Psychology and Me by Keegan

Psychology and Me by Keegan - October 2016 Scholarship Essay

If the tables were reversed, I would teach Psychology. I became lost when I was hit by a sudden, crippling depression during my sophomore year of high school. I lost friends, family, my social and outgoing nature, my confidence in my creativity and skill, my passion and motivation, and eventually my hopes for things getting better, and nothing got better until I literally lost everything. I stopped socializing, stopped going to school, stopped wanting to live. I argued, at times violently, with my parents. I started using drugs. I lied to people. I wanted to die. I started to fantasize about ways to end my life. I was self-harming, first with simple things like paper clips and thumbtacks, then with razor blades, and slowly with drugs. My parents locked up everything sharp in the house. They would no longer leave me alone. They tried everything to help me. I had been seeing a therapist since I was younger; they increased my visits with him. They took me to different therapists who prescribed anti-depressants; I threw them on the ground. Thing kept worsening and I had violent outbursts where my parents had to call the police on me. Since I was only 15, they police were very understanding and brought me to the hospital. I promised to do better and try the medication, but I didn’t. My parents told me I looked sickly. I had wounds all over me from the self-harming; then delusions and hallucinations started. I had experienced those at times in the past, but nothing that seemed bothersome. Now, I couldn’t tell what was real and what wasn’t. Voices spoke to me in my head. I imagined people and incidents that didn’t exist. I kept getting sicker. The second time the police brought me to the hospital I was transported 2 hours away to a psychiatric facility in the nearest large city. I spent about 10 days there. They started me on medication. They made me do some schoolwork. I actually did feel a little better. I left with prescriptions for anti-depressants and anti-psychotics. They told me it was “depression with psychotic features”. I tried to be compliant. I took the medication for about 2 weeks after discharge. I tried to start going to school. But I just couldn’t do it. I stopped the medication and used more street drugs. Everything was unraveling. The arguments with my parents and their fear continued. I thought I was in control of the situation. Nothing could have been further from the truth.

I turned 16. One month later 2 men showed up in my bedroom in the middle of the night. I fought them. They took me away. I had no idea what was happening. I was enrolled in a wilderness therapy program in Colorado where I wasn't allowed a single possession of my own. The other students and I weren't allowed to know where we were, how far we were hiking on any given day, or even what time it was. I had lost everything. I was lost in the woods, lost in my life, and that realization hit me hard. Ironically, being lost in the woods gave me an opportunity to regain what I'd lost at home. Without the repetitive chaos of modern society, I developed vision full of clarity that allowed me to confront my depression, and find out how to move past it. I met new friends, my relationship with my family improved drastically, and I found acceptance that allowed me to become social and outgoing once again. In the bright spark of a coal, born from a bow drill fire set engulfing a nest of juniper bark in flame, I rekindled my own flame of confidence. In a necklace of beads made of stones and bones and ghost beads from a juniper tree, I recognized my creativity. Hiking up a mountain, motivation I hadn't felt in ages flowed like a river, eroding the boulders I'd allowed to block that flood. Reaching an overlook where I could see beautiful mountains for hundreds of miles embedded a passion for the wilderness that I still carry with me.

My wilderness therapy program is what had the biggest influence on me. Since I left that program, my biggest desire has been to return to the wilderness and guide others through the woods, to help them find what they have lost. When I lost my sense of self, it was given back to me through the whispers of wind in the trees and the quiet breath of open space, and I believe anybody that struggles with questions of who they are or what they are meant for can find answers in the same way. So because of my experiences, I would want to teach psychology, but not in the traditional way, but in the way that it was taught to me in wilderness therapy; to get in touch with myself, to see how my place fits in with others, and how the power of nature can heal. When you understand these things about yourself, only then can you then understand how you can help others. The therapists in wilderness therapy had this inner vision; and as a result, they could help us teens and young adults along in the healing process. I would like to pass that wisdom along by teaching psychology.