Dysthymia. A name to the face of my monster. I tell people up and down all the time that I believe in both medication and therapy as means of treating depression. I always said I didn’t need chemical treatment because my depression wasn’t…couldn’t…be chemical. My life was too fucked up to have a chemical imbalance in my brain on top of my own shit luck. Could it? I have been to 4 therapists counting the one that I saw today and no one… not one of them suggested there may be a sub-diagnosis to what is wrong with me… except today. She caught me off guard asking: “so what was your actual diagnosis?”. I didn’t know what to say. I almost thought that she was questioning whether or not I had depression or anxiety. I wanted to just be like “I guess nothing, sorry. Bye.” and leave. But I didn’t. And I’m glad I didn’t. I just said, initially it was diagnosed as post-partum depression and it never changed from that. Having that diagnosis or self diagnosing myself always got me to where I needed to go. She asked me if I was familiar with “dysthymia”. I wasn’t. She explained how depression as a broad term is more like the flu - hits hard, effects you hard. Whereas, dysthymia is more like allergies. It shows up often, can seem tolerable even though you’re not feeling yourself. This was the first time I had entered therapy with a purpose with what I thought was anxiety (it is but this was something I just thought was me). I thought all to often that I was making myself have these issues for attention, because I could function at school…at work…at home. Therapists have told me “why are you here?” because I seemed okay that day or that week, or noticed an “upswing” in my pre-session questionnaires like we were making improvement. I always thought that I was really good at burying my issues and appearing okay everywhere that I needed to be okay at. APPARENTLY this a thing. A sub-type of depression where you just don’t feel 100% a lot of the time but frequently doesn’t affect your work/school/home life from a first glance. I thought I was an emotionally indifferent freak but at the same time an emotional wreck.
I got up enough courage when I woke up this morning to tell myself “THIS FEELING IS NOT OKAY”. I did something about it. But now, I feel remorse over it. Simply because I don’t know if my insurance covers the session. I may finally be getting the real treatment I need and I may have to turn it down because I CAN’T AFFORD IT. What the fuck kind of fucked up country do we live in where we all have to walk around like a bunch of mentally ill zombies just because the help we need is just out of reach. I am sick and tired of just picking up the scraps I could get because I couldn’t afford to “shop around” for the correct help I needed. Maybe I would’ve been working on this a lot more a long time ago. If I find out this visit cost me just under $300. I may lose my mind because today is the closest I’ve felt to getting what I’ve needed in so so SO long.
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