Dear future Psychiatrist/Psychologist

I don’t like you, nor do I trust you.  A very bad experience back in 2003 with a vigilante pop psychologist from an emergency room has pretty much cemented my feelings that “shrinks” are not to be trusted.

I express myself well in writing, but very poorly verbally.  The combination of trust issues and my inability to properly emote makes treatment slow, painful, and discouraging.  To coincide with that, I take criticism very poorly, “reality checks” even worse, and shut down quickly at the first signs of either.

I am highly defensive, and it takes very little to trigger that defensiveness, which again, leads to shut down, because I cannot express all the negative feelings at once.  Regardless of how much I would like to discuss my issues, I never feel that I can, because I am always under pressure, feeling like I will be locked up if I say the wrong thing.

I do not believe the law is correct in stating that if I am a danger to myself, it is acceptable for you to have me placed under a psychiatric hold.  I’d personally like to see that changed.  If I’m a danger to others, by all means, lock me up, but if I’m a danger to myself, I don’t think it is your place to incarcerate me and demand that I conform to the social norm of “life is worth living”.

No, I don’t want to talk about how having Tourette’s makes me feel.  In general, it truly does not make me feel much at all.  There are some days when I’m in a disgustingly foul mood because I’m in pain, but beyond that, I deal with it.  I find my depression to be far more debilitating than the Tourette’s, even though both seem to preclude me from ever obtaining gainful employment.

I am highly suspicious of you…probably always will be.  The walls I have up are thick, and strong, and though they are penetrable, it takes a lot of time for me to trust, because one rash, foolish, inconsiderate bitch decided that my feelings on life were neither correct nor valid, and took away my choice to do as I wished.

I have a lot of secrets.  You will never be privy to all of them.

I can be a ruthless bitch when I feel like I am backed into a corner, and I will happily eviscerate you with my words, given the chance.

I know PARTS of my brain are broken, but not all of my thoughts are the depression and anxiety talking.  Some of my opinions have been mine for a very, very long time, and they are not clouded by my psychological hurdles.  My disagreeing with you has little to nothing to do with my illness, and everything to do with me being more than that illness.

I am an intelligent human being, and I hate being patronized.  Don’t do it.  Hey, look!  There’s that defensiveness!  Suspicion soon to follow!

I know I need help.  It’s why I’m in your office.  That doesn’t mean the help will always be well received.  Generally, it takes me weeks to even accept that I need to try something.  And then, when the suggestion from you fails, I will return, angry, any potential growth stunted, because nothing changed the way I feel it should have changed.

I am a difficult charge when it comes to therapy, because I am slow to trust, or cannot trust at all.

Medications?  Yes, I’ve been thinking about trying them again, but the decision is being made with great trepidation.  I have suffered from constipation, diarrhea, catatonia, idiopathic seizures, being “high”, weight gain, and one reaction so severe that it nearly killed me.

I am not interested in stopping my tics, really, just in making the chemistry of my brain function better than it does so I don’t feel like throwing myself off a cliff every other day.

I have self esteem issues, and in general, really do not think very highly of myself.  I do not like the way I look, I constantly struggle with my weight, I have a very hard time making new friends on my own, and I feel like a massive, useless failure.

I know that in general, I am a warm, kind, caring person, and this is why I am often taken advantage of.  I do know that I am valued, though on days when I am so depressed I barely want to get out of bed, I cannot see that value in myself.

I know that the severity of my TS is partially based in my anxiety, and if I can get the anxiety under control, I can get the tics under control.  Unfortunately, I suck when it comes to learning coping mechanisms, because they don’t work quickly enough for me, and I get more anxious and perturbed because it needs to be fixed NOW, not later.

Dear future Psychiatrist/Psychologist,
Good fucking luck

Flail on,
– Classical Spazz

~ by ClassicalSpazz on January 26, 2012.