(marginally literate rant, you're better off just ignoring it really)

[sans qualia]

Oh my god oh my god oh my god what a terrible time in my life.

On Friday, March 4th I was supposed to go for an intake interview at a DBT program near where I live. So it's the morning of the day before, and I'm in my therapists office (he wanted to make sure I was ok - he's a little bit skittish), and he decides that I'm suicidal (I wasn't, but hey, skittish), and calls the police and orders me to go with them to the hospital on pain of being committed. Huzzah. Nice work, this is really gonna give me the will to keep on living. I don't have the energy to protest, and he's pretty much assured me that if it comes down to it, the county screeners are gonna decide I need to be locked up, so I go.

Yay. Hospital. For the third time in two months. It's not so bad. I meet nice people, like I always do in the hospital. I also meet totally crazy people, like this delusional guy who wouldn't stop hitting on me (they wouldn't let me keep my razor, of course, so at this point I hadn't shaved in about a day... go figure, I guess he likes stubbly women) and threatened to sneak into my room that night and do something... ungentlemanly... which couldn't happen, cuz this guy was crazy enough to be followed around by a security guard 24/7, but that didn't stop me from getting so scared the nurses gave me enough sedatives to knock me out for the next four hours or so.

Then on Monday, when they're gonna let me out, my psychiatrist comes into my room, talks to me, then refers to me as "he" to her medical student two times on her way out, which for whatever reason causes me to have yet another breakdown. I spend the next couple of hours in my room sobbing, then another psychiatrist comes in and asks me what's wrong. I tell him. His response: "Don't be so sensitive." Brilliant. Fucking brilliant. Is that what they taught you in medical school?

They let me out anyway. Free at last and feeling impulsive, I go into New York City and get my hair dyed blue (it came out black :() and get my nose and the cartilage on my left ear pierced, cuz hey, I'm crazy right? So that's Monday. The next day I have an appointment to go to that DBT thing I was supposed to go to last Friday. I go. I sit in the waiting room. I'm greeted by this ditzy social worker whom I immediately hate. She tells me that if I enter the program, I won't be able to see a therapist for six months to a year. I don't like the sound of that. I want to see my therapist, skittish though he is. I like him. "I can see you're getting agitated," says the ditzy social worker. I leave. I call my therapist, tell him what happened, start sobbing, ride back home in tears, almost swallow a handful of hydrocodone, naproxen and cyclobenzaprine, but don't, because I realize that if I die now, there will be somebody else's name on my headstone. Um... that's Tuesday.

Wednesday passes uneventfully. I go back to school. Thursday I get appendicitis. I go to the hospital (different hospital) on Friday, they operate on Saturday, I'm out by Monday. Fuck, that hurt. It's spring break now, which I guess is a good thing for most college students, but it sucks for me, because it means I have to spend a week at home with my parents.

So on Tuesday I go back to my therapist, who wants to have a meeting with me and my mom. I am informed that my shool's counselling center has a strict policy against, um, taking on cases they can't handle. So no more skittish therapist for me, they don't want me anymore. He tells me to go back to the DBT program. I really, really don't want to. My mom tells me to go back. My dad tells me to go back. I don't want to. I don't want to further avail myself of the services of the mental health profession, ever. I don't want to end up in the hospital again. But now everybody I know is mad at me. My mom drove me back up to school today, and she gave me this tearful speech about how by not getting help I'm hurting the people who love me. I don't really know what to say to that...

So I'm back in my dorm room now, radically altering the balance of my body's humors, so to speak. And I want to die, as usual, but I won't, because I lack the resourcefulness to get enough fast-acting barbiturates to ensure a painless death, and I don't particularly want to suffer on the way out.

God, it is absolutely ridiculous that I just wrote all that, and that now I'm going to post it. Whatever, I'm crazy, right?

[DemExpat]

1. It doesn't sound all that crazy to me, sans qualia,

because I can follow and understand all that you have related about your experience, which sounds just awful.

I follow, because I went through similar ones myself back in the days gone by.


What is DBT? If the social worker is not the one conducting the therapy I would go for it, check it out and see if it has anything to offer me. If not, seek further....

Did you ever see the movie or read the book "Girl Interrupted"? When I saw this film a couple of years ago I could not believe how similar it was to my young adult years - it could have been my autobiography in many ways. (Borderline diagnosis)

Hoping that you get yourself into calmer waters, sans qualia, waters where you feel much better to be........

