Life for Benjamin H. seemed set for him as he pursued a medical degree, but he could not shake one thing: he was miserable.
The Ohio native wanted to do what he had been taught and find a prestigious career. But he gave that all up after he felt happiness for the first time.
Benjamin has battled depression since he was a teenager. His treatment plan included medications that would work, but he continued to be devoid of happiness. They never gave him a sense of happiness.
“I was able to get by most of the time and thought, ‘If I don’t die, that’s good enough.’” Benjamin said. “My medications were working well enough to keep me from suicide or being hospitalized, and I just thought that was the way my life was supposed to be.”
He was aware that an alternative to medication was available. He had worked as a Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation technician and interacted with clients as they were undergoing the noninvasive treatment. He saw clients who received treatment and watched as many experienced an improvement in their symptoms.
Even though he knew that there was an option for his treatment-resistant depression, he struggled to feel deserving of pursuing the therapy himself until his wife reassured him that he was indeed worth it.
As a new father who intended to return to medical school, he knew seeking TMS would be another commitment he would need to make. He began to feel content early in his treatment, something that had been muted for years and masked by a general sense of feeling OK. With the glimmer of hope that came with the slight shift, he decided to keep going to Connections Counseling, a specialty group of Rosecrance Therapies.
Things were much clearer to him after he completed his first round of treatment. He felt comfortable enough to return to school but realized he was no longer the same person.
“TMS made me realize that it was possible for me to be happy,” Benjamin said.
Having experienced happiness and solutions that worked so well when other options have failed in the past, Benjamin is now able to tell when he is struggling and might want to do another round of TMS to address the symptoms he’s experiencing.
The clarity and relief that TMS brought to Benjamin has allowed him to implement skills he learned long ago because he now has a better baseline. He still has difficult moments, but he has learned to value his happiness and understands that his worth is not based on what he can do for those he loves but on what he can do for himself.
“It’s not that life is easy now. It’s that I can handle it when life is hard,” Benjamin said.