SearchA self-advocacy column by Eric Gmeinder
What Could Be Better Than Therapy?
Eric Gmeinder,
Guest Writer
I came around to writing my column exceptionally late this weekend; I had no idea what to write about.
Then on Sunday afternoon, I Googled phrases like “therapy doesn’t work.” Recently a couple people recommended seeing a therapist to me. Having not seen one for almost a year, I doubted that seeing one again would work for me. People used to tell me I was “stubborn” for not following my therapists’ advice, but I never really thought so. I feel like they (like most of society) were writing off my depression as purely a mental illness, and not something I had reason to feel.
The first sources I found expressed their belief that positive thinking doesn’t work. My thoughts after trying positive thinking had been, “I’m thinking more positively, so dammit, why am I not happy yet?” The sources I found said that people with low self-esteem (which I don’t have) who try to be more positive feel like they’re lying to themselves by giving themselves lovey-dovey affirmations. That made sense; I know there’s a way out of the garbage I currently put up with in my life, but it doesn’t make enduring it any more fun. What was even more surprising was that “positive thinking” apparently backfires on some people! I don’t think it backfires on me, but I know it doesn’t help. And one article pointed out the irony that Norman Vincent Peale, author of the grandfather of self-help books, The Power of Positive Thinking, said disparaging things about some public figures.
Other sources validated a belief I’ve had for years. If we’re supposed to retrain ourselves to always be positive without taking action to change our surroundings as they are, then what would be the use of doing anything in life that you would find pleasurable? Should we just be amoebae for all our lives? And if so, what would the purpose of life even be? No works of fiction with happy endings – be they movies, novels, plays, video games etc. – end happily because the hero decides to make the most of how things are when he or she starts out. The sources I found argued that happiness should not be determined by learning to blindly accept bad situations but by solving what makes them bad. And even if I can’t change some things, I should at least be able to avoid them.
Finding these sources made my day. As I continue on with my hard life, I will also continue my struggle to be part of the community and have a normal life that others take for granted. And then the skeptics will see I really am better off.