Location: Denial Tent, Virtual Psych Ward Campsite, MA, USA
I am currently:
Triggering (SI/ED) - have come back after forever because i exploded my world. oops. (also trig SUI/OD)
i stopped coming on here like a year and a half ago because this is the safe talking about problems place and i was having serious problems with the facing and talking problems thing, hence avoiding the place where that happens. That might have been a mistake, because things really only got worse, yeah. Oops.
i never had therapy or counselling, despite my issues starting at like 13 (i'm 25), until 3 years ago. i graduated uni, got my first full-time job, and realised that my plan of just acting normal and having a normal life eventually leading to my mental health becoming normal was total crap. Anyway, went to first therapist ever when i was 22 and she told me that she had a magical backpack in the corner of her room where i would unload my problems and not have to carry them on my own anymore because she would hold them there for me until i came back. i chose not to come back because clearly she was under the disillusion that i was 5. She also asked me if i had a history of trauma, and even though i said no and have never been abused, gave me the title of a book to look at before i came back for my 2nd appt with her, but the book ended up being an anthology of case studies ABOUT FEMALE TRAUMA SURVIVORS. I never went back. After about 6 months I went to see another therapist, had like 8 appts with my 2nd therapist before I realised she was in over her head with me. She referred to SI as "just a habit, so just stop doing it,” didn't know what a "trigger" was and told me at my 3rd appt with her to just throw away my tools. i finally stopped seeing her when she decided to compromise on the stopping cold turkey and told me to only purge/SI once a day. That week i lost almost 10 pounds and gave myself the worst cuts and burns i ever have before i realised what was happening was that i saved it all up for my 1 time a day and made the most of it and that wasn't really progress. So that was like 2 years ago.
Finding my 3rd and current therapist was so hard bc i called so many places was told either that i really needed to be in hospital/at a hospital day program, not in regular therapy, or that there was nobody who could help me because none of the staff had any experience or training with my problems, which i think meant SI. Finally found the therapist i have now after forever looking. He was the only one who would even meet with me once. i have been seeing him for a year and a half now, and the psychiatrist in his practice for over a year. i don’t think it’s going well. A year and a half of therapy and nothing is different. My life is the same, maybe worse.
A little over a year ago i was sectioned after i OD'd and spent 2 weeks of hell in hospital. It's confusing, but it was a PRACTICE suicide attempt gone very awry so i didn’t even mean to commit suicide. i’d never been in hosp before, and my family and friends didn't know anything about what was going on, so being there was the apocalypse. they were a rubbish hospital and did a rubbish job searching me so my first day there i locked myself in the bathroom and used the tool they didn’t find to really try and kill myself. Was sent to A&E for stitches. After that i was on 1:1 staffing for almost a week. Horrible. They watched me go to the bathroom, shower, sleep, everything. Made me sleep in the kitchen common room, where the lights were on 24/7, that had a glass wall and glass door, on a cot, with a guy sitting in a chair next to me staring at me all night.
This really nice but unmedicated manic lesbian patient was admitted, and we were in the same unit for 2 entire days before they finally separated me from her because in her unmedicated manic state she fixated on me and decided i was the love of her life and it didn't matter that i disagreed. She attacked me and it took 4 staff to hold her down and keep her away from me. She was barely 5ft tall. She grabbed me with such force that she made my arm bleed. Yet somehow it took 2 days for them to separate us.
The hospital was clearly evil so after that i signed a 3-day-notice for discharge. They have 3 business days and then you either get discharged if the dr agrees, or you go to court if the dr wants you to stay and the court decides. It's a legal document. What happened on the 3rd day? Nothing. Nobody discharged me, nobody let me go home, and nobody would talk to me or get my dr or social worker to explain. So after threatening to call my family’s lawyer to take them to court, where i would win, they discharged me finally. They did set me up with interviews at 2 day programs as my post-hospital therapy plan. The 2 interviews they scheduled were both on the same day, at the same time. So helpful, that hospital. i went to one for 15 days, but it sucked. They told me i might have a seizure disorder and said they wanted to test me for them. Never did. 2 months later after i asked my PCP about it, she had me tested and it was negative. They also said i needed neuropsych testing. They never did. When asked about it and they said they wanted to review my results from the neuropsych testing that the hospital did on me first. i never had neuropsych testing when i was in hospital. i never was tested. Seeing as i was suicidal, the program wanted me to make a crisis plan with them. They gave me the first couple blank worksheets to try and fill in on my own. Nobody ever looked at it and they never even gave me all the sheets the entire 2 weeks i was there.
