My Story: Opening My Mind to Therapy

EN talks about how her views on therapy slowly changed after opening up to the idea of it.

Transcript:  

OBOS Today: Okay, so, what was your experience with like therapists and stuff? Cause I know you said you went to therapists so like, how did that experience help you or not?   

EN: I didn’t want to believe in the beginning. I said, “There is nothing wrong with me. I don’t need to do this. I don’t need to go see this person.” And sometimes we’d just sit there. And she would just ask me about my life and try to really understand what is really going on at home, at school, socially. I really didn’t want to talk to her and then it came to the point of where I looked forward to going to see her. Because I think I started to see her twice a week, every week, for a couple months. And then I went down to once a week. Um, and now it is like every so often if I need something I’ll reach out to her.

But, um, at the beginning I went in and said I don’t want to take medication. Because, my sister, who is older than me by about 16 years told me that medication will affect, like, everything. It’s just going to be bad. And then I was like, well okay, I don’t want to take it because I always trusted her judgement. But my doctor talked me into it. We also worked with my pediatrician to work with dosages and medication even though I was seeing a psychiatrist, so she could give prescriptions and stuff. But, yeah, like going through every single week and seeing her and just talking about life and then talking about what about the medication helped was a really big part of high school. And I don’t think I would be where I am now if I didn’t go through it. Or be as open to like, listening to people.  

OBOS Today: Okay, awesome and so I know you said that your sister who is older said something about, um, negatively about medication and stuff, so how did that experience go with your therapist trying to convince you and everything? Was it helpful or? 

EN: Um, I personally don’t like taking medication in general. And I want to know like everything about the medication. I will research it as much as I possibly can. I will ask my doctor as many questions as I can come up with because I just want to know how this will affect me. Will it affect me in a good or bad way? What are the side effects? How many people have taken this in my age range? And my, um, gender or even, um, ethnicity? But having my sister say that made it a lot harder for my doctor to convince me because she is such a big part of my life that she wasn’t able, that the doctor, it made it harder for the doctor to be like, “Hi, this works, please take it.” But yeah.