:hug: :hug: :hug:

DemEx

[rockedthevoteinMA]

2. Not crazy at all sans qualia

I have been through similar situations (my therapist now qualifies the color of my hair as a sign of a treatment issue, along with tattoos and piercings) :)

On a serious note, as DemExPat said - is the social worker the one doing the treatment? If not, you should try and give it a shot, if you feel up to it. I have heard DBT works great. (Never been through it myself, though it has been suggested multiple times, just no where around here to get into a program.) I know two of the many day treatment programs I have been in have had the most horrible social workers who do my intake, but the groups, and the therapists who run the groups were very cool, and dedicated to helping me get well. (It sucks that they have these morons as your introduction to the group - I have walked out of one day treatment, and not looked back, for that reason alone, too).

It sounds like you had a week from hell. :hug:

The mental health profession is a frightening one - you never know what you're going to get. I had just about given up on getting any care from the whole profession, when I lucked out and got an ex-hippie for my therapist, and a p-doc who believes in alternative therapy (herbs and such).

As far as school goes, they do get funky when having to deal with anyone with more than depression over a bad grade it seems. (before I get flamed, I am just speaking of my OWN experience). They should be able to provide you with an alternative for care though. Usually they have lists/numbers of therapists who can do some more intensive treatment if you need it.

I read in one of the older books on Borderline Personality Disorder, "I Hate You, Don't Leave Me," that it seems as if people who suffer from Borderline are actually fighting existential questions...

Good luck, and I'm sorry to hear how much this past month has stunk.

[undergroundpanther]

4. crazy is as crazy does

Welcome to the sanity support group

RockedthevoteinMA wrote:
"I have been through similar situations (my therapist now qualifies the color of my hair as a sign of a treatment issue, along with tattoos and piercings) :)"

I hope that doesn't become a trend...in psychology,too see ANY body modifications as a sign for more treatment/illness. That is just stupid,it's profiling and it's controlling. Ignorant psychologists once thought being pagan was a mental illness too ya know.I caught it from plenty of doctors,that assumed I was sick because I was into Sekhmet. In reality shrinks have no idea what sanity really is,it's always tied to some defining characteristic in this culture's standards of"normal". To me this culture is crazy and so anything this culture calls sane is suspect.

Therapists focus on the individual and tend to ignore the individual's social context,they are not about seeing how people cope living in a larger social habitat that's sick,sociopathic in fact...And they NEVER seem to take cultural issues into account when looking at mental illness,They assume the insane demands,inconsistencies,beliefs,
control games and emotional pressures our limiting,intrusive,
abandoning, control based society that calls itself"Free" has foisted upon all of us is not impacting people's minds as another source of an individual distress. Here's more :

http://www.lipmagazine.org/articles/feattalvi_141_p.html


And for therapists to really look at our sick culture,and realize insanity is not just a few problem individuals it would mean thier jobs as the defineers of what's "normal"or not for other people would implode,and lose meaning,they may find themselves guilty of a little insanity too ..and thier social "authority" over the job of sorting of sane from insane would go pouf like a fart in a cloud of bullshit!

Luckily my therapist is cool with my body mod, he knows what I am doing is extreme,but he's behind my body modifications.He urges me to think about it,but does not attempt to control. He sees it helps me feel better about my body by making it change in a way that I want it to..I'm trans gender so changing my body is a big issue.I also have trauma issues. Sometimes healing takes unconventional routes as well as the usual ones.

My therapist has a tattoo too, showed it to me on session 1,and if he got"skittish" I'd call him a hypocrite..and he knows it.

Take care,and I know things are chaos..
But for whatever it's worth,I'm here with the rest of us..

[rockedthevoteinMA]

5. Exactly undergroundpanther...

I could go on and on for hours about what is "normal".

I really like this: "Welcome to the sanity support group" :)

[TrogL]

7. Reaction to link

Basically this a rather dangerous article written with some sort of axe to grind (or something to sell).

His basic points:

• All psychiatry is bunk
  
• no psychotropic medications work
  
• things used to be better in the old days
  

What immediately raises my suspicious is a total lack of footnotes or references. He makes outlandish claims and then doesn't back them up with facts and figures.

His arguments are full of logical fallacies.

I'll hit some of the highlights.

Depression has grown tenfold since 1900.

Possibly. Who knows. Certainly the diagnosis of depression has grown tenfold. We know a lot more about depression since the 1900s.

we are all are expected to acclimate as a dulling void of disconnectedness and dehumanization

That's certainly not what I've seen in the mass media. I've found we're all supposed to be shiny happy socializers. In that particular point I agree with the author that some psychiatric meds are incorrectly prescribed.

However the whole "dehumanization" meme comes from the "there's no such thing as ADD crowd" who want to have Ritalin banned (even though Ritalin isn't necessarily the drug of choice - I'm on dexedrine).

just take a look at 30 years ago: we have twice as many overweight children now compared with then

I was a child 30 years ago. There were plenty of kids around who would now be diagnosed as "overweight" who at that time were actually considered "underweight". At the time, I was what is now considered a healthy body weight, was told that I was "skin and bones" and questions were raised about my upbringing. One doctor insisted I needed to basically double my body weight. The poster boy "healthy child" was what we would now call "tubby". What they called "fat" was what we now call "grotesquely obese". Basically, the standards have changed.

