being stuck

Intro:
This last summer I read a book from a therapist, that concluded with these words: "... my admiration for [my patients] is endless. Each week, they push themselves harder than Olympic athletes..."

That resonated strongly. I wanted to try and describe how hard that can be. This is my first attempt at writing what psychotherapy and my mental health journey was like.

A few hours before writing this, I had concluded my final session of three years of therapy. During that journey, a few different metaphors have come to mind for cyclothymia, depression, and therapy. This one made most sense when I sat down to write it.

Disclaimer: this is just my experience, I know everyone has their own journey which is different but just as real.

Seeing a Walsh Method practitioner was like you've fallen by the wayside and can't get up and feels like you've fractured something. Then you get some assistance, a splint, and BOOM you can walk (or hobble) again and hey! you gotta get back in the race! world ain't stopping just for you! thanks doc I'll be on my way.

Psychotherapy, depression and cyclothymia (which, when unmanaged can lead to bipolar disorder and schizophrenia -- I can only imagine what it must be like to live with the symptoms behind those diagnoses). These three experiences were more like you're walking opposite the park, fast, bouncing on your feet. You're lost in your thoughts and take a small wrong turn and find yourself in an unfamiliar spot. No worries, you tell yourself, thinking you can reconnect up ahead. So you keep walking, and return to those thoughts you were lost in, return to the bouncing feet, the quick gait, and look up to find a stone wall.

You turn around.

Another stone wall.
You look back.

An alleyway.

Was that always there? Where'd the stone wall go?

You're in the middle of an alleyway, high walls on either side. Stuffy, stale air.

Like the world got turned upside down.
You've fallen down the rabbit hole, Alice.

How'd you carry yourself here? You're a danger to yourself. In a eighty hour refusal to acknowledge reality, your hyper-focus on those four works meant you failed to see the crumbling footholds. And I bet, had you jumped at the end and finished all those projects, you'd still be living blind.

Back here, it's dark and you find another dead end facing you, but some light off to the right; so you shimmy through, squeezing yourself into a narrow gap. The walls behind you close in and things are moving very fast and there's no other way but this narrow gap; each shuffle wedges you further between two walls; each shuffle requires a pause, an inhale, closed eyes, and a grimace as you move further into less space. You look back one last time then turn your head forward, over your shoulder and slightly down, chin touching collarbone while your back scrapes against the brick. Something wet slides down your exposed shoulder. And you sniff and smell such dank and stale and lifeless air. The whole wall is slick in this section.

With grueling tenacity you squeeze yourself along and through that gap. Eyes permanently shut now. It's too dark, and tight, and scary to open them. It's like time slows -- no, it's like you're in limbo. The world keeps spinning but you're in this alternate reality only you can experience, lost in time and suffering. It becomes so consuming you can't recall how long you've been here. Or when you took the last shuffle forward. At some point you take another one.

Then you're clear and you stumble out to the street and take many breaths before looking up ... to some war-torn neighborhood; some post-apocalyptic city; the shadow of a charred, scarred, and fire-ravaged house stands out against a backdrop of flame. The world as you know it irrevocably changed. Smoke billows dark against the nighttime sky, illumined by the flicker of fire, which casts light on only the head of the behemoth, and you suspect the fire has been raging for ages to have such a cloud behind it.

It's scary. It takes tremendous courage to open your eyes.

You take a few steps forward, head spinning, still out of breath, each one painful and straining the ribs; slowly, one step forward, teetering off balance. And you don't fall but there's a whole maze ahead to navigate. But you can't navigate. The word itself doesn't register with limited faculties, and you move almost by instinct: forward, turning, following the roads, the maze, and it's all very scary, and growing increasingly dark, and you think back to the breath being squeezed out from you. And it's moving by in a blur, not a fast one, but a slow one; a world where your vision is blurred and you can't quite process things.

Bills? Deadlines? Once one passes the rest become meaningless. Emails pile up. Do not disturb is permanently on. You haven't eaten or drank anything in so long you sit in bed for more than 20 hours without needing to use the bathroom. To be immobile is to be stable. To be stable is progress. You cling to this thread of thought while paralyzed from an anxiety attack, struggling to fight off the swarm of other thoughts. Like clinging to a rope off the side of a boat in a sea storm - not covered in tar but slippery algae.

