Medication vs Therapy

I spent most of today crying again.  I have therapy every Monday morning. I told my therapist last week after my psychiatrist appointment how my doctor boosted my antidepressant medications for two weeks every month to compensate for the hormone changes causing chemical imbalances.  I think I may have mentioned this in my last message, but she basically said, "Well what kind of skills can you use instead of medications to help you through this."  She doesn't get it. I use skill out my ass and during this time THEY ARE NOT HELPING.  No one should feel like they are one big black hole for two weeks straight.  Those weeks feel like they last two years.  Those weeks make me feel so low, so lost, so alone, that I don't want to live.  (Don't worry. I promise I won't kill myself and that I don't think about that.  There's a difference between not wanting to live and wanting to kill oneself.)

Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)- a system of therapy to treat people with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) combining standard cognitive-behavior techniques for emotional regulation and reality testing with concepts of distress tolerance, acceptance, and mindful awareness.

Blah blah blah....Eh, It works, it really does. I will give it that.  In fact, I think everyone, even people without BPD should learn these techniques.  I think they should teach it in schools starting in elementary education.  I'm not joking.  These things should be taught to the general public.  It would make the world a better place.  It won't fix it, but it will be better.

IT WON'T FIX IT...but it will be better.  Ah, that leads me into the next thing...I AM NOT FIXED, but I am better.  I use these skills I have learned to the capacity.  Like I said I use them until they pour out every orifice of my body.  I try so hard....and yet, I am so low.  I am so empty. I  am so "not fixed".

I never expected this therapy, or any therapy for that matter, to fix me.  Not that I think I am unfixable, but I didn't expect it to be a miracle.  I expected it to do as it did.  It helped me tremendously, and it still does.  I'm glad I did it.  But to have my therapist sit there and tell me that "medications aren't a solution" and say "what skills should you use instead of medications?" is a huge kick in the face.

One of the major things in DBT is Radical Acceptance--letting go of fighting reality, accept your situation for what it is.  And she even brought that up today.  "Radically accept that you will have these times and that they will end soon."  I'm sorry, but although, I will (and have) radically accept that this is part of me, I will not radically accept that there is nothing I can do about it...that, although I have tried to get through it properly and "effectively" (another huge DBT word) and I'm still in it, that it could indeed be chemical.  Blasphemy in the DBT world, apparently.  "Chemical"....

 Do you think my psychiatrist would prescribe me medications when he doesn't view them as necessary?  I wish she could see me off of medications. I wish there was a safe way for me to go off of them and still use my skills to show her that they are not enough. That I do, in fact, have a severe chemical imbalance, and that the medications are extremely necessary.  Alas, this can't happen.  Those who know this part of me are afraid of it, for me that is.  They have been afraid for me, my safety, when I have gone through that.  Even my doctor won't do this because he knows this, he's seen it first hand.  He knows it's dangerous.  Why can't my therapist take everyone's word for it?  She didn't, hasn't known me medication free, yet she doesn't think they are the "effective" choice here?  I don't think she has the right to say that.

I'm calling my psychiatrist to ask him to back me up on this.  Both for my own peace at mind and to make my therapist stop pushing this issue.  I need him to confirm to me that he believes I have a chemical imbalance and what is mentally wrong with me is not all emotional/behavioral but physical.  I want him to flat out say he will not take me off of the medications.  That we've tried it before and I have crashed and burned and...worse even.

Don't get me wrong when I say this, I think Julie is a fantastic therapist, but I really think therapist should have to have gone through what us mentally ill patients have gone through before they get accredited.  Otherwise, they will never know, they will never understand us, and they will push these things on us.  It makes me feel hopeless and not good enough....