Dealing with Depression (part 2)

Getting better started out very slow.....it was meeting a new family Doctor for the first time, (moved to a new neighborhood) and I went for our introduction meeting and after all the usual questions were asked and answered, she said, "Is there anything else you would like to discuss?" So I thought this might be a good time to mention the bouts of pain in my head that I had been suffering through silently for 15 years, so she ordered and EEG and a MRI of my brain and I was later diagnosed with seizures (Who knew?) and severe Migraines. Then she asked,"Is there anything else?" and this torrent of words just started spewing from my mouth and I told her everything in one long winded breath because I was afraid if I stopped to take another breath I would close myself off and again and suffer more dark moods in silence.

She just took my hands in hers and quietly looked me in the eye and said,"First we are going to get you well physically and then we will get you well mentally." I felt my soul break free and dance. Then I wondered would I be able to really open up myself and let all the terrible things that I had to witness as a small child find words and escape my mouth? Would I let all the terrible thoughts that ran around my head, that just scared the hell out of me just thinking about them sometimes, actually escape through my mouth? I was either going to have to really trust and feel safe or I was going to have to find that part of me that just threw it all out there and let the chips fall where they may.

It took a few days for my first visit for my head to get shrunk, would I let my head get shrunk? Would I feel like I could talk to this Doctor and would she really be listening or would her head be somewhere else? caught up in her own day? (you know what I'm talking about, you've caught your doctors on that once or twice!) it was a very scary day for me. I just remember my sister telling me,"What ever you find out, what ever you might remember, don't tell me I don't want to know, I am not ready to remember, I don't want to remember!" How's that for support?? But that is another whole issue unto it's self.

I was very lucky that my "Shrink" really loved her job and did have my best interest at heart, with the same candor that I had opened up to with my new family Doctor I found myself half confessing/half tattling everything that had brought me there, to my breaking point. I thought, "So this is what a nervous breakdown felt like?" all that holding it in, all that hiding in myself, always worrying about what others would think or say, telling a few secrets that weren't supposed to leave the recesses of my childhood came out of me that day.... like the helium that escapes a popped balloon...but what would be the repercussions?

(continued)