Friday, March 5, 2010

Mr. Wow's Had-Enough-Therapy Moment

I will break with my usual habits and not offer very much commentary on Mr. Wow's article on his depression. I will simply introduce it.

You may know of the website called Wowow. It specializes in matters of special interest to women, but not exclusively to women. To my knowledge it has only one male writer, dubbed Mr. Wow.

A few days back Mr. Wow wrote a long and fascinating column about his ten-year bout with a severe depression and his efforts to deal with it through medication and talk therapy. Link here.

His account is open and perfectly honest. Mr. Wow does not have an axe to grind; he has no vested interest beyond his own health, well-being, and sanity. The world is full of accounts of which treatments work and don't work for depression, and I would count his story as a painfully truthful account of what did not work for him.

So, I consider the column to be raw data. It speaks for itself; it does not need very much commentary.

I would only direct your attention to one specific moment, what I would call a had-enough-therapy moment. There Mr. Wow realizes that therapy does not seem to be working for his benefit, because his therapist refuses to understand and acknowledge the therapeutic value of activities that are outside of therapy.

I will not describe it in any more detail. But, if you read the article, I think you will see that Mr. Wow's turning point is not a moment of therapeutic epiphany but a moment where he stepped out of therapy and into his life.

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