Since i was released from hospital and finished that crappy day program last September, nothing has really gotten better. My world ended and my mothe ruined my family. i need another family now but you can't trade them in for new ones unfortunately. My mental illness and SI and ED and everything were my private issue that only my closest friends knew, mostly because they figured things out not because i told them, but they didn't know everything or how bad. My mother thought i had stopped everything by college but knew i had issues as a teenager. Being sectioned killed that. The hospital and day program made me tell my mom everything and they told her waht i didn't and then she told everybody. Without asking me. All my relatives and family friends. i'm still finding people who know things about me that she told them. Just last month somebody was talking to me about something random and vomiting came up and she said, "i heard you make yourself throw up." i can't go to family functions anymore unless they are short afternoon things where i can leave after an hour or two because it always turns into conversations and things being said like that one.
After the hospital from hell i was so afraid of being put back in that i would do anything any dr told me to. So i started seeing my psychiatrist and tried meds. We tried 4 meds and they all gave me crappy side effects like upset stomach and forgetting things and being overly tired, but none of the therapeutic results. All that i discovered is that in addition to everything else i have adhd and the med for that actually works. But now the psychiatrist just seems to have stopped trying. He gives me the adhd prescription and asks how things are and i say the same and that’s it. i tell him that i am getting discouraged, but if he had a suggestion for another to try that i would take it. Then he said if i wanted to try something he was there to help. So i repeat that if he wants to suggest something i take it. And then he just gives me the adhd prescription and repeats to let him know if i want to try again. What, am i supposed to find the meds by myself? Prescribe myself? What did he go to med school for? He just keeps saying that over and over and never can tell me another med to try. It’s been like that since May. It’s December now. My therapist is no better. Have been seeing him longer than the psychiatrist and he is a nice person but i am also starting to doubt if he knows what he is doing with me. A year and a half and we don’t even talk about the SI and the ED or suicide or od’s or anything anymore. When i bring it up and ask how we are going to start figuring out what feelings cause it and how to identify the feelings, or ask about what i can do instead of SI to feel better, or what distractions i can use, he just says weird things like the feelings go away by themselves and that i don’t need to do anything. When i say that i do, because i have no emotional tolerance and until it builds upwhat else can i do as an alternative to injuring myself of attempting suicide, he tells me that nothing apart from alcohol or drugs will do the same thing and that he doesn’t recommend that. i also have told him multiple times that i get stoned when it is worst and i think he somehow always forgets that, because he says things like this that are really not a good idea to say to mild drug abusers like me because all it makes me think is that maybe i should try cocaine or heroin instead if therapy continues to be useless. The ed is getting much worse. i can tell physically. Maybe. Am so confused. Sometimes i think it is and sometimes think is maybe physical side effects of the other mental stuff. Either way don’t understand why when i bring the topic up he never has anything helpful to say. No suggestions for safe eating. Nothing. i tell him stories about going away places and having to force feed myself one meal a day that consists of 4 fish sticks causing me to be so tired that every time i stand up i can’t see straight and i stumble and trip so often that my legs are covered in bruises, and all he can talk about is jobs. What jobs am i looking at and have i applied anywhere else?
i can’t do this anymore. It’s not working. Am still waiting for therapy to be therapeutic. Nobody can tell me what to do to get better. i don’t even know why i am the way i am. i’m emotionally retarded. Not a joke, seriously am. Have no idea how my emotions affect me, can’t identify them. i can tell i feel like crap but i don’t know how to figure out what’s upsetting me or how to fix it. It just gets unbearable until i SI or get stoned out of my mind and can then momentarily be distracted from the bad feelings until they come back. Repeat day after day.
