“…You know, I’ve been there. It was a tough time, and I have no doubt it’s tough for you. Here’s what I did to get through it …“
If you’ve been through a great deal of sadness, angst, difficulty, and struggle, it doesn’t need to go to waste. While you can’t go back and erase the experience as if it never happened, there really is something better. And that is to share with others who are hurting, showing them how you weathered the storm. Your painful experiences can provide hope for others.
Have you ever been against the wall with no way out? Struggling to find answers and solutions? You KNOW how alone you can feel at a time like that. The fact you feel so alone seems to make finding solutions that much more bleak.
Eventually, you probably did find a solution, or else if you didn’t, you survived it and are now here to talk about it.
Others are facing the struggle you were, and haven’t survived it yet. They need to have someone to talk to just as you wished you did. When you allow that, your painful experiences can provide hope for others … IF you’re willing to share them. It’s not all that easy to expose yourself, but you can do so much good if you’re willing.
Take Melanie, for example.
She struggled with depression, and her daughter is diagnosed with bipolar II disorder. Melanie has so many stories to tell… For instance, her depression was untreated at the time she married. Her husband, Jim, was in medical school, and was always gone, studying with his study group. It was a great weight on a new marriage, and she tried to overcome her despair.
But she couldn’t shake the feeling that her husband had become apathetic about her as his wife. The pain she felt about it was more than she could bear. She’d close herself in a blanket closet and scream into the blankets so no one would hear her. It felt so hopeless.
Years later, after he finished his training, he continued to be extremely busy and away from home. A dark cloud pervaded her mind and outlook, and it seemed obvious it would never get better. She even considered suicide…
As one year bled into another, children were born and growing up. Melanie settled into a complacent frame of mind. One that helped her to not expect more from her husband than he was giving to her and the family. She knew she had married a future physician, and that his time would be in demand.
But she didn’t know his time was never going to be his own. Or hers.
Still, she hadn’t expected to be this lonely. But she had to put on her big girl panties and accept the life she was living. It took awhile of ups and downs. Getting up, falling down, and getting up again. But little by little she was able to find things to involve herself in to contribute.
By the time the kids were in high school, he agreed to see a marriage counselor with her. A friend had suggested that she be cautious about blaming him, if she wanted good to come from the counseling.
Taking her friend’s advice, she approached couples’ counseling as an opportunity to find out what her husband needed, and to endeavor to contribute to meeting those needs. She hoped that he would want to know her needs, too, eventually.
The couples’ therapy seemed to be progressing fine, until he admitted that with the distance between them he had considered pursuing women he worked with, but had never taken the first step. He truly wondered if she was involved with someone else due to her distance from him.
At a time like this, exposing your pain is harder than retaliating… but it’s still far preferable, and somehow Melanie sensed this.
But, she was devastated. The idea that he had looked at any other woman besides her–really looked, seriously thought about it–just seemed to break some aspect of their marriage vows in her mind. She wondered how they could possibly go forward from here.
With hard work, tears, and pain, the counselor and her husband helped her see that it was because of their vows that he had never acted on those thoughts. And that, if they were both willing, they were in a strategic place to begin a new level of commitment…. one that included time together, caring for each other in ways the other needed, and working every day to nurture love between them.
Well, it worked.
They planned a trip to Italy to study Melanie’s favorite artists while the kids were still in high school. After the youngest graduated, they took a second honeymoon to Denmark, to see where her husband’s grandparents had lived and to search out other relatives.
By the time Melanie was 50, she was enjoying life in ways she never had before. And she discovered she had much to share.
While they were enjoying a cruise in Alaska, she met a young woman whose husband was in medical school. This new friend seemed to be having some struggles similar to those she and her husband had so many years ago.
Since painful experiences can provide hope for others in pain, she decided to open up and talk about her own story to this young woman… and later to both of them together.
So they met for dinner as a foursome and talked about the problems that plagued their early marriage. and how close they had come to losing each other. They talked about ambition and how sometimes physicians lose sight of their family’s needs because of the demands of their practice. They spoke about her problems with depression and how her unrest fed the depression, and prolonged it.
It turned out that the younger couple wanted to have dinner with them every night for the rest of the cruise–yep!–and Melanie and her husband took them under their wing to warn them of the pitfalls ahead and how they would do it differently if they could do it over.
And even now, years later, the two couples are still friends, and have helped each other through a number of ups and downs.
When Melanie’s daughter was diagnosed with bipolar II disorder, she and her husband needed lots of support. They were doing all they knew to do to help their daughter, but her condition had a way of bringing them face to face with their own powerlessness.
The young couple from the cruise stepped up to offer their support to Melanie’s and Jim’s daughter and to let her know she had friends who supported her no matter what. They wanted to give forward the kindness her parents had shown them — because painful experiences can provide hope if we share them.
So beautiful. So generous.
To say they lived happily ever after is a bit of an exaggeration… but what is happily ever after anyway, but loving and being loved, facing obstacles and tragedies together, and knowing you have each other’s back?
(Wish we all had that, right?…. we sure need it.)
At Innovative Psychiatry, we see patients with stories like Melanie’s. People whose lives and their frustration with it contributes to their depression and anxiety. We encourage them to face the truth about themselves and the other players in their life’s story and find out how to embrace their lives head-on and realistically.
Sometimes a change of circumstances can help a great deal. Other times, treatment is needed. For severe depression and anxiety, PTSD, substance use, social anxiety, alcohol use, and suicidal thinking. If the symptoms are too severe to fix through counseling and talk therapy, or don’t respond to other treatments, there may be an opportunity for a whole different approach. IV ketamine treatment may help them manage circumstances more effectively.
It’s amazing what solutions can be found when symptoms of a disorder lift.
We treat people with IV ketamine for these specific disorders, and find the treatment extraordinarily helpful in most cases.
When you come in for treatment, you’ll see we’ve taken every care care to create a space that is calm, serene, welcoming. It’s like a spa. Heated, leather recliners that adjust perfectly to let you really realx.
And while you’re here, settling in, you’ll notice an elegant little white box on the table. That unassuming box is more valuable than you might have guessed. The word Novaerus graces the front of it, as it quietly works away. And what is it doing? Well, since we’re committed to always go the extra mile, those white boxes serve as investments in your health. Using plasma cell technology, they destroy viruses, including all the COVID variants, as well as bacteria and mold. When you’re in our offices, you’re protected from pathogens that would make you sick.
Developed by NASA and the Department of Defense, these units were designed to destroy pathogens in the Space Station, and are more than sufficient for destroying those pathogens in our office. What’s important is that you’re safe from infection while you’re here, so you’re free of anxiety about flu or pandemic fallout. Focus on your treatment, and the insights you gain. It’s all part of the healing process.
You’ve lived too long with the nagging wounds and symptoms that have installed obstacles all through your life. It can be so much better for you.
If you have symptoms like we’ve described, and no other treatment has helped, call us.
Step up to embrace your freedom and hope.
To the restoration of your best self,
