I’ll Write When I Die

Wait, was that supposed to be rest?

Well here we are together on this seemingly unimpressive Sunday and I am writing what has become my once every when-I feel-like-writing post.

If you don’t know, I started this Substack after my therapist insisted I take meds because “Insurance won’t cover you traumatizing me with stories about your childhood unless you take drugs”.

I had a cool therapist I was seeing around 8 years ago, and I felt much better just having someone to bounce stuff off of. I was taking Wellbutrin at the time so insurance was covering my appointments.

Recently I thought that therapy might be helpful for me in dealing with my business and family issues, especially since I had been free from my lifelong major depression for over a year at that time. It seemed like having someone to talk about that would be cool also. Humblebrag about killing a major demon, right? What therapist wouldn’t think that was super cool?

So I looked online for a therapist and decided on one person that seemed like they shared my ideological beliefs, to some degree at least.

Obviously, I was screening out evangelical hucksters that would try to pray the gay away or whatever the equivalent for me is. Voting Republican? Going to a church where they have a Golf Ministry but no social programs? Teaching that the Earth is thousands of years old? That Kangaroos swam to Australia from Turkey after the Ark landed on a mountain?

The first session or two was pretty cool, for me I mean. I have stories for days.

I guess the issue is that when you share trauma to a therapist, they need to have a diagnosis for insurance purposes. This one immediately diagnosed me as bipolar because that’s what I told them I was diagnosed as previously.

The thing is, I’m not bipolar anymore. I’m just a human who has good days, bad days, mediocre days, but nothing extreme on either side.

I’m not great at controlling my emotions under stress. I get angry about stupid shit. I future trip and imagine things are worse than they really are. I worry about the kids, I worry about work project deadlines and freelancers that work for me not getting their work done.

I worry about how much I worry — sometimes.
But not all the time.

And, I don’t cut myself or hit anyone or break anything or break down crying, or spend all my money on Trump Crypto scams, or vote to cut SNAP… so I am convinced — in my mind at least — that I no longer suffer from a debilitating mental “disease” like bipolar, and I have not been on any meds for anything mental for several years now.

So back to therapy I go — just to talk. To tell my stories and talk about the things I still get hung up on. The things we all get hung up on, more or less.

I do like to talk about my past. I’m not afraid of it.

I’m only mildly embarrassed about some things that some people would never admit to. I’m ashamed of several bad choices. Regretful of more than a few, but I like to share what I’ve been through for the most part, because it helps me stay humble and grateful, and reminds me of what blessings I have and makes me hopefully more understanding of other people.

However, the insurance companies need to get you to take drugs or they won’t pay.

That sounds conspiratorial to me also, but it’s true. You can’t get visits with a therapist ‘just to talk’ without buying meds. Unless you pay out of pocket and that’s not cheap. They have enormous school loans to pay off and an overinflated sense of perceived value that they think they provide.
Who am I to judge?

The meds thing is absolutely ridiculous. It’s a scam and a trap.

I’m not saying that meds don’t have a place in helping people. I was on Lexapro many years ago and it helped my depression quite a bit.

But that was then. This is a different time and a different me.

I started to really see significant changes in my moods and in general when I got into a consistent exercise routine. Hiking and getting outdoors more often helped a lot too.

The most important change for me was I changed the way I was thinking about things.

How I perceived myself and how I perceived my relationship with my clients as partners, rather than just people I work for.

How I started to understand that I bring value to my business relationships — I’m not just some sad guy hiding from the world, missing his daughters and building websites in some basement room in a halfway house full of sad, broken men with broken relationships.

I was all that, but that was only one way of looking at it.

It’s so easy to get trapped in thinking only one way about your life and circumstances.

So, back to the therapy recap: I was told to take meds because my dad threatened to kill everyone on many occasions. Once had a shotgun to my head, etc… And somehow me surviving and thriving and telling these arguably interesting tales to this therapist was too much.

Either they wanted to keep chopping it up with me and needed me to get a prescription so we could continue, or they thought I was out of my mind, I do not know. I just quit going.

I could have gotten the Rx and flushed them just so I could tell my therapist ghost stories, but fuck all that. I’m about being transparent, and taking meds, or pretending to, just so I can talk about childhood trauma seems at best fake, and at worst, dishonest.

So I wrote about a few of these stories here in my Substack, where “who cares if you’re medicated or not — It’s not even on the ‘Become a Famous Writer’ application form”.

But I can’t write every day. I can’t even write every week. I put so much of my time into my work that even on Sunday, my one sacred day off from working, I just want to relax. And writing is not always relaxing.

Shit, even reading is not always relaxing. It hurts my eyes for some reason.
I used to read all the time, now I’ve had to set a morning routine of reading a couple paragraphs of each of my books.

Insert segue here ~ ;)

Here are the books that I am slowly working through currently:

Wisdom Takes Work by Ryan Holiday. I just got this and it’s the last of 4 in a series. If you don’t know Ryan Holiday, how are you alive? Google his name or Daily Stoic and subscribe.

The Daily Laws by Robert Greene. This is 366 daily chapters by the guy who wrote “The 48 Laws of Power”. Very interesting reading and a nice, short, one-page bump for my morning.

You are Not so Smart by David McRaney. I found this at the thrift store one day. I know right, how? Why TF did I even try to find a cool book at the Goodwill when all those 8,000 books are all willy nilly? I can’t answer that question. But the book is a great read all about our biases and the real reasons we make the choices we make.

Epictetus - Discourses and Selected Writings translated by Robert Dobbin. If you aren’t familiar with who Epictetus is, make it happen. You need philosophy in your life.

Pathological by Sarah Fay. I really am enjoying this book. I’m almost finished with it. I recommend it to anyone who has, is, or was suffering from “mental illness”. It talks about Sarah’s recovery from ‘mental illness’ even though most doctors and institutions say that recovery from mental illness is not possible.

Spoiler: it is possible, and a reality for more people than you may be aware of.

Last but not least, one I’ve read several times but I always read a little bit every morning without fail: Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, the Gregory Hays translation.

And there we have it; my cheap excuse for not writing online consistently. Mingled with a jab at the Psychiatric & Pharma industrial complex. Throw in a humblebrag about how I’m reading 6 books at a time (over the course of many months lol) and that’s a wrap folks.

Maybe I’ll write more when I retire. Or when I die. Whichever comes first.

---

If you made it this far, thanks for sticking with it, now you see why my therapist wanted me on meds. Probably to shut me up. That thought never crossed my mind…Nah, couldn’t be my fault.

Until next time, be kind to yourself. You’re never going to be nice to anyone else if you can’t even be nice to yourself. Same in reverse, be kind to others so you will be the kind of person you can respect and admire.

Peace 🖖