Struggling to be

yes, i agree, even when i first went to hospital i would still have liked to be talked to about what medications they were going to be giving me etc. Unfortunately I am now stuck on a medication that is not PBS funded and is sooo expensive because they put me on something that i can't easily come off of. There was no discussion wiht me for nearly 2 weeks about my treatment plan, maybe because i was a country patient and didnt have a telemed with the psychiatrist till then. I think the mental health nurse was in touch with him before that though. Very frustrating that there is little in terms of 'respect' in that regards... though i do believe my hospital experience was ok, especially after reading some posts here!

LJ

Hey @Former-Member

Sorry to hear about the costly meds and the difficult side-effects. Not helpful at all. Sadly some so-called health professionals do tend to treat people with MI as if they have no say (or even ought not have any say) in their own treatment. Yet many people develop a great deal of insight and know when they are becoming unwell, even if they can't prevent or halt the slide.

I think most of the posts here on the forums about "hospital" stays have been about being in mental health units, not an ordinary hospital ward. (For exampe Karen contrasted her MHU experiences with the kindness of the staff when she was moved to an acute ward for her heart problems.) Sounds like you were lucky with the (ordinary) latter. Though that's not to say that eveyone's MHU stay is unhelpful.

I hope you are coping ok with all that has been going on, and getting some helpful help yourself.

Hope for emerging from the long dark tunnel endures...

Kindest regards,

Kristin

@PeppiPatty thankyou, i love birds, such free spirits! and they mostly seem to be quite cheerful creatures to me. 🙂 Thankyou for your comments, feeling validated isnt a feeling that i've experienced very often in the outside world but here I actually feel like I kind of belong. Thankyou for that too @kristin and many many others!

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@justanother47yr wrote:
You are so clever I'm reading your message again and again, hang on Ille just grab the dictionary........

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Hiya @PeppiPatty ,

Sorry, I'm not trying to be. [sad smile] It's just how I write.

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@justanother47yr wrote:
And I agree that your dwelling on your last therapist.

So, you met a therapist who isn't like you and needs to score points with his ego,,,,,,,is this right??
Crikey. That sounds like 'not a place to find your own peace and spirituality .....but like your shopping for your groceries and bargaining for cheaper vegetables......

Please write please write. I can show off my pseudo intelligence .

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This only happened a few days ago, and you folk are the only people I've spoken to about it. (Except for a bloke at Lifeline around 4 a.m. on Saturday morning.) I think "dwelling on" might be a little harsh. [smile] Remember, this occurred at the session where I first raised my concerns, a session that he terminated (with extreme prejudice!) after precisely 11 minutes. I raised the issues so I could gauge whether he was someone I could work with; it's not as if he'd rejected my concerns and I'd still gone back to him for another session.

It did feel like his ego was very tied up in things, yes. But I wasn't trying to chip away at that -- my feeling is that he can be as agotistical as he likes, provided we can still have a productive conversation. My concern was that he had made sweeping pronouncements that felt judgemental, not founded on facts, and very limiting on what I then felt able to say to him. If he felt strongly about them, I expected him to tell me why he felt that way, or at least try to explain it; I needed to feel like an active participant in the conversation, even if his ego demanded that he be the senior partner. But instead he went straight to blanket statements of "I'm the boss, and you'll do what you are told". He even actually said to me, "Well, that's just your opinion. I'm the therapist, I'm the one with training, so I'm the one who knows what's true." I don't feel that's the kind of conversation I want or need, but even if he did, there were much better ways he could have said it. I am concerned there are "Helpers" out there who can't handle being questioned and have to throw the questioner away as a knee-jerk reaction, but my actual issue was that he did it quite intentionally nastily. He was an active ... [insert words here that the forum's robo-nanny won't let me write].

As I said, I know I'm better off without him, in the broader scheme of things. But that's the pragmatic view, for when the shock and sense of rejection have abated; in the closeness of the experience, it's bone-rattling to have someone in the role of a professional act so callously.

Enough. I do want to say that, from my perspective, there's nothing pseudo about your intelligence. You strike me as canny, witty and observant,

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@kristin wrote:

Dear @Aonaran

I am really glad I didn't see that Q&A. Sometimes never watching TV is such a blessing. Too much bad news and BS for my health's liking. Otherwise I'd probably have steam coming out of my ears too.

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Heya @kristin ,

My comments weren't intended as a whinge about Q&A, nor even the people on that specific show -- I mentioned it as a reference point, as something others might have seen where the things that I'm currently concerned about re the public view of MI were (I felt) clearly on display.