At times you want to go back, to retrace your steps, to squeeze through the gap. To be in the painful but familiar.

Or go back even further. You just took a mis-step, right?
You can get back on track,
right ?
The park is just over there.
Right ?

Please say yes.

Sometimes you do retrace your steps back to the gap. You tell yourself "No, I'll wedge myself back in there," though it looks narrower this time. Your arm barely fits but you try anyway. It's a one-way door. You keep trying. You can't help but to continue pushing yourself into pain. With sadness you hang your head and walk back into the maze.

At some point you start knocking door to door. Asking for help. Seeing if anyone lives in this ravaged neighborhood. No one answers. One may open the door, only to slam it in your face. Others don't even listen. Someone speaks a warm greeting but you've been burnt before and the wound is still too raw.

If you're lucky, someone may see you -- really see you -- and ask if you're okay. "Is everything alright? You don't look alright. Is it this new environment? Ah, I was afraid as well. It is scary. Here. Let's leave for a moment. I know a spot just over here to catch your breath." They look you straight in the eye and you know it's genuine. A chance to catch your breath. A moment shared. Then life takes them back and you're glad that you didn't drag them down but wonder, if they really did see you? Yes. Because you've found some new strength within to journey on.

Then, one day, you find a friend. The smoke and ash floating through the air lets up for a bit and someone throws open their window and greets you. Or, it's like you get a phone call from a stranger after, when in a moment of tremendous courage, you told someone you've been stumbling and may need some assistance. And the reception is terrible. But they don't hang up.

They ask you questions: what surface are you walking on? What's to your left? Your right? You realize you never looked backwards to see how you got here. Do you have proper shoes? Three times they ask you, Do you have proper shoes? It takes you three times to understand the question and they don't hang up.

Maybe you found them earlier. Maybe they encouraged you to shimmy through that tight gap.

I've not been there myself, they say, but I've heard from many how the roads twist, the maze doubles back on itself, the whole thing seems rigged against you and often, I hear, you don't even want to play the game so you sit down and let the world pass you by.

That's what they tell you. But mostly, they don't hang up. They ask you questions. Get to know you. Speak some suggestions. They listen. They tell you to keep walking, find that path up ahead. They can't take the steps for you. You must.

So you hang up and expect their call next week.

And next week they find you in the same spot. Paralyzed. You share an hour and
then lay back. This spot is comfortable.

You take a few steps.

A whole world later you move again.

The landscape and your perspective of it has entirely shifted, and you realize you were sitting on a path through the mess all along. Not a small clearing to setup camp. You discard that which no longer serves you, that were propped up hastily in the first place. And the old you can only be seen in pictures.

And then you find something that sounds like what they described: an end. The promised land. Not the world as it was before, as if your journey didn't matter at all. A clearer vantage point. The panoramic view that they watched you from all along. Ah, yes, you nod to yourself, that's where I took that misstep. And just over there, the alleyway with the narrow gap, oddly nostalgic. To be in limbo when time didn't matter.

More areas stand out. The places you avoided. The billowing smoke now a faint trail. Oh! You've found it -- the spot you gave up and sat down for weeks. Wow. And they didn't hang up?? That looks a little silly, to sit down there. A few roads away was a nice thoroughfare. What patience. They spoke with such compassion.

But what perseverance from you!

You notice there are others milling about down there. Lost or helping? Looking closer, it does seem like a treacherous bit of road to cross. Glancing back towards the road you climbed up, you notice it carries on, and past that hill it reconnects to the Great Road where you first took that wrong turn.

Strange – once back there it seems as though the world has higher resolution. Like you're seeing more details that you missed before. It's not really the same spot, but it's familiar. You take new paths through this part. Each step planted more firmly than when you first walked with bouncing feet. You're more aware now and "navigate" is a word you're intimately familiar with. In fact, it's one of the first things your faculties process. No matter what shakes you, you get back up and carry on. Sure, some setbacks, some wrong turns. Maybe another stone wall and alleyway. But a lot less scary this time. And a lot easier to backtrack from, before the walls close in.
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disclaimer: all views, thoughts and opinions expressed are strictly my own and do not reflect the opinions or beliefs of any websites, affiliates or organizations I may be associated with

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