Dear Unsealers,

When I was married, my ex-wife and I fought a lot.

We were married for eight years, together for thirteen.

You would think we would learn to get along by then.

We tried couples therapy for almost three years, to no avail.

It came to me one day.

I never felt right with her.

I never felt as if I could tell her anything.

I hid a lot of my life from her.

She read me her journal entries.

I kept mine under lock and key.

Something inside of me told me not to trust her.

And it came to me:

I never felt like she was home to me.

I always felt out of place.

As if I weren’t welcome in her heart.

Because I never let her inside mine.

I left her the next day, for good.

I walked away from thirteen years of misery – emotional homelessness and destitution.

I could not, in my heart and soul, stay with her another day.

I thought that was the turning point of my life.

When I found a new place to live in, I felt the same.

I had not found home, even back with my family of origin.

My dad reluctantly welcomed me and threatened to kick me out several times.

I felt unwanted there, too.

When he died, I found relief.

But I still had not found home.

I was still with my loving mother, who said I always had a home with her.

She meant a domicile, not a true home.

I don’t think I knew what a home was, yet I was still trying to find it.

I searched far and wide.

I drove everywhere, speaking with the locals.

I formed tight friendships locally, sharing our lives together.

Where was home?

I still hadn’t found it.

It was not under a roof.

It was not with loved ones either.

I searched outside of myself my entire life – for four decades.

It was time that I looked for home from within.

I found that my home was bare.

I went to building and decorating.

I built on the foundation of my values – creativity, compassion, camaraderie.

I created routines that kept the home functioning.

I cleaned up the cobwebs in my mind by journaling, meditating, and reflecting.

I nurtured my interests – art, writing, mental health advocacy – and that garden flourished.

I secured my boundaries and exercised caution with whom I let inside my home.

After all this work, I realized I had only scratched the surface.

There is a lot of upkeep required.

Constant home improvement projects.

Weeding out the structures and objects that do not suit me.

Slowing down occasionally so I don’t burn out.

Making time for fun.

The work never ends, but it’s worth my time and attention.

It is my home.

I am home.

Dear Unsealers,

“Fake it until you make it.”

I think this motto is disingenuous to the human experience. Here is a modified version which I live by:

“Do until you become.”

Why do I prefer this motto over faking it?

The first motto implies that you are trying to be something you are not.

My preferred motto sounds as if you are stepping into a suit that is custom-tailored for you.

This motto saved my life recently. For months, I had been suffering from severe depression.

I was even admitted to the psych hospital for two weeks.

One day, I decided that this was the last straw. I could not keep living like this –

Experiencing no joy in activities I normally love.

Having trouble getting started on tasks.

Constantly worrying about money.

Hurting myself because I hated myself.

Thinking many times a day about ending my life.

Feeling hopeless that nothing in my life would change.

I thought about everything wrong in my life.

Then I discovered a self-care app that changed my life.

At the risk of sounding like free advertising, l will not reveal the app’s name.

This app helped me develop coping skills.

It kept track of my goals and special projects.

It built my support system.

It made me stay busy so depression would leave my mind.

It gave me motivation and strengthened my will to live.

I’m not going to say that this app worked right away. That, too, would be disingenuous.

It took a few weeks of using the app to feel euthymic again.

Tranquil and stable instead of highly anxious and severely depressive.

My head is now filled with positive affirmations.

When I have a negative thought, I ask myself “Is this thought helpful to me right now?”

If the thought suits me, I do something about it.

If it does not help me, I table the thought until I can take action, or I let it go and replace it with a positive thought.

“Do until you become” almost always involves a slow burn, but it is effective when I work at whatever change I desire.

It can help you, too. It may take weeks or months to see results. Be patient. You will find the outcome you need.

Dear World,

It started when I was in the psych hospital in August 2020 for a severe mixed manic-depressive episode.

I was sitting at the table, coloring pictures with the friends I had made at the hospital.

I looked up and saw the psychiatrist who was seeing me during my two-week stay. Except this time, I was looking at him… differently. He stood across the day room at the nurses’ station, his back to me.

I actually checked him out.

Checked. Him. Out.

“This is crazy!” I thought.

“What’s crazy?” my friend to my right said.

“Did I say that out loud?” I asked.

“You sure did.”

“I think I’m… in love with my psychiatrist.”

There was pandemonium at the table. My friends asked me so many questions. Nobody had ever talked about having romantic feelings for their psychiatrist. The interest was high.

The problem was that I had no idea how to answer any of their questions. This concept was new to me, too.

After I was discharged from the hospital, I spent months battling my romantic interest in my psychiatrist. I felt confused. Ashamed.

I was seeing my psychiatrist in intensive outpatient therapy as well. I never once mentioned my love for him. I was afraid that if I told him, he would reassign me to another psychiatrist, and I would never see him again.

One day in January 2021, five months after I… you know, I was curious and typed “I’m in love with my psychiatrist” into the Google search bar.

The results were amazing. I was not alone. There were articles about people falling in love with their therapists. Psychiatrists were less common.

I was experiencing a phenomenon called transference. Simply put, it happens when a client transfers feelings about an attachment figure in their lives, usually their parent or guardian, onto their therapist or psychiatrist.

