[deleted and re-posted a few times to fix the html]
First of all, *hugs*. Always. Taking action is hard and you need to give yourself credit for it.
As previously mentioned, I've been in therapy for the last 4 years, mostly on a one-session-every-six-weeks maintenance plan. (Besides which, my mom's a social worker with a B.A. in psych, so I guess you could say I've grown up in a therapy-friendly environment.) This is in combination with daily medication for anxiety and mild depression.
And, in general, I can't figure out what I'd be trying to DO with therapy, anyway. I mean, I get depressed. The ability to feel happiness sometimes gets sucked out of me, so quickly and violently that I get a physical sensation of it draining out of my feet. There's not much I can DO about it. Talking about it doesn't help.
I think that this, right here, is the kernel of your lack of interest in therapy. It sounds like what you're saying is that your past therapists have tried to analyze why you feel this way, and/or help you come up with solutions to 'fix' it. Most therapists are going to want to focus on figuring out the external factors that contribute to depression, and if I understand you correctly that's not what you hope to achieve from therapy--you believe the depression is a neurochemical issue and to treat it as such. A therapist who tries to talk you out of that belief is probably not going to be helpful. So it seems to me that what you need is a therapist who has a different approach. My therapist is teaching me tools--how to recognize the symptoms of an oncoming depression episode, how to quantify my anxiety on a scale of 1 to 10, etc.--but it doesn't sound like that's what you want either.
You mentioned that seeing a coach was kind of helpful, to learn how to do things, which suggests that solution-based therapy might be helpful too. Maybe you'd derive some benefit from talking with a therapist who's willing to focus on how to recognize when you do feel happiness, what factors cause it to increase or to drain away, etc. Trying to analyze and capture a positive behavior is as much a part of a therapist's repertoire as trying to analyze and avoid a negative behavior.
My therapist made me keep a journal, for the first few months, of when I felt any strong emotion (joy, sadness, anger, fear, etc.) and of what physical events surrounded it. Not 'how did I feel before this happened' or 'what do I think caused this' but 'what happened at work that day, what did I eat, how much sleep did I get, what did I talk about with my roommates, did I learn anything new' etc. Seems to me your LiveJournal entries sometimes serve a similar purpose for you. Printing some of them out and taking them to your therapist, as someone else suggested, is definitely a good idea.
no subject
First of all, *hugs*. Always. Taking action is hard and you need to give yourself credit for it.
As previously mentioned, I've been in therapy for the last 4 years, mostly on a one-session-every-six-weeks maintenance plan. (Besides which, my mom's a social worker with a B.A. in psych, so I guess you could say I've grown up in a therapy-friendly environment.) This is in combination with daily medication for anxiety and mild depression.
And, in general, I can't figure out what I'd be trying to DO with therapy, anyway. I mean, I get depressed. The ability to feel happiness sometimes gets sucked out of me, so quickly and violently that I get a physical sensation of it draining out of my feet. There's not much I can DO about it. Talking about it doesn't help.
I think that this, right here, is the kernel of your lack of interest in therapy. It sounds like what you're saying is that your past therapists have tried to analyze why you feel this way, and/or help you come up with solutions to 'fix' it. Most therapists are going to want to focus on figuring out the external factors that contribute to depression, and if I understand you correctly that's not what you hope to achieve from therapy--you believe the depression is a neurochemical issue and to treat it as such. A therapist who tries to talk you out of that belief is probably not going to be helpful. So it seems to me that what you need is a therapist who has a different approach. My therapist is teaching me tools--how to recognize the symptoms of an oncoming depression episode, how to quantify my anxiety on a scale of 1 to 10, etc.--but it doesn't sound like that's what you want either.
You mentioned that seeing a coach was kind of helpful, to learn how to do things, which suggests that solution-based therapy might be helpful too. Maybe you'd derive some benefit from talking with a therapist who's willing to focus on how to recognize when you do feel happiness, what factors cause it to increase or to drain away, etc. Trying to analyze and capture a positive behavior is as much a part of a therapist's repertoire as trying to analyze and avoid a negative behavior.
My therapist made me keep a journal, for the first few months, of when I felt any strong emotion (joy, sadness, anger, fear, etc.) and of what physical events surrounded it. Not 'how did I feel before this happened' or 'what do I think caused this' but 'what happened at work that day, what did I eat, how much sleep did I get, what did I talk about with my roommates, did I learn anything new' etc. Seems to me your LiveJournal entries sometimes serve a similar purpose for you. Printing some of them out and taking them to your therapist, as someone else suggested, is definitely a good idea.
Good luck. :)