At least that’s what Dr Meister used to tell us in our philosophy classes. I posted earlier about my uneasiness with casual diagnoses from nontherapists like my coworkers, but I’ve had a few “aha!” moments at work that are making me change my mind.
Today, I was meeting with one of my clients that I dearly love, and I couldn’t figure out why she was repeating her life’s ambitions to me for the hundredth time. And then it hit me: there’s something different about her. She’s thinking differently. She compulsively tells stories, and often it’s the same stories. Now, a fixation with telling stories is not only healthy but desirable in our culture. But, I think after meeting for an hour with this woman every week for months on end, you’d think that she would stop telling us that she’s a self proclaimed “damn good writer.”
I was in a similar session with a man who I see about once a month, and in the middle of the session I realized that he continually tells stories which must be exaggerated. And then it hit me: he always does this! When I first started meeting with him, he would exhaust me because I had to “fight” with him to get anything done.
These people aren’t crazy. They aren’t violent or mean spirited or stupid, and I doubt that they need medication. And, for the record, I like their stories!
However, they (and many of my other clients) seem to have things happening in their brains that got in the way of them staying housed and made their lives really difficult for them to cope with. Now that I’m nearing the end of my time at St Joseph Center, I’m starting to believe that there’s something to this whole mental health thing after all.
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