Usually, those feelings of transference are familial, but sometimes those feelings are romantic. So while I am not a common occurrence, I am certainly not alone in my romantic feelings.

I digested this information on my own for two weeks. Then, I summoned the courage to tell my psychiatrist that I had been having romantic feelings toward him for the past five months.

My psychiatrist was compassionate. He said that while he will never pressure me to reveal anything else, the invitation to discuss my love for him will always be there.

I poured out my feelings to him slowly over the next four months as I kept switching between inpatient and intensive outpatient treatment. However, I still felt anxious to tell him yet more.

I had told very few people about being in love with my psychiatrist. I still felt uncomfortable sharing my feelings about him with others.

One day, I finally told my therapy group at intensive outpatient treatment that I have feelings of love for my psychiatrist. Then, I told them a little about transference.

I was not completely alone. Two other clients in the group said they had loving feelings toward their therapists, but it was parental for them, not romantic.

The group therapist said that transference is “the goal” in therapy – that if a client wants to make any progress in resolving their attachment issues, then they need to experience those feelings with someone compassionate – a therapist or psychiatrist – who will help them process and heal their attachment trauma.

I don’t think I’m a typical case of transference. I don’t see my psychiatrist regularly, only when I am in crisis at the psych hospital.

I have a therapist I see weekly, with whom I process my feelings toward my psychiatrist. I wish I could see my psychiatrist at least twice a month, but that, unfortunately, isn’t possible.

It has been four years since I fell in love with my psychiatrist. I have not resolved those feelings yet. I have processed so much, yet something feels stuck. However, I still believe it is possible to heal, so I am honest and open during every session with my therapist.

Here’s my message for you: If you develop strong feelings for your therapist or psychiatrist, whether your feelings for them are familial or romantic, you are not experiencing a setback.

You are making incredible progress.

Keep going. Explore your feelings for your therapist or psychiatrist. Talk to them about how you feel. A good one will be receptive, warm, and friendly.

You will peel back many layers of emotional pain and trauma, and you will eventually heal. I believe in you.

Dear Friends Simply Hanging On,

I had trouble thinking about a dream or goal I had that came true that I would feel good writing to you about.

I graduated from university with highest honors but I went through a hell to achieve that goal that I would rather have no one else repeat.

I had a beautiful wedding that I was proud of because I planned it almost entirely on my own while working 50 hours per week at my job, but now I am divorced after eight years of marriage. The wedding clearly was not a long-term success.

I landed my dream job, writing law that would affect mental health care, but working there mentally and emotionally broke me to the point where I am disabled and unable to work ever again.

The dream I had that came true, that I am actually proud of, is living to age 40. I did not expect to live nearly this long.

My suicidal ideation and attempts began when I was 14 years old. Given how often I was injuring myself intentionally, it is a wonder that I lived to walk the stage at my high school graduation when I was 17.

My adult life often treated me harshly. I was in two long, challenging relationships. It took me seven years to graduate from university. Twenty years of intermittent employment were a huge challenge before I finally accepted that my mental health conditions severely limited my ability to work. I have been a patient at the psych hospital 18 times from the ages of 15 through 40.

When I feel any danger to my own life, I make it to the psych hospital quickly. The psych hospital is the soft place to land so I can give up the fight with the part of myself who wants the pain to end so badly that they would rather not exist.

My resilience and incredible will to live vastly outweigh my many urges to end my life every single time. I get up off the ground more times than I fall.

For many years, I have tried to fight the urges on my own. Sure, I went to therapy and took medications, but I was not completely honest with my care team. I put on a happy face because that was what I thought I was supposed to do. I even laughed and cracked many jokes throughout my life to maintain the facade.

I had a lightbulb moment eventually during one of my multiple psych hospital stays at age 36. I realized I had to be honest about how I felt and advocate for myself to get what I needed. I also had to get honest with myself and stop seeing the negative in everything.

I have had many challenging life events from ages 36 through 40. Divorce. Relocation. Death of a parent. Career loss. Bankruptcy. The list goes on.

I choose not to see these as negative. I feel incredibly blessed to have experienced all of this. I feel grateful that I could live long enough to tell these tales. I could not have endured any of these challenges had I ended my life while I was in high school.

Life is quickly looking up for me. There are still challenges, but I know I can handle anything the universe throws my way. Making it to age 40 has been fantastic. In fact, I spent my 40th birthday in the psych hospital, surrounded by an understanding care team and a handful of kind patients. It is not how I envisioned celebrating 40, but it is certainly a creative way for my birthday to be recognized.

I have plenty to live for, although I have little money and I cannot work. I set many goals, such as learning new skills and hobbies, meeting people with common interests, and getting back to my first love: writing.

If you have lost the will to live, please remember that things do get better. No emotion lasts forever. Try to imagine yourself five, ten, twenty years from now. Where do you want to be?

It is a dream come true that I have made it to 40 years of age. My next dream is to reach 50 years. I hope you become grateful for your life, too, if you have not already. I am telling you with absolute confidence that it is possible for you because you, too, have an unshakeable will to live. It is in your DNA.

However, if these feelings of despair persist, please call the crisis line in your country. You do not have to endure this alone.