If you can find it, have a look at the Canada Food and Health guide from that period. A "healthy breakfast" was an orgy of fat and carbs.

biochemical, neurological or genetic markers have been found for ADD, depression, schizophrenia, anxiety, alcoholism, gambling, or any other mental illnesses we can think of

Absolute nonsense. Autistic Spectrum disorders run through my family. So does depression. Here's a simple google search for genetic markers for schizophrenia (http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=schizophrenia+genetic+marker&meta=). There's my footnote. Where's his?

Prior to 1980, there was no such thing as "Post Traumatic Stress Disorder".

Nonsense. Prior to 1980 there was no such diagnosis as PTSD. There was certainly plenty of it about. In the World Wars it was called "shell shock". Only recently has it been found that there are many traumas that could cause the disorder.

And now, kids who are bored in school and then get diagnosed with ADD, they're going be put on Ritalin or other amphetamines.

You had to know this was coming. My son has ADHD. Last school year he was doing awful. Beginning of this school year he was given medication (dexedrine). His marks picked up. His school work was better. He was organized and had his materials. Right after Christmas we ran out of money and couldn't afford his meds. His marks immediately fell of. He became a problem in class. The comments coming home from an increasingly concerned teacher reflected last year's comments. Then we got his meds back. Things went back to the new "normal". Granted it's only one case but plenty of others are documented.

Yes, my son was bored in school. He was so overwhelmed by the classroom and so upset with the teacher constantly on his case trying to make him pay attention that he was a "problem". Now that he can actually cope with the classroom and has the materials at hand he finds school exciting.

Remember, however, that I live in Canada with a Canadian health care system. My son has seen four different specialists to have the problem diagnosed and treated. I am well aware that in the US health care system for someone who make what I do, this would be unaffordable. I'm also aware of many family physicians making these diagnoses and prescribing these medications who are questionably qualified to do so.

First of all, they don't do research on these anti-depressants, including the SSRIs like Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, on suicidal people.

There's a tiny bit of meat to this argument. Say one chicken wing's worth.

http://www.biopsychiatry.com/bigpharma/ssri-suicides.html

Dr. David Shaffer, a researcher at Columbia University, noted that teenage suicides have fallen significantly in every country where Prozac and its cousins are in widespread use.

Granted there has been studies showing a link between Paxil and suicide. I can certainly see it. I've been on Paxil and frankly I think it should be taken off the market. There are, however, other choices. Remember, we are talking about 3000 cases out of the millions of people taking SSRI's. There are other choices including tricyclics. To dismiss all SSRI treatment out of hand is ludicrous and dangerous.

I suffer from clinical depression. It is being treated with an SSRI. I had to try a number of different ones before I found a good fit. In a situation where basically nothing bad was going on, I found myself sad and upset and suicidal. On the medication, confronted with the same situation I am not sad and upset and suicidal. I'm not shiny happy dancing in the dandelions either.

I grant him his points that medications are over-marketed and improperly prescribed. Nonetheless many people have found relief from them.

[undergroundpanther]

8. Adderall

I have attention deficit,and trauma/dissociation.I was diagnosed with this stuff in the early 70's.For me it's real issue.I can tell you for a fact that I have busted my hump to find my wellness,to feel happy and get control over my emotions.I have been around the hospital circuit.I know the drill...I want to feel good for more than a fleeting moment and all the yammering , Thorazine and Prozac in the world did nothing to help me be cured forever. The drugs suppress my symptoms.Make them manageable. That's all.Therapy keeps me from losing it,because I can talk about shit I would not want To be say to others who would not hear it the right way.The Adderall I take gives me enough concentration to do art and keep track of what I an doing so I don't feel like a total distraction.I forget to take the medicine sometimes tho.So it doesn't work perfectly.

As for trauma I have no clue how to fixit neither do doctors. I have talked for 15 years I have plumbed the depths of my unconscious more than most people ever do..and I still feel crappy, I get triggered,I deal with horrid anxiety ,fear and hopelessness,and anger and nightmares,insomnia and all.
Sometimes I wonder if ECT would help me..I wonder if it could erase my memories sorta like waving a magnet over a hard drive, delete it all,than maybe it will be like it never happened to me and I can heal finally.I dunno. But it has risks,just like radical psychedelic therapy or Ibogaine or ramming a pencil in your own head to stop the pain in your heart.

