How many of you believe in angels? I never did until I met my therapist. I never even went to church or was religious prior to meeting her. This all changed when I met her. I believe she entered my life as an angel sent by God to help me reconnect with my family.
My therapist was the Assertive Community Treatment Team leader who not only worked with me as a therapist but also as a case manager while at Monadnock Family Services. In those roles she was a mentor.
As a therapist she specialized in Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT). It’s a type of treatment approach that helps one recognize negative or unhelpful thought and behavior patterns. By doing CBT the goal is to identify and explore the ways one’s emotions and thoughts can effect one’s actions. Once one notices these patterns one can learn to change one’s behaviors and develop new coping strategies. While doing this one uses CBT worksheets to better understand one’s thought patterns, emotions, and behaviors, leading to more effective problem-solving and self-regulation.
My therapist first entered my life as the ACT Team leader and worked with me solely as a therapist in 2017. At that time I had just come from Parkland Medical Center in Derry, New Hampshire and was struggling with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Bipolar, and Depression. I also had anger issues. All of these made my life very challenging. It put my therapist in a tough position. Her responsibility was to help me get better. This was something she didn’t take lightly. In order for you to understand how she was able to help me, you have to first understand what my life was like before she entered it and started working with me.
My struggles with a mental illness started in high school. The way I viewed myself and my family, which was a result of having distorted thoughts, effected me mentally. I have two older brothers and a younger sister. When I entered high school at fifteen my oldest brother was a senior and my second oldest brother was a junior. This was the beginning of the most challenging years for me. I looked up to them. I wanted to be just like them and follow in their footsteps. To me they had a good social life, did well academically and were athletic. I wish I could’ve enjoyed my life as much as they could and were able to succeed in the areas they excelled in. Unfortunately, due to the fact that I was an introvert unlike them and had a learning disability, it was very challenging for me to accomplish that. This was a let down to me.
All I cared about in school was getting an A. At that time I couldn’t accept help with my courses. I wanted to do well on my own. Getting that grade in all my classes came at a price.
I spent hours, often in the library during my free time at school, and in my room at home, tirelessly working on my school work. The work seemed endless. It consumed me. I remember telling myself the more free time I had the more time I would spend doing homework. It came to a point where I gave up making friends and participating in sports. My world was slowly getting smaller. That was when my depression sank in and got a hold of me.
What made things even harder was seeing my sister succeed in areas my brothers excelled in. I remember feeling like a disappointment to myself, my family and others. This hurt me internally effecting my ego. As the feelings of depression became overwhelming, things got worse. It came to a point where I felt like I was the weakest link in the family. I thought my family would be the perfect one if I was not around. As this distorted thought consumed me, at the age of seventeen I lost all motivation to want to continue on in my life.
After unsuccessfully being able to relieve my self from the feelings of not being good enough, I new I needed to deal with my depression. At that time I couldn’t accept the type of help my parents wanted me to get. Getting help while living at home made me feel different from my siblings. This only added to my depression. I concluded the only option I had was to leave.
I left home at eighteen. I spent the next fifteen years having no contact with my family. It felt like I was hiding from them. This was because I thought my parents, in particular my dad, didn’t approve of the kind of treatment I needed. This was a distorted thought. Leaving home and getting help put me in the mental health system.
During those years I showed signs of having OCD. My symptoms manifested through my hoarding. I became a hoarder to eliminate the things I threw away. The thought behind this was if I threw things away my family would find them and find out where I was. This led me to believe my dad would get involved with my treatment. By having this thought I was giving him more power then he actually had.
I remember being asked one day during those fifteen years why I didn’t have contact with my mom. I said: “It’s because of my dad.” At that time, and during those entire fifteen years, I thought if I had contact with anybody in my family my dad would interfere with my treatment. This I didn’t want.
I left home on the first day of fall in 2003 without telling my family where I was going. All I knew was there was help out there for people like me who had depression. I was determined to get that help. Because of this, and because I didn’t want my parents, in particular my dad, involved in my treatment, the next fifteen years were very lonely.
In the early years, after I left home, I was hospitalized and put on medications. Even though I went along with this form of treatment, it’s not solely because of that treatment that I’m doing as well as I’m doing today. The more holistic approach in the community is what helped me the most.
It wasn’t until after my hospitalizations that I moved into the community and received outpatient treatment from MFS. At the mental health center my therapist helped me the most. Getting help from her was the help I was looking for since I left home in order to overcome my depression.
While working with my therapist, during one of our sessions at the end of 2017, she asked me: “Do you want to see your grandparents before they die and have a relationship with them or do you want to wait until they die and regret not seeing them for the rest of your life?” This moment got the wheels turning. I said: “I want to see them before they die.” When she asked me this question it was like she was opening a door. My response was my way of saying I’ll walk through the door. By responding with this answer she new what her mission was and once accomplished she also new I would enter into remission and allow the healing within my family to begin.
From that day on everything she did in order to help me enter into remission was geared towards accomplishing her mission.
I believe the door she opened lead me through a long tunnel. For the next five years, which was the time that we worked together, I tried to climb out the other end of the tunnel into the light.
The work I did with her involved CBT. By doing CBT she helped me change some of my thinking patterns which had created problems for me in the past. We also used thought records to help me recognize and change unhelpful thoughts. The purpose of doing those was to help me get into the habit of paying attention to my thoughts and how to change them. For the first time I felt safe enough expressing my true feelings. To help me do that she would often pull out a feeling sheet and have me identify the feelings I were experiencing. That felt liberating to me.
As a result of doing CBT my thinking changed. I thought about my siblings in a whole new way. I no longer compared myself to my brothers. I realized and accepted the fact that I was different from them. I concluded being just like them and following in their footsteps was something I couldn’t accomplish. For the first time I was okay with this. I also came to terms with the fact that my sister excelled in areas I couldn’t. Coming to these realizations and accepting them boosted my self esteem which improved my depression. I realized my mom actually approved of the treatment I was getting. Over time I also came to see that my siblings and mom truly loved me and wanted the best for me. This allowed me to feel comfortable reaching out to them and having them in my life again.
Now, when I look back over the years, I realize that during the hardest years of my life, which was when I was in high school, I wasn’t well due to a mental illness. I realize I was doing the best I could’ve done back then and that every body else in the family was doing the best they could’ve done for life was not easy for the whole family then. By working with my therapist I learned to forgive. By forgiving my parents, in particular my dad, for not allowing me to get the treatment I needed while living at home, I’m now able to move on and prioritize getting the help I need today even with my family in my life.
By having worked with my therapist and by having done CBT with her I now realize that recovery is possible. I went from a dark place, not wanting to continue on in my life, to a place filled with light. Now, after those five years of working with her, I feel like I’ve climbed out of the tunnel finding life at the other end. This made me realize that by believing in a higher power the impossible is possible. That with help one can overcome one’s challenges, enter into recovery and conquer life. This lead me to become spiritual. As a result I can now say my therapist, who entered my life as an angel sent by God to help me reconnect with my family, accomplished her mission.
timothyweeks 
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