(That said, I do have a few issues with that show itself. I used to be a fan of the show, but the current tone, and the highlighting of the mind-numbing bon mot du jour tweets, has pushed it into being merely populist and self-congratulatory, and that's so frustrating. Even "experts" are competing for the approval of the happy-clappy audiences, rather than saying things we might actually need to hear. Worse, it's spouting the currently-prevailing perceived wisdom that's got them recognised as "experts" in the first place. That's where the true nanny-statedom resides. But what else can we expect, when the whole of our entrenched media operates as an id-based equivalent of the "Like" button on Facebook?)

I guess we all build our perception of the world on the nature of the people who show up circling our individual gravity wells. For those who have positive people transiting theirs, then a hearty congratulations. I've not been so lucky. Very few of them have been malicious, and i honestly don't think most people are, but in my own experience very few of them have been kind, either. I tend to be quite patient and accommodating, and I suspect that allows people to latch on. When I ask questions on this forum, I'm not actually asking for personal reassurance, but to hear other people's honest perceptions for themselves; I've spent most of my life alone, and I'm painfully aware that I can't assume my own perceptions are the ones everyone has. (They don't have to be, and I'm certainly not trying to normalise myself or invalidate my own experiences; I just want to know what other people see from their own planets.)

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@nigioc wrote:

Hey @Aonaran

I hope it's ok to wade in at this late juncture. It does feel a little like walking up to a group of conversing people, waiting for the last speaker to finish their sentence and then bellowing "Wanna know what I think..."

But everyone here is very lovely and super polite so I'm sure, even if I get it very wrong, nobody will hand me my coat.

It was just the comments you made about being the object of a lot of people's ire, a lot of the time, resonated with me. Not because I exerience it but because I've witnessed it in close quarters. I had this very close friend who always found herself in the crosshairs of that type of person you described. People who often appeared well meaning, concerned, even worried about her. They would cluck around her, making her tea, telling her she looked pale and needed to eat more. And then, invariably, the friendship would end, explosively. Because she didn't eat more, like they told her to, or go for the job they thought she should apply for, or end the relationship they had deemed 'going nowhere' or any number of failings on her part. There would always be yelling and vitriol and she would often fnd her self with another life long enemy she would bump into at parties.

The thing though, that I found the most odd was that as my friend struggled with MI it was always, always 'her fault'. And not just deemed so by the person doing the yelling, but those around who watched it happen, or those that heard her tell the story, everyone. They would all arrive at the conclusion that she had misunderstood what went down, like she was not able to recognise poor behaviour when it played out in front of her, or, and this one was an absolute favourite and the one I grew to loathe the most, she had 'attracted them into her life'. Like her MI was this internal magnet for jerks and ultimately the responsibility lies with her to switch off the magnet. Not for the jerks to stop being jerks. Which to me just seemed like salt in a suppurating wound.

I have come to believe that some people just have crap luck and they go through their lives encountering theirs and also other's shares of jerks. It's not their fault. It's just bad timing. The same way meeting your soul mate is awesomely good luck and great timing. Except not as rare and on repeat.

The part that stays within our control is how long we let them linger. I've had pretty decent luck and have not had to deal with too much animosity in my life but I also believe in ducking and diving the chaff. (I had a kid very young and, for me, once I was vetting people for someone I loved the whole process was simplified) And if I had to offer up a suggestion about how to see them coming or ways of tweaking a radar so it pings quicker...my criteria is laughing. If they don't make me laugh, and they don't think I'm hilarious then, I'm sorry but it's just not going to work out.

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Heya @nigioc ,

Wow, thanks so much for this post. To my perception, you've put your finger precisely on what I was trying to say. To my mind, it's a genuine gift when someone really "gets" where you're coming from.

So. It is what it is, but the struggle for me is to know how to respond to it. The people who think I'm "wrong" think it's self-evident that I am so, and so anything I say otherwise is taken as my being uppity or difficult. I see it something like being born with a caul, but others seem to see it more like being born ugly in some Brothers Grimm tale, where the characters essentially say, "you were born ugly, so you have to accept that of course we're are going to kick you and deride you and only let you work menial tasks. Know your place!"

And like a Brothers Grimm character, I've done my fair share of crying into the ashes at the cold grate of a fire that's gone out. Of course I've also done my own version of "this is not for me", hitching up my waggon and going looking for a greener field, but I've never found one -- just more cold hearths. Each time it happens takes a heavier toll, and makes it harder to move the waggon again. I'm sorry if this sounds like self-pity, but pragmatically it's no surprise that I now have heart failure; my heart is literally broken. And to me, the saddest part is that along the way I lost sight of who I was and what I wanted my life to be. Even that isn't hard to understand, but it's grievous.

These days I'm most glad to encounter someone who says "I hear you" as clearly and precisely as you did. Sincere thanks for the gift, @nigioc .