Help! - These Psychiatrists have ruined my life!

Hi @KnightK4,

Thanks for joiniing the forum and sharing your story 🙂

Hi @KnightK4

Sorry to hear of your frustration. I have things pretty mild compared to you and some others. For that I am thankful.

Sadly Doctors are right about things being pretty fuzzy and imprecise. They are only able to take best guesses and the groundwork they use is often shifting as official diagnoses and terms get shifted around to suit the latest theories. Unfortunately, that would make people trapped in that wheel pretty confused - and therefore easily angered.

I take it you posted here to get out your frustration (better than smashing things for sure) and in some part looking for a light to guide.

Assuming the latter, my Mother always taught us that we were the masters of our own ship and when things seemed too tough to pop them aside for a while and look up and outward till something new came along. She would tell irritable-me to look up at the mountains. Soon enough my grumbling faded and I was off playing with my plastic knights again.

I guess to be more direct, I worry that as long as you see your health and happiness as being in the hands of "the man" then it will always seem like you come off second best. And that will hurt.

Is there some way you can start to see that the thoughts in your head belong to you so that in some future place and time you could adjust them for yourself? Can you take a tip from the AA rulebook and let your higher power (life, the universe...) help you find a way to take a step forward 9and be open to it when it shows)?

I hope that helps in some small way.

🙂

@KnightK4

I am sure that not all is roses in the health system. Systemize anything (esp at the hands of government types who seem to have a penchant for hating life) and it tends to create gaps for things (or people) to fall through.

Resentment is understandable. I can wallow in that myself. However, it leads to no good (note how all super-villains lose). Try being grateful for what you do have instead. I know for a fact you have hands that can type, eyes that can read and access to a computer to let you do both. What an amazing time to live in. I dreamed of computers like this when I was a kid in the 80's.

Maybe just try suspending judgment (like you do when you watch a show like Harry Potter or Dr Who) and allowing yourself to consider that your life could actually be entirely in your own hands.

Sure that may seem a bit far-fetched for you when you try to rationalize it but allow the idea, and more importantly the feeling of peace and joy that would bring, to sit in your mind for a few minutes every day. Don't analyze it, just let the idea sit there for a few minutes and then hand it off to whatever you can accept as the thing that makes the clockwork of the universe function (and that sure ain't the govt.).

Suddenly something unexpected will pop itself up in your path; a book, TV show, person, event. If you let yourself embrace that moment and thing there will be something that helps you move forward a few steps and you will be a bit more in control of your own life.

You have nothing to lose trying that for a few weeks.

🙂

@KnightK4 I am so terribly sorry to hear of your experiences in the mental health system. Your post reminded me of another thread titled "hospital experiences" that someone started a day or two ago. I too have been significantly harmed in the mental health system. It is an awful system and I can relate to a sense of powerlessness within it. It is very very frightening. I don't think people can really appreciate it unless they have experienced it. I know that within that system we are NOT in control of our own destiny. I long for the day that the system changes...but I fear that it won't be in my lifetime.

I love your positive approach to life @Fiz. However, sadly, the reality is that for many people with severe mental illness (MI), their lives are not entirely in their own hands. For example, they can be forcibly taken from their homes and locked up in hospital. Or they can be ordered by a court to take medication - and be locked up in a psych ward if they don't comply with the order. Within psychiatric wards, horrible things happen like people being forcibly medicated, physically restrained, or locked in a room on their own when they are super distressed and really just need someone to listen and to care.

All of these sorts of things can lead to trauma, which physically damages the brain. So no...even though, as I said, I love your positive attitude to life, this alone will not heal the sorts of harms that @KnightK4 is describing. I know you mean well by your post though, and it is lovely that you took the time to write it and offer support to someone who you can hear is struggling.

Thanks @Phoenix_Rising

I get that there must be some depressing and defeating things that happen in the system. I sure wouldn't want to seem to be trying to minimize that.

My 2 cents was based on the William Glasser idea that bad things happen and we can't control that more often than not. However we can control how we react. Easier said than done, esp from the outside, and I struggle with that myself more than I would like.

Sorry if it seemed I was trying to minimize. I will step out of this one now as I don't have the ability to share a matching life experience.

🙂