Thank RYL you for being the awesome safe place to talk and for still being here after i abandon you. i am sorry that all i have to give your awesomeness is an endlessly long complainy story about myself, but i the complaining felt good once i started and then it just exploded. Hopefully it was helpful. Maybe now i am cured because i complained it all out. That would be so great. If you read this you should tell people you have read the book War and Peace even if you haven't because this post was probably as long as War and Peace is.
Hugs Callie!!
Sorry youve been having somuch trouble in finding a good therapist,
they are few and far between im afraid.
Hope being back on ryl helps you hun xxx
Hey, Callie.
I'm sorry things have become so terrible. The only thing I could suggest is to keep looking, the two docs you have sound utterly useless.
But I know how tiring and discouraging that is.
Hope being here again will help.
xxx
Location: Denial Tent, Virtual Psych Ward Campsite, MA, USA
I am currently:
thank you muchly MammaMia and Grace and Romp *hugs*
i feel ugh because somehow i was actually hoping that i wouldnt have to think about finding new docs
i feel complicated enough and having to meet new docs and find new docs and talk to even more people is not acceptable, world. world, please let me demand you into making that not have to happen because if it does have to happen i will fail. the end. i can't do it. can't can't can't. i just can't. ugh. great i am going to freak out. just last week my best friends talked to me and said the same thing, that my docs suck and are not working and don't seem to listen, either they don't know what to do with my problems or they don't realise what the problems are, and that i need docs who do, and what they said made sense and i got all excited and yay like okay i have a plan i will go home and go online and research and find a new perfect doc and life will be so awesome and i will be therapy advanced happy healthy girl! and that was total crap. i had so much trouble finding docs who would accept me into their practice and this one was the only guy who would take me! and i have been told that psychiatrists will be even harder and that the psychiatrist i have no is like the only guy in the area who is suited to work with somebody like me! what does that even mean since he can't seem to come up with any more med options but whatever it's certainly better than being rejected for being too crazy by any more docs i can't do that. i give up possibly. i have tried. so. so. hard. really i have. i have advocated for myself and put up with so much crap and i really feel like if i were not meant to be this way, i wouldn't be anymore. i am just made this way. i am not viable. there is something wrong in my brain and no drugs or talking can fix it. this is just me. i accept that. and now i feel confused and swirly so i am just going to tell myself to enjoy my nice hugs from you guys and try to convince myself that the Denial Tent is real but at the moment this whole thing feels like a stupid delusional pretend pathetic game. which is really rather disappointing.
Location: Denial Tent, Virtual Psych Ward Campsite, MA, USA
I am currently:
i have therapy on wednesday and i just don't see the point in even bothering to show up. i don't want to go anymore. i feel like i tried and that i get to be done now. i tried so what else am i supposed to do? i did everything i could. therapy just went nowhere and i finally figured that out and let me tell you ignorance is bliss because that was a really unpleasant and disappointing revelation. really. super. sucky.
i just realised last night that it's been 3 years, as in i was 22 when i first tried therapy and i am 25 now. and i can't express how much it sucks to look back and realise these last 3 years were a waste, and in fact made WORSE by starting therapy. i look back at where i was before and after and am only struck by the mistakes that were made, and not just by me, in the course of therapy being introduced into my life. i have fallen further. not made any progress and it kills me because i have actually made efforts.
i no longer just work up the courage to go to the office and sit in the chair and stare with huge frightened eyes at the therapist and wait for him to talk and ask me things and barely choke out answers to his questions that are something other than "i don't want to talk about that talking about that is scary." i go and sit in that chair and i actually ask my therapist what we are working on, what i can do when i am at home to make progress, and i get nothing.
we are working on feelings. i am supposed to specifically identify the feelings i have before during and after i si and i get that. we started talking about that on day one. i know this it's part of the ABC behavior analysis and functional analysis and all that crap - i know this i was a psych major in school so i could help learn how to fix myself, but from the very first time i saw this therapist i told him I CAN'T IDENTIFY MY OWN FEELINGS i dont know how to i am divorced from my emotions i started blocking them out so long ago that it's automatic now not even requiring conscious effort and i dont know how to do it and he doesnt seem to get it. he tells me i need to identify them. i say how. he says nothing! nothing!
so in an effort to make some kind of therapeutic progress i asked about replacement behaviors because clearly the feelings thing is going nowhere.
