Pathology and the relatively high bar for mental health services 🤪 💭

One of the things I’ve been thinking about lately a lot is how much push back I got from my mental health therapist when I wanted to discuss my own values and thoughts about the world. He wanted to stay away from with a 39 and half foot pole, mainly because having any one set of values is not a pathology, assuming those values are mostly lawful and the risk to oneself or others is relatively low.

The whole thing kind of bothers me a lot, just because values are so integral to who I am as an individual, and I think a lot of my anxiety issues that at one level are holding me back, as fed by the conflict of values I often have myself having. But having conservative viewpoints might not be pathology. I understand that, but I wish I had someone I could talk to just to better understand my own values, about my hopes and my future plans without everything being pushed back to something that could be easily medicalized and billed to insurance. I also wish there was something in my own thinking, that could be pointed to and need to be changed as faulty logic. But there is no such obvious thing like needing help with depression or anger management. 

I am by no means ready to give up seeking further counseling, as I do think there is benefits to having more introspection and building up my life skills. I am making good money at work, I am getting closer to my life goals and are generally happy, but I think I could still be better at how I think about the world and be a more effective communicator. I still worry I am a bit too much of a firebug, but if I want to move to Pennsylvania or out west some point so I burn my own trash and have bonfires (along with owing more guns, pigs and cattle), then all the more power to me, as my counselor says. In the vast open spaces of our country, there is places where nobody cares. And it’s not that bad of a thing in grand scheme of things, despite what some of the activist types might want you to think.

I have so many liberal friends and relatives, I put in long hours for the Democratic Party, and I involved in fighting development in the Albany Pine Bush and elsewhere. But I find myself often siding with conservatives on many issues, although certainly not all, and somehow that really bothers me as I am not sure totally what to believe these days. But I am not willing to accept whatever I hear on the radio or get in an activist group’s email. I am certainly not a Donald Trump supporter, although I didn’t exactly vote for the other guy either, going for the libertarian this cycle. The activist types say, I threw away my vote, but I rather say I just threw up my hands!