How to find a therapist?

[WWDDFD]

I recently ended a "relationship", which every single one of my friends told me to end... well... 2 years ago. I ended up alienating my friends because of this, and things finally got so bad that I finally got fed up and ended it on the day after Thanksgiving.

 

 

There are literally hundreds of things that should have made me end the relationship, but I ignored every sign and told myself everything would fix itself in the end (I could list them, if anyone cares, the list is a mile long though, and everyone I tell it to thinks I'm making it up because it's so ****ing crazy).

 

The last straw came at the very last minute; we were set to move 300 miles away (I was moving for her; she wanted to be closer to her family); I was uncomfortable with the relationship but I convinced myself that it was just normal jitters, and then 2 weeks before we moved, she saw me crying over a sad song and said that that was "psychotic behaviour" (it's the new Goo Goo Dolls song "Better Days"). In her words, "Only psychotic men cry when they hear songs", so she said that marriage is out of the question for the time being (she had told me a month before that the whole plan was to move out there and get married to me) and we're going as just friends, and see where things go from there.

 

This got me really REALLY uncomfortable with the situation and I now had some VERY serious doubts. To top things off, I'd been having some unstable mood swings for the past two months (basically it started when I told her that I loved her, and she told me "f*ck you, if you really loved me you would have found a job in my hometown by now"), basically ranging from super-optimistic to super-depressed. Whenever I was around her I'd be very happy; whenever I wasn't, and got to thinking about things, I'd be depressed because our relationship has really gone nowhere in all this time. Yeah, she said that she wanted to marry me, but at the same time, she couldn't sit next to me on the couch and she hadn't even hugged me since May.

 

 

Anyway, the final straw came on Thanksgiving, when she threatened to get a restraining order on me. Here's the story behind that:

 

I had a very bad childhood growing up; my father used to beat and literally torture us (POW-style; naked, standing 8 hours at a time, no food, no water), and when I told her this, she remarked that violent behaviour is genetic. Now, I had always thought that I was this amazingly benevolent person; the last time I had gotten into a fight with anyone was in 1998, when I was still in high school; me and my brother got into a little fist fight over something stupid, and that's the last time I ever did anything violent in my life. Anyways, when she told me that violence is genetic, that really freaked me out, and I asked myself if I could ever possibly be capable of hurting anyone. Obviously I laughed it off and said to myself "don't be ridiculous, you couldn't hurt anything bigger than a fly".

 

When I told her that I once asked myself this question, however, she totally flipped out on me and said that when we get off the phone, she's getting a restraining order against me, since anyone who even has to ask themselves that question is obviously a psychopath (she even made a comment that I probably had dead bodies in my trunk). I have NEVER once said or done anything threatening to her or anyone, and I kept telling her to think about that, but she said it didn't matter, I could have been hiding it all along. Hell, ever since she stopped hugging me, all those months ago, I haven't even made a single romantic move towards her, because I respected her enough to know that she just wasn't in the mood for romance at that time.

 

Anyway, it took me an hour to calm her down, and she told me that she's still going to tell her family everything about me and if anything ever happens to her, they'll come hunt me down (wonderful, right?), but she'll give me the benefit of the doubt about me being harmless for the time being. She even went on to say that we should still move together and get a 1-bedroom apartment, because she thinks that I really am harmless, I'm just very socially awkward (I am), and we'll see where a relationship/marriage could possibly go, but no garantees about anything.

 

 

At this point I decided that I can't handle this paranoia anymore, and I told her that I'm probably not going to go anymore... which of course makes her flip out on me again and says she's going to sue me for breach of verbal contract. Because we agreed to move together, she quit her job and doesn't have any money anymore, so she said she'd sue me unless I gave her enough money for 2 months rent as a "security". So I wrote her a check for $1000, and she calmed down to "normal sweet mode", and told me that she really still does want us to move to Rome together and hopefully work out as a couple, and the way she said it made me want to go so badly too.

 

 

Anyway, reason took over in the morning, and I decided that even though I told her last night that I still wanted to go, I really can't, and it's just time to end this once and for all. So I wrote her a note (I couldn't break up in person! Every time I try, she somehow ends up sweet talking me into wanting to be with her even more!) and finally, once and for all, ended things.

 

 

Anyway, ever since I did that, I've been unable to cry, and I'm not sure why. I still have mild mood swings for the past 3 days, but every time I feel like crying, my face wells up and then it just stops and no tears come out.

 

 

The point to all of this is that I feel like I should go see a therapist now; I'm not really feeling good about the way my life has gone, and I think I want to start fixing things and I really need someone to talk to. I drove her crazy always complaining about my childhood (her number one complaint about me was that she doesn't want to be my damned therapist), I drive my friends crazy because they don't really want anything to do with it, and people on the internet aren't really interested in helping some random guy they don't know anything about... so I think I want to find a therapist.

 

Does anyone know how I would do this? I looked in the yellow pages, but it's very overwhelming and I have no idea where to start.

 

Also, if I do go to therapy, could the records of me going there ever be used against me in the future, like if I applied for a job, can they say "oh he went to therapy, we won't hire him!"?

 

Thank you.

[WWDDFD]

Oh by the way, I had some suicidal thoughts last month and I never told anyone. I never actually acted on them either, but I told myself that if I died, I really wouldn't care... and that scared the crap out of me the next day.

 

I really don't feel like that anymore, but it still worries me that I did think about it, even for a moment.

 

So, I really really do think I need to see someone, asap.

[JS17]

Honestly, I didn't read your whole post but to find a therapist you can do a few things. First, if you have health insurance you can go through your provider directory. You can call respectable universities to find out if their alumni have a listing. You can do the same with hospitals. Recommendations from others are always great but it would have to be from someone you're not close with by any stretch of the imagination.