Excerpt: Having a Blast With Mental Illness and Very Few Drugs

He’s young, he’s good-looking, he’s my latest psychotherapist and he’s practically standing on my back. I’m in a squatting position and Donald’s knee presses between my shoulder blades.
“Try to stand,” he says as he presses me down while I….you guessed it… try to stand. My legs won’t budge me, won’t lift me up. Extremely frustrating. What kind of a psychologist is he, you may well ask. Go ahead, for I’m asking that myself. And what kind of a person am I to put myself in this embarrassing position? A person with emotional issues. Life stresses me out. How do I get through it? What with job losses and new marriages, what with wars and rumors of wars, but wait, I’m waxing biblical. What with the day to day trials of life (she said in clichéd fashion) and a heavy dose of second guessing myself (Should I have said that? Should I have done that?), life, and just about everything else, can really get to a person, that person being me.
How do the rest of you do it? I haven’t a clue, but as for me and my house, we go to counseling. I know, another biblical reference and if you’re familiar with them, you’ll see a lot of them in here. If not, you’ll see a lot of them anyway, but you won’t recognize them as such, so you just might think I have an odd turn of phrase.
Back to the counseling squat, I try to stand again, and this time, to his surprise and my relief, I stand tall and he (in gratifyingly ridiculous fashion) falls off my back and onto the floor. But he ignores his ignominious position and looks positively triumphant.
“You’re very strong!” he says, and for my part, I now believe it and accept his reassurance and take it in, own it, as it were. He’s not your average psychologist, and has not been since the moment I stepped into his home office.
“So, what do you hope to gain during our time together?” he asks then.
“A lifelong admirer,” I think but do not say. “If not you, then perhaps one of your brilliant minions. Or possibly you can make me the confident, cool person that I’ve always wanted to be, the kind that will attract others to me and make me feel worthwhile, powerful and safe.” But I say none of these things. Instead I say, “I want to feel better about myself and not so depressed.”
“Done!” he says. Okay, he does not really say that, but wouldn’t it be really cool if he did?