And my actual goal is not conducive to mental health. So not only did no therapist until my current one bother to try and figure out why CBT wasn’t working for my depression instead of just assuming I wasn’t working hard to change, I never realized I was trying to accomplish something that was impossible because the underlying, unaddressed issue was counter to what I thought my goal was. 

I thought my goal was to be happier. Duh. But it turned out that my subconscious mission was to be as little of a burden to anyone and everyone as possible and going out and doing activities that would normally be enjoyable does not serve to satisfy minimizing my burdenship. 

I don’t know where we are gonna go from here, but at least I know now and have some validation that it really wasn’t a lack of effort (like I had convinced myself), it was that the effort was not applied in the area I was really trying to apply it to. At least now I know why I never recovered for over 8 years. Why I still can’t enjoy anything. Why I feel hopeless all the time. 

But I also grieve at all the lost time. All the money paid to therapists who didn’t do their job well enough or thoroughly enough to figure out what was going on. I kept going back and we beat a dead horse for an hour until the next week. Or they just wanted that income more than they wanted to point me into the right direction to find relief. I can’t help but imagine what life would be like if this epiphany would have happened years sooner. I am a shell of a person on the inside and maybe if things had gone differently that would not be the case. 

It’s just a really hard pill to swallow