("we are going to work on identifying negative feelings that make you si, callie." "okay, how do you identify negative feelings because i don't know how." "well i think it's possible, callie, because lots of people who aren't as smart as you can do it and do it every day, and you don't seem to have any trouble with the positive feelings." "okay, sure, i am smart enough to LEARN how to do it but i don't know how to right now and i even try when i am at home because you have asked me to but i just get confused and try so long that i get really upset so tell me how these other people do it or tell me how to start to figure it out." "well i think it's possible, callie, because lots of people who aren't as smart as you can do it and do it every day, and you don't seem to have any trouble with the positive feelings." and clearly that is going nowhere)
so i asked him what are other things i can do instead of SI to make the bad feelings bearable, to make me feel better? even if we arent at the place where i try them (because he seemed to think i wasnt ready and whatever that is fine i think he is right but i refuse to have been doing therapy for 3 years (not consecutive but whatever this feels like forever) and have no progress not even pretend theoretical future planned progress). i mean really people just tell me what they are just give me SOMETHING I CAN CLING TO IN THE HOPES THAT MAYBE SOME DAY IT WILL START TO TURN INTO WHAT MIGHT BE CALLED PROGRESS. and he says nothing! all he does is tell me that nothing will feel like SI and nothing will make the bad feelings, whatever the hell they even ARE, feel better like SI does. then he launches into the same speech i always get when i ask about managing bad feelings and it is the Feelings as Waves Theory that emotions are a spectrum and they aren't on or off or active or inactive they are like a wave and the flow up and down all the time and when the bad feelings peak they will always eventually go back down. sure i get that. hello psych major how many times do i need to remind him. don't lecture me on what my professors already did. i took the final exam already. i even graduated already. and this doesn't even apply because i am not asking what will make the bad feelings disppear and never come back. i know that is impossible. i am asking how you TOLERATE THEM WHILE THEY ARE HERE because they will always come back, and i just want to know what i can do to stand it instead of SI because i need something to replace the SI please! and just telling myself that eventually this will go away because it's a wave just doesn't work!
so when i flipped out about all this last week and felt like therapy was a confusing waste of time since i had made no progress and basically as far as i can tell have no plan in place for making any progress, ever, at the very end of the session he told me to take a baseline reading (like take data on my SI), and somehow that made me feel like we had a plan and everything was going to be okay and he must know what he is doing and yay now i will make progress because i have this important therapy thing to do at home and i will do it and bring it to him and then i will be cured and have a party
but i just realised it's crap. i have been seeing this therapist for one year and 9 months and he thinks he needs a baseline reading NOW? that was nothing but distracting busywork! he would have made note of baseline levels in the beginnning the first few sessions i saw him! that's just how it is! plus i remember him asking all the time in the beginning what did you do today when was the last time X happened how often does Y happen. he doesn't need a baseline!
WHAT IS THIS IS THERAPY JUST SOME HUGE JOKE HOW IS THIS SUPPOSED TO WORK I DON'T UNDERSTAND HOW THIS IS SUPPOSED TO WORK AND IT IS DRIVING ME CRAZY THAT I AM APPARENTLY THE ONLY ONE WHO CAN SEE HOW MUCH THIS IS A POINTLESS SITUATION THAT CANNOT POSSIBLY HELP ME IMPROVE IN ANY WAY it makes me feel crazy because when i ask about it and point out the blatant flaw in the plan he doesnt seem to see it he doesnt have anything to say so am i crazy and because of that just wrong about this and it isn't a real problem or am i crazy but right about this and he is a bad therapist?
