Getting Help -- One

All of my adult life, I've struggled with a combination of clinical depression and generalized anxiety. I had my first major depressive episode at the age of twenty in 1965 when I was a college sophomore at Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio. At the time I had fantasies of committing suicide by jumping off a bridge or high building. Instead, I published a poem in the Xavier literary quarterly entitled Gas Jet Epitaph about a man who kills himself by turning on the gas. Since then, I've had many recurring episodes of depression and anxiety.

Throughout my life, I've also sought out many kinds of help for my mental illness. This began when I was living in Marburg, my hometown in Germany, in the winter of 1971. At that time, I saw a psychologist at the Marburger Phillipps University who was the first person to diagnose me. I remember that he told me I suffered from a weak sense of self (eine schwache Ego Identitaet). As a result of his diagnosis, I joined a weekly therapy group which I attended for one year. The group, which was facilitated by a therapist named Dr. Kratsch, used talk therapy to help me work on the source of my depressive episodes.

Since that time in 1971, I've sought out many kinds of help. These include multiple therapy groups, day-treatment programs, individual visits with therapists and psychiatrists, and one residential treatment program for mentally ill adults called Hewitt-House-Wellspring. During that time, I also attended numerous support groups, several men's groups, a DBT (Dialectical Behavior Therapy) group, and one Christian 12 step program. Becoming a member of a supportive church community where I felt accepted and understood has also helped me greatly.

I think the most significant experience in my recovery journey has definitely been the two-and-a-half years I spent in the Hewitt House-Wellspring residential treatment program where I lived from the summer of 1979 until the fall of 1981. Because of that program, my life was transformed profoundly. There, I lived side by side with people who were diagnosed with depression, anxiety, bi-polar disease, schizophrenia, schizo-affective disorder, OCD, bulimia, and anorexia. Wellspring used several new, experimental forms of treatment like Yoga and bionenergetics (body work), as well as more traditional cognitive behavior, Gestalt, and Jungian therapy styles. Each of us in the program was assigned a primary therapist whom we saw once a week. We were also required to attend a weekly therapy and Yoga group both of which I found especially helpful. Some of the residents also attended a bioenergetics group which used body work to access painful feelings like rage, anxiety, and sadness. One of the techniques I remember best was called Racketing. Here residents beat on a pillow with a tennis racket while screaming out their anger and rage. I found this body work to be more effective than mere talk therapy.

In addition to the residential treatment program, I also attended several partial hospital and day-treatment programs at Hennepin County Medical Center, Fairview-Riverside Hospital, and an independent program called Restart. However, not all of these were helpful. One program in West St. Paul called The Center for Creative Living, which I attended from 1984 to 1986, was not only not helpful, but caused me a lot of harm because of their abusive therapy techniques. They used transactional analysis as their main mode of therapy in which clients were encouraged to be re-parented by some of the therapists. I was assigned a re-parenting mom who was supposed to help me deal with the trauma of being abandoned by my birth mother. At the beginning, I found some of her interventions to be helpful, especially the nurturing I received there when I was held by her. I was also encouraged to regress to childhood and even infancy, and given baby bottles filled with milk and apple juice. Unfortunately, the program also used shaming techniques like making people stand in a corner if their therapy work wasn't going the way the staff wanted. I also witnessed the use of four-point restraints, and the handcuffing of people who were going through a psychotic episode. Fortunately, I quit that program after two years, and it took me attending yet another day-treatment program called Restart to recover from the trauma I experienced there.

However, most of my therapy experiences were positive, including some wonderful individual therapists I've had over the span of forty-five years. One of them used Jungian techniques which I found very healing. Each week, I would bring her the dreams I had the week before which I worked through during our session. My two therapists at Wellspring were also very helpful. One of them encouraged me to use my creativity to write poems and songs. Another helped me work through the rage I felt after being abandoned by my mom, and the anger I felt towards my dad. I remember a more recent therapist who encouraged me to think of myself as a writer and musician. One of his sons played in a country-rock band. Another therapist, who is a Korean-adoptee, helped me work through my adoption issues.

For a long time, I resisted taking any psych meds because I was afraid they would distort my personality. But eventually, with the help of some supportive psychiatrists, I've come to find a combination of meds that have eased my symptoms. A recent program which I found to be very helpful was a senior 55 Plus program at MHealth Fairview. It provided me with a great variety of healing techniques such as DBT skills like mindfulness, radical acceptance, and emotion regulation. I've also continued to use my Yoga practice, T'ai Chi, and regular exercise regimen of swimming, walking, and biking to maintain my mental health.