Welcome to Back from the Abyss. I'm Dr. Craig Hecock. This is a place for stories of hope and healing, recovery and redemption.

First, an announcement, there are a couple of openings left in the ketamine-assisted therapy training

I'm doing next month with elemental psychedelics.

It runs from May 14th to 18th, and I'll link to more info and registration in the show notes.

Today's story is really two stories in one.

First, this is a story of a little girl growing up with a dysfunctional and shaming mother,

a girl who grows up and finally finds hope and healing through psychotherapy and loving

adult relationships. And secondly,

this is a story of peeling off the psychiatric meds that were used to try to fill her trauma

hole. But as back from the abyss listeners know, psych meds typically do very little to address

the core wounds of trauma.

This is a story of overcoming shame, a story that looks at the question of whether people

need meds for life, and it turns out, surprise, surprise, that what's causing or driving

depression actually really matters.

And when that's a mom wound, most psychiatric meds are really just acting

as flimsy bandages.

So it was 1987, and I was 21 and had my first appointment with my former psychiatrist.

You know, a lot of times now, docs do just medication management or just therapy, but he was old school. He did both. The first time I saw him, what I said was, I'm depressed, and I have no idea why. And I don't remember what he said in response to that, but I still, 37 years later, remember very much how I felt when I left. I felt like he had

not heard me. I felt hopeless and that he wasn't going to be able to help me. But I went back the

next week and the next and the next for four years. Looking back, I'm not sure why I kept going back

other than I was just desperate.

And I think at some point along the way, I realized, you know, that I was healing in the midst of it.

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