Lots of people said lots of good things and I agree with quite a bit of it. :) I'm not going to retread that ground, but I'll expand on a few things that occurred to me as I was reading your post and the ensuing comments:
As a number of people have noted, long-term neurochemical depression leaves fingerprints all over our lives that medication can't address. One of the things I got out of talk therapy was learning to sort out causes of what was going on with me. Living with decades of under-treated depression left me with destructive habits of both action and thought, and I needed a lot of help identifying and addressing those habits that had been dysfunctional coping mechanisms when I was unmedicated and that now are actively problematic. That was really difficult -- those habits *had* served me well, for a long time.
I still have neurochemical ups and downs. But now I can much more reliably recognize when a downslide I'm feeling is chemical and when it's situational, and I can react to it appropriately. It's nice to be able to recognize that it's time to up (or in some cases, down) my meds *before* I hit crisis.
It also helped me a lot to have a more-objective viewpoint on what was going on with me. Most of us are terrible at objectively identifying our emotional state -- a friend of mine reported that he could tell when his medication was working, because when it wasn't, more bad things happened to him. He recognized that for the most part, the same kind of things happened to him whether or not his medication was working, but when his depression was active he couldn't shake the deep-down emotional conviction that the problem was external, no matter how much time he spent recognizing on a logical level that that wasn't the case. That's not exactly the way it works for me, but it did take a couple of years of talk therapy to develop the skill to sort out "this sucks because I'm depressed" vs. "this sucks because it sucks." I really needed that objective voice who could say, "no, actually, that *does* suck; that's not your depression talking" or "you seem to be reacting to things from a very depressive state; let's consider upping your meds for a little while and see if it goes away."
Right now, I'm taking a hiatus from talk therapy. First I dropped to every-other-week, and then when I had five successive sessions in which I had nothing to talk about, I told her I'd call her if anything changed. I've made a deal with myself that I'll go back if *anything* gets difficult for more than twenty-four hours -- even if I'm *sure* that it's something I can handle on my own. Because once it's clear I can't handle it on my own I'll be too depressed to actually go make the appointment. And if that means a couple of sessions I pay for that I really didn't need, well, that's much better than getting to the "too depressed to get out of bed" stage.
My partner also goes to talk therapy. He's not neurochemically depressed; he's dealing with other things, some neurochemical, some situational. From what he's said, his sessions sound a lot more like life-coaching. They talk about his goals and passions and how to bring his life more in line with what he loves. And that's a perfectly valid brand of talk therapy, too, and you might find that's what works better for you.
no subject
As a number of people have noted, long-term neurochemical depression leaves fingerprints all over our lives that medication can't address. One of the things I got out of talk therapy was learning to sort out causes of what was going on with me. Living with decades of under-treated depression left me with destructive habits of both action and thought, and I needed a lot of help identifying and addressing those habits that had been dysfunctional coping mechanisms when I was unmedicated and that now are actively problematic. That was really difficult -- those habits *had* served me well, for a long time.
I still have neurochemical ups and downs. But now I can much more reliably recognize when a downslide I'm feeling is chemical and when it's situational, and I can react to it appropriately. It's nice to be able to recognize that it's time to up (or in some cases, down) my meds *before* I hit crisis.
It also helped me a lot to have a more-objective viewpoint on what was going on with me. Most of us are terrible at objectively identifying our emotional state -- a friend of mine reported that he could tell when his medication was working, because when it wasn't, more bad things happened to him. He recognized that for the most part, the same kind of things happened to him whether or not his medication was working, but when his depression was active he couldn't shake the deep-down emotional conviction that the problem was external, no matter how much time he spent recognizing on a logical level that that wasn't the case. That's not exactly the way it works for me, but it did take a couple of years of talk therapy to develop the skill to sort out "this sucks because I'm depressed" vs. "this sucks because it sucks." I really needed that objective voice who could say, "no, actually, that *does* suck; that's not your depression talking" or "you seem to be reacting to things from a very depressive state; let's consider upping your meds for a little while and see if it goes away."
Right now, I'm taking a hiatus from talk therapy. First I dropped to every-other-week, and then when I had five successive sessions in which I had nothing to talk about, I told her I'd call her if anything changed. I've made a deal with myself that I'll go back if *anything* gets difficult for more than twenty-four hours -- even if I'm *sure* that it's something I can handle on my own. Because once it's clear I can't handle it on my own I'll be too depressed to actually go make the appointment. And if that means a couple of sessions I pay for that I really didn't need, well, that's much better than getting to the "too depressed to get out of bed" stage.
My partner also goes to talk therapy. He's not neurochemically depressed; he's dealing with other things, some neurochemical, some situational. From what he's said, his sessions sound a lot more like life-coaching. They talk about his goals and passions and how to bring his life more in line with what he loves. And that's a perfectly valid brand of talk therapy, too, and you might find that's what works better for you.
[continued...]