I’ve always been pretty open about my struggles with mental health. I’ve been in therapy since my freshman year of college and taking medication for anxiety since junior year. It doesn’t define my entire life, but it has impacted it.
While I’m upfront about how it’s been on the surface, this doesn’t mean I’ve been honest with myself about how hard it’s been. The last few months in particular have been incredibly difficult, and it wasn’t until I sat down with my therapist and was truthful about what my thoughts have been like that I realized the rough shape I was in.
Here’s the thing: therapy isn’t going to work if you aren’t honest with your therapist. Yes, it’s absolutely terrifying to say what goes on in your head, especially to someone you may not have a firm relationship with yet. The thing with therapy is that it’s there to help you process what you’ve been through, even if that experience seems “small” to you.
I realized that I was minimizing my experiences. Last semester was really rough for me emotionally and I never actually recovered from it. I hadn’t worked through what happened with my housemates, which ended up following me into the summer and, subsequently, my senior year. I’ve been missing classes and dropping shifts at work. I haven’t been doing things I love. I’ve been isolating too much and lashing out at the people I love most, and I was never honest with my therapist about it until this last week.
Once I came forward with how I had been feeling for over half a year, my therapist came up with a plan for me to actually work on what has been troubling me. We were able to figure out that the medication I’ve been taking may be at too low a dose to help with depression on top of anxiety, so we talked about putting me on a higher dose to help with both. We talked about what I have to do moving forward to help with depression and agreed to meet once a week until visible progress has been made.
It hasn’t been long, but having someone who listens to me and ensures that I’m safe and working to be okay has helped. The only thing that helps more is when I’m honest with him (and myself) about the fact that I’m struggling. It’s okay to be having a difficult time; being honest about it with others goes a long way.