Just back from therapy. Looking for opinions.

[polymath]

Got pretty deep with therapist today about my thought process. It is so bad I move from what I want to the next thing I want pretty exclusively and totally outer directed. I'm continuously looking to people to tell me what to do. If there is not someone to give me a task to do, I just zone out with a book or TV, or visit forums. This is of course has me so down, I'm contemplating the worst case scenario.

He suggested checking myself in to the treatment center across the street. I'ts not a suicide watch kind of place but more homey, I suppose. Immediate medical attention, therapy, individual and group, etc.

Of course I have reservations about it due to lack of freedom. Deep down I know it is my only hope at this point but just cant make a decision. The balancing act between hopelessness, stigma, reservation about my predicament, etc.

I was thinking on the way over about how men that came up how I did are just a statistic for the most part and thats why they're not here in any numbers. Men and women are just wired different, and the boys that had no decent older males are either dead, homeless, or in prison. At 37 I just managed to dodge all the predicaments I got into, like bar fights, drinking and driving, card games in smokey backrooms, chasing girls, etc. Hell, I even managed to talk the same cop out of arresting me for DUI twice in one night. Now I figure all that bad stuff is just catching up with me. Boys with no boundaries just don't make it to old age, something gets them. Am I wrong?

Off on a tangent. Do you guys have any experience with inpatient therapy and if so please do tell.

[lighter]

I hope you take T's advice.

Try to release thoughts of stigma and difficulty entering facility.

Focus on the here and now .....

focus on learning how to feel better.

Your distress tells you you need help.

Embrace it.

That's my advice.

Mo2

[Sealynx]

Polymath,
My best male friend was once in what sounds like a similar space to the one you describe. His then social worker girlfriend was able to intervene with a judge when he was arrested for a campus disturbance. The short term, mental health confinement  that resulted was very good for him. It ended up that he was diagnosed with some other issues that were treatable via medication. He is now working to manage his moods through a combination of medication and therapy and doing well.  I would take advantage of anything your therapist offers. You never know in what direction your answers may lie until you try them
Best of luck to you friend,
S.

[Ami]

I am an anti-therapy person cuz my NM is a practicing therapist. Maybe if Scott went in to the type of program you are suggesting, he might still be here.                                       Ami

[Twoapenny]

Hi Polymath,

I attended a psychiatric unit as an outpatient for several months after being repeatedly hospitalised with severe depression.  Every time I got better it only lasted fairly briefly because without any support or structure to my day I just drifted about achieving little and then beat myself up about it.  What was great about being an outpatient was that it gave me a structure and a focus without giving me the kind of pressure that working full time would have.  I did a wide range of activities (mostly pretty badly, but I enjoyed it) and had some CBT and took part in group therapy sessions.  It was a really positive experience, and the people I met there helped me understand that anyone can have mental health problems and that most people can manage them well enough to get their lives back on track.

If you are able to get it, I would say grab it with both hands.

[HeartofPilgrimage]

I think it sounds like a good idea. Of course, inpatient facilities vary widely so when I say "good idea" I mean the idea of going inpatient as long as the treatment center is good, is good.

I think that if you get up the guts to say "screw what it looks like to other people" (throw the obsession with appearance out the window) and go inpatient, that act in and of itself might be liberating. Loss of freedom? I've read most of your posts and you are prisoner of your own misery anyway. So losing outer freedom for a limited amount of time in order to gain inner freedom --- even a small measure of inner freedom --- sounds like a deal to me.

One of my favorite quotes is:

He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose. (Jim Elliott)

[polymath]

Thanks, all good points. I'll bite the bullet and give it a go.

[lighter]

That's good to hear, Polymath.

I'm glad.

Mo2

[Ami]

Can you take your lap top and talk to us from there, RS?                                     Ami

[HeartofPilgrimage]

I've been studying dynamic systems and their application to human development, and it occurred to me that if you are looking for some kind of "scientific proof" that somebody can have childhood X and become Y whenever everybody else that had childhood X became X, this might be where you want to look.

