Is mental illness real?

@Former-Member is there anything you can do to ease the physical symptoms? Sometimes warm water is soothing - a long shower. Sometimes when my stress is really getting the better of me I try and do something to take care of my physical self. Thinking of you.

Hi @Former-Member, I'm really sorry to hear you are feeling so terrified. Scared feelings super super suck.

I am not totally up to-date with your story, but what I'm hearing is that you are scared your therapist is going to think you should be dead. Is that right? I have had a therapist tell me that I am f*cking evil and that I should "just f*cking do it" in reference to suicide. He was wrong and it wasn't ok for him to say that to me. That was abuse. Given that I have had that experience, I cannot promise you that your therapist won't say something similar to you. However, I am 99.9% certain that he won't. And if he does, that won't make it true.

It sounds like you have been amazingly brave to send the email and I can certainly relate to the agony of waiting for a response. I wish I could do more than sit with you while you wait. But alas, that is all I can do...and I will do it gladly. We can sit in the nest and wait for the email together.

@Former-Member That's ok, I'm happy to sit with you...although after this post I'll be sitting with you while I head off to bed.

I can hear that you are scared, and big scared feelings tend to flood our brains and make the thinking bits not work so well. However, if you can maybe look at what you said in your response to me, it might be a tiny bit helpful. On the one hand you are terrified that your therapist will think you should be dead. Yet on the other hand, you can hear how utterly wrong it is for a therapist to say such a thing to a client. So...logically, it is highly improbable that your therapist will think or say such a thing, and if he does, you already recognise that such a thing would be abusive and wrong. So either way, whatever he thinks or says is simply what he thinks or says. It isn't necessarily "true" or "right."

And yes, my relationship with that particular therapist that I told you the story about is a very VERY big part of my muddle. Being able to draw on that muddle to perhaps help you in a tinsy tiny way tonight also helps me in that it gives a sense of purpose and meaning to what is a pretty big muddle in my world.

Goodnight @Former-Member.

Hi @Former-Member

Im emailing you