Big Pharma And Me, 3

I think it was during my second visit with my psychiatrist that we agreed on my method of treatment.  He offered me some options: we could do talk therapy with medication or talk therapy with no medication.  I opted for the latter.  To this day I have no regrets.  We did get off to a rather awkward beginning and I endured the first year or so while my psychiatrist clearly enjoyed hearing the sound of his own voice.  He had many theories and ideas about my diagnosis, and much of his understanding was either Freudian or Adlerian.  One day I told him when he tried to convince me that I had defence mechanisms I simply replied that I am very conscious and aware of the way I handle situations, for which reason I would prefer to call them coping strategies since they were not kneejerk reactions but carefully thought and planned out methods of dealing with difficult people and difficult situations.  I also told him that he could go screw Freud and Adler for that matter since I happen to be Jung at heart.

It turned out that my shrink didn't have a lot of familiarity with Carl Jung, a lot of whose writings I had already read extensively and absorbed.  But there was not a lot I could say about any of this to him so long as he wasn't willing to shut up and let me get a word in edgewise.  One day I snapped.  I shouted, "Will you please shut the fuck up for a minute so that I can say something,  It's my therapy, not yours." 

He was shocked, but he also conceded that he was talking way too much.  I had to train him to listen.  For the first ten minutes of my appointment I did the talking.  For several weeks he tried to interrupt.  I would not permit him to.  He soon got used to it, so that, for ten glorious minutes at the very onset of my appointment with my shrink, I had the podium and I did the talking and I took the freedom to express what I was feeling and just what my life had been like for the past two weeks before our last appointment.

This was where things began to go swimmingly.  He said that while I seem to have control issues that my insisting on my right to speak and express did a lot to streamline and speed my recovery.  I also countered that instead of using the word control, let's just say that I have very good boundaries.  He couldn't help but agree.