Susan Jennifer Polese

I have a personal relationship with depression. The depressive periods in my life are highly situational in so much as in the past they occurred after my divorce and most recently since the death of my mother. However, I am no stranger to the effects that chronic depression can have on a person and the people in their lives. I am certain that along with having difficulties with anxiety, my mother suffered from depression – never really addressed clinically or in any other way. The man I married when I was in my twenties was most certainly depressed – like so many others I recreated in my adult life what was familiar to me as a child. He, also, do this day has never addressed his depression – or chronic basic unhappiness. I have been affected by depression and so I am interested in what this condition is and ways to combat it - and in another sense, ways to accept it and actively deal with it.

As I begin personal therapy at my graduate school student counseling center I realize that I am analyzing everything the therapist is saying. What is her theoretical orientation? Was that an open or closed question? Will we be goal setting? How much money does she make? Yes, I was more than a little “in my head” during that first session.

I admit it, I’m green. I’d like to think I possess good intuition and that a firm foundation for my counseling future is being laid in graduate school. But I feel very confused about which populations I want to ultimately work with. I alternate between an unrealistic wanting to work with virtually everyone and a steady yearning to find a more comfortable niche. My comfort zone is cradling me as I urge to break free.

I recently watched the original film version of Neil Simon’s “The Odd Couple” and it was as funny and touching as when I first saw it. Viewing the classic flick as a counselor-in-training I have rediscovered Felix as a person with obsessive compulsive disorder who would benefit from a combination of cognitive behavioral therapy and medication. And Oscar? Clearly Mr. Madison has executive functioning challenges and really could use some help from a professional organizer. On a more psychoanalytical note: I don’t even want to consider how either of these two were toilet trained!

As I embark on the middle leg of my second year of graduate school in clinical mental health counseling a course looms on the horizon that I’m simultaneously excited about and simply wish I didn’t have to take at all. That class is Intro to Psychopathology with an emphasis on psychopharmacology. Both words are packed with oomph and leave me with an array of mixed feelings.