Also, quick disambiguation for you, and/or anyone who stumbles on this in the future who may be looking for help: - PsychOLOGIST: therapy, talk, feelings - Ps

Also, quick disambiguation for you, and/or anyone who stumbles on this in the future who may be looking for help: - PsychOLOGIST: therapy, talk, feelings - PsychIATRIST: drugs, neurotransmitters, ECT, TMS, etc. If your neurological chemistry isn't working right in the first place, no amount of therapy is ever going to help you. That's when you go for the drugs through a qualified psychiatrist. Once that's in place, THEN you go see a psychologist for therapy on a regular basis, both to mend the damage long-term and hopefully help you establish the tools necessary to prevent it happening again. But if your brain is fundamentally jacked up because it doesn't have the right balance of neurotransmitters in there, nothing that therapist does is going to matter. So if you tried therapy and nothing's moving the needle, talk to a pschiatrist to see if medication is a good option in your case. Above all, remember that his is medical science, not witchcraft. We're still learning about how the brain works, but it isn't casting bones or shaking a magic 8 ball either. There's a surprisingly strong amount of science backing this stuff, especially when you consider the human brain as a quantum computing device that is both affected by, and can affect, its own neurotransmitters on an internal and external basis simultaneously. (And that's just the tip of the neurological complexity iceberg...) > UPDATE: Since you're worried about the drugs, talk to your psychiatrist about TMS. Short for "transcranial magnetic stimulation", it's an evidence-based treatment that is usually reserved for when the drugs don't work, but if your insurance covers it (assuming you're in the US like me, hope you're better off than that though!), it's a non-drug based therapy that can help. Not guaranteed because everybody's different, but it's worth a discussion at the very least. > > There's also ECT (electroconvulsive therapy). Yes, electro-shock. No it's not AT ALL like you see in the movies. It's remarkably safe and effective according to what I've read, though not without some risk. You don't want average run-of-the-mill idiots doing it either, and you sure as hell don't want med school students learning on you. But with the supervision of a skilled physician and team, it's helped people where nothing else has. Also worth a discussion with your doctor, though I honestly advise SSRIs first (I'm not a doctor though so take that with a grain of salt). > > Neither of the above relies on medication whatsoever. Both use external energy sources to influence neurological electrical transmission and (hopefully) stimulate production of the same.