr. Adena* asked for permission to write about my case in a chapter she was preparing for a textbook. I said that was fine on the condition that I could read it when she was done. "Ms. S. is a middle-aged woman whose strong schizoid tendencies would probably place her into low borderline personality organization." Read More

While I was a patient on a long-term unit for borderline personality disorder, I began to have flashbacks of myself being sexually abused. I was blind-sided because they came out of nowhere and up until then I had no reason to believe I had been abused. Read More

When I was in my early twenties I already knew I didn't want to have children. I just didn't have that "maternal instinct" as it is called. I kept this revelation to myself; as the women around me at work and in the Advertising Co-Ed Softball League, in which I was playing at the time, were planning their weddings and their future families. Read More

Change is hard. Small changes are hard and big changes are even more difficult. In the past, I was terrified of change. Giving up all of my self-destructive behaviors; changing them for more productive ones set off my inner alarm. I was sure nothing would be as effective as cutting, as starving, as my addiction to drugs — they were all used to numb myself. Read More

I've been in a serious funk for the last two weeks. We've had a family crisis which made me sad with feelings reminiscent of depression. I've had a hard time concentrating and motivating myself to get anything done. Read More

I left my first job as a social worker in a cloud of shame and humiliation. After two psychiatric hospitalizations for depression in rapid succession, I came back from hospitalization number two to find that my caseload had been reduced by half. Read More

Any semblance of credibility I had was shattered. When I relapsed into my anorexia I did so in dramatic fashion with numerous physical complaints of chest pain, abdominal pain, dizziness, and other vague ailments. As I continued to lose weight my grievances intensified and I insisted to my psychiatrist that the aches and pains were very real. Read More

I was not making progress, I was slipping and sliding in and out of the anorexia. I sat in Dr. Adena's office sobbing because nothing in my life was going right. I remarked "You must be so frustrated with me." I didn't expect her response as she nodded confirming one of my worst fears. Read More

I lay down and waited to die. It was my second and most deliberate suicide attempt. I had just swallowed a month's supply of my antidepressants—sixty capsules. I could have called 911, called my mother, or knocked on a neighbor's door. But I did none of those things. Instead I curled up on my unmade bed and just waited. Read More

When I was so severely ill, my illness became my identity, the only way I had to distinguish myself from the rest of the world. The anorexia was the first thing at which I was truly successful.The eating disorder sucked me in, it swallowed me, it consumed me. Losing weight became my focus..it was more important than my life. Read More