Dynamic systems looks at the way systems (and in the case of psychology, the system is the human organism) change. Whereas most of psychology looks at states and stability, dynamic systems as applied to psychology looks at the process of change.

I suspect you are already familiar with dynamic systems, with a user name like "polymath" and from some of your other comments. However you might not have thought of this theory in connection with your own stuff.

The Principle of Emergence says that the complex interaction of components of the system gives rise to new levels and functions.

The Principle of Nonlinearity says that there are multiple causes possible for every effect and multiple effects for every cause.

People are complex, nonlinear, self-organizing, dynamic systems.

The "randomness" in everyone's life, seen by much traditional social science as "noise" in the system, is seen in dynamic systems theory as complex unexplained variance.

To relate to some of your other posts, so what if Elvis and Howard Hughes had a similar background, nobody has an identical life. Identifying factors that contribute large amounts of variance to outcomes helps us in prediction, but we cannot absolutely predict outcomes for individuals because we can't control the "noise."

I agree with CB that you should just immerse yourself in the experience of being cared for by live people. This forum can be a part of your ongoing work once you are released. It would be too easy for you to get conflicting messages from the two sources. Let them take care of you, and let us know how it went later.

[polymath]

Thanks guys, all good advice...

HOP, I'll look into that. My thing about Elvis and Hughes is that true we all have individual tracks we've taken, it just that my early history closely matches those guys. In all my searching of male biographies (100's, presidents, movie stars, business leaders, teachers, etc.) I can't find one single man with no siblings, no father, doting mother who survived and thrived to ANY degree. Surely there is nothing new under the sun and if there were just a handful of men I would've found them.

An interesting aside, that may even help women on the board. My mom came over to see if she could help after my wife told her I was going to the inpatient center (my mistake there for not telling my wife that she was not to do that) and immediately went to the tears, I mean within 10 seconds. Now some of you are saying, 'her sons going to the hospital, of course she would get emotional and want to help'. But it's not like that, she's just too close and smothering. It didn't start till I told her I would rather have my wife, basically rejecting her help and setting a boundary.

When I told her that if she 'really' wanted to help me that she was going to have to start looking inside herself and stop saying 'once a mother always a mother'. I told her she was going to have to back off and let my wife help me with this issue. I even told her, as absolutely as nice as I could muster, that if she 'really, really' wanted to help her depressed and suicidal son, to go see a therapist, take an extensive psychological evaluation and let professionals share with her what her part in this whole mess was, and suggest behaviours that would allow her to have a better relationship with her son. Well, you can imagine what happened when that type of 'help' for her only son was suggested.

This morning, my first thoughts were something like this. From birth to now, my mom has had 4 male relationships, my father until my age 2, second husband from my age 10-12, current husband from my age 18 till now, and me for all years. That is the oddity, the abnormality. Between those relationships, there were no dating I was aware of, no efforts by her to be social with female friends to give her a chance to meet someone. I became her surrogate husband, the child she could lean on and not have to go out and experience the big bad world and all those mean men that just want one thing. Men that were boys that were faced with that type of pressure are going to grow up messed up.

I think my preaching message after all this would be, if your a mother of a boy (and girls too but really damaging to boys), please don't use emotion to control. Yes you feel like crying, its your nature, but its an unfair fight. Your boy has no choice in the matter. He must come to your rescue and will put on a face to take away your pain. He will then take this face into the world and it will cause him soooo much pain and suffering later. And also, big time important, is don't bail him out of trouble, no matter how much he works you. He must be made to face his problems. A good father will run interference between the two of you so if he's not around you have to do it, be strong.

[Hopalong]

I am SO glad you're getting help, Poly.

This was a decision from a deep strength in you that you haven't been able to feel up on the surface where the noise and thinking are.

But it's there, and it's wonderful. Deep place.

Deep peace and courage for the work, it's worth it!

We'll hear your news when it's healthy for you to touch base again.

Best wishes for it all,

Hops

[Ami]

Fight for your mind!                                                   Ami

[Ami]

I am sure we all could agree, here, that we have you  in our thoughts and prayers,RS!            Ami