Jeremi said:
Sounds like you had quite a revelation, and you didn't need any pills for that. That's very strong of you.
Thx for the kind words
Yep so I left this thread a little up in the air so I figured I'd come back and tell how it ended for anyone who's wondering. After that week where I turned down the medicine things got a lot better, I kept going to counseling after that and it was good because with the medicine out of the way we talked about other ways to help get rid of depression like:
-Expose yourself to as much light as possible, when your inside turn on a light
-Exercise especially helps if it's outside
-When you feel a depressed mood coming along listen to upbeat music
-Force yourself to do things you enjoy even if you don't feel like it at the time, you'll find yourself having fun eventually
Those helped me a lot also we went over a lot of ways to identify and argue against negative thoughts like "this always happens to me" "They are all looking at me because I'm sitting alone" etc. I have to recognize that they are illogical and wrong, for instance I have to remind myself to look around and prove that people aren't looking at me etc. and the more you combat these thoughts the less they will show up in your mind, it's been very helpful also with dealing with a lot of my anxiety.
We also talked about holding conversations which I'm really bad at, we had a whole bunch of mock conversations and she would stop me and tell me "well you could have said this" or "why didn't you ask the same question of them" and I think it's helped a bit.
We also talked a lot about autism and which aspects of me are effected by it. I have to try a lot harder than a normal person would during something social to catch facial expressions and social cues and really think about what to say not just mimic the person, which is a bad habit of mine.. It's like playing a game, which is a really lame metaphor but it expresses it all well. It's not that I won't be able to socialize with people normally it's just I have to work a little harder than the average person.
Autism is a difference not a disability and to me it's fascinating, I've gone back and reexamined my life and why I acted the ways I did and it all fits together like I can finally understand myself and THAT is probably the biggest benefit of therapy for me, things make sense now and I feel like I understand myself and appreciate the things I'm good at and not be angry at myself when I do something that isn't along the lines of normalcy. I've agreed to myself that I'll tell my family about me being autistic when I go home for summer and I'll also tell my roommate next year and maybe a few other people this summer if I feel like I can slip it into a conversation or something.
I went to my final session last week, we both agreed that I had shown significant improvement and was ready to try things on my own. I'm going to miss talking to her every week she was awesome.. But with Spring here I'm feeling a lot better and things are looking up. I can't wait for summer to start only 4 weeks left!
Anyone who is reading this right now and considering going to therapy or counseling I would highly recommend it. It's worth a try definitely, it's helped me immensely