I am running out of options.
At least with adderall I can think I can concentrate and write..
Might not be a big whoop to some of you,but it means alot to me. Underground Panther in the Sky

[EFerrari]

9. Big whoop to me

I watched the person I love most in the universe go through stuff no one should go through. Diligently, as much as possible, put up with second rate care.

Therapists who wanted him to plumb his past -- when that was as triggering as possible.

Docs who were afraid to DX psychosis -- so they wouldn't look at a whole class of solutions for him.

(This list gets long, too.)

Get a real doc. No matter the cost. Since we got one, we have a life we love AND can live. Not perfect, often bumpy, but liveable. (Our pets have dropped their divorce suits :)

PM me if you want to. This is sort of what I do, try to match people up with the docs their situation needs. Just stubborn, I guess.


If not, know you've our best wishes.

Beth
Beth

[undergroundpanther]

10. Hi

Umm I can't afford a therapist that isn't state funded.
I live in Maryland. You live on the west coast. I can't imagine how you would do it.

I don't know if therapy can do much for me.I have been through shit that would curl your hair "for my own good" so I got trust issues.I was even given torture drugs,stuck in a little room alone for 6 months with maybe 10 minutes out a day . I have had docs that were"experts" in dissociation with political agendas trying to get me to lie about my own past,than treat me like shit because I refused to go along.

My life has alot of real life x files experiences,I do not want that mistaken with a psychosis. I don't have schizophrenia.I have PSTD. Also I do not accept certain things most people call "normal" as normal or healthy .A am a social dissonant and creative.I think our culture is sick and the rampant mental illness reflects this. There are some things I like that I refuse to change,that may be construed as symptoms. I am an androgynous transperson with a feline spirit inside.

Lastly I perceive differently I have synthesia and perception differences. I have an unusual kind of spirituality. I hate the whole concept of authoritarianism.If I detect patterns of domination from a therapist,I will walk out if it happens past a certain limit.

I do wonder if body work would help me that is something I have not tried, my muscles are in knots alot when I wake up.If there is body memory maybe that is where part of the path to peace is..
I have a reversed sleep scedule..this makes appointments a pain in the ass.I am willing to go unconventional IF it can be safe and effective as possible.

What kinds of people you would reccomend..??
I am curious...It's a cat thing.

[EFerrari]

11. Hi there, I read this this morning, having been thinking.

I've been on a board with people all over the world, so I guess I'm used to brainstorming, not recommending as I'm a consumer not a doc or pro. (For example, I've a friend in a small village outside Limoges who has had to be really creative to get any kind of care for herself or for her husband.)

But, on the otha' hand, consumers have their own fund of experience, don't we?

I've PTSD as well and realy on public health care and the seat of my pants like most people. And I also want to partner with a therapist, not be parented.

I did some body work and, thinking back, it helped me a lot. At the time I didn't get it but in hindsight, it tipped me into a kind of integrity of being (if that makes any sense) that I'd not had before; into wanting more of that. Muscles remember, they do.

I don't know from Maryland although I also have a longtime friend there from my board. In Baltimore. I'd be happy to ask him what works and what has not been helpful there.

(Btw, I've four of my feline masters on the couch with me right now. I should be sleeping, as they are. Have a good night!)

[EFerrari]

3. Wow, just wow.

No wonder you feel crazy. All that chaos is crazymaking. And I don't blame you for wanting to kiss off the whole profession. How many booboos do people get before you just want to give them the "GONG!"

(I especially like the part where the dummy tells you not to be sensitive. What a wackamole!)

Everybody is mad at you? Well, it looks like they'll just have to handle that with themselves. :)

If you need a hook up in NYC, I know a great resource for you. Valerie Porr, she founded TARA. I don't have the link, but if you want to, you can google it. She's a no shit guy (smile) and definitely won't tell you to "stop being so sensitive". Sheesh.

If you or anyone in your tribe want a quiet online group, I run one out of yahoogroups for families living with BPD called OurFamilyRoom.

Big hugs to you and your humors.

Beth

[Droopy]

6. When I see a post like that

My first reaction is, "What the fuck?" It doesn't mesh with my recent experience with the mental health profession. I'm being conventionally treated and I'm doing just fine. Then I think back a little and realize that I felt similarly as you for ten years, only with psychosis so I could not verbalize what I was going through.

I don't buy this fucking "too hard a case" bullshit. What your counselor is saying is that he's not good enough at his job to help you. If your therapist is going to give up at the very least that should come with a referal to another doctor. I don't see how in good conscience a therapist could turn away someone who is suicidal. That also seems very unprofessional to me.

Sans quailia, I think there is a whole lot going on with you that you haven't communicated here so I really don't know what to say in regards to the way you're feeling except that it is probably a chemical imbalance. Mother nature just wired you a little differently than most people. If you are not already, find a good psychiatrist and give meds a try.