Member-only story
The Beginning of Outpatient Therapy
My experience needing intensive CBT therapy, as well as figuring out diagnoses, and thinking beyond them to heal myself.
The last month has been a really rough one for me. I’ve been in the hospital twice for panic attacks and went on leave from work until January 1st. One would call this a ‘crisis’. I would call it that as well.
It started with thoughts. Not suicidal ones per se, but intrusive thoughts of failure and insecurity. I was stressed and disappointed about my job and felt like a failure. Making it worse, my brain started saying I was stupid and ruining my own life, that no one loved me and I’m only a burden to everyone. It felt like a tornado that I got swept up in and suddenly I’m crying in pain and uber-ing to the hospital with suicidal thoughts in my head.
“I just want it to be over. The pain”, I told all of the doctors, therapists, and psychiatrists. I just wanted the pain to subside. It felt like someone (probably myself) was stabbing me in the chest, and that I had to be kept tense constantly to keep all of my body intact. The hospitals sent me home because I told them I didn’t have an actual ‘plan’ for suicide. However, we know this doesn’t make my pain any less valid.
