Thank you for the picnic lunch – it was nice to sit out in the sun and not be rushed. Thanks as well for coming with me to the appt. I should really have asked you to come in - I didn't because they were going to ask you to do even more supporting and, as I said, you've been amazing and gone way beyond anything that could be expected.
Both of them are genuinely nice women and seem keen to do what is possible from their perspectives, within their resources. Even said they wished they could "rescue" me (whatever that means) because I’m nice or whatever and they both feel well-disposed towards me, though it’s not what I want.
The whole appt was so seriously confusing and all over the place – from why isn't my sister supporting me, why is she bedridden, to why don’t you go and live in [400 miles away] near your son, to you have to get blood tests and you must get a GP (apparently local GPs are so much better now, they have been trained to work-with patients now, and nothing happens without a GP), to (yet again) the details of the people involved in the stalking and – mega-trauma - CCTV, to ‘there’s three people in the room: the doctor, the patient and the illness – the patient has to decide what side to join forces with’ (huh?), to (yet again) how did the stroke happen: recount the event, to [a local charitable agency] as a signposter and tenancy supporter and me saying to the effect of 'been there, done that, they're not helpful', to you have so much to offer, not in [this city] of course because it’s [something negative] but somewhere else... to “everyone” is “terrified” of your intellect/intelligence, to a bunch of things they could offer (but only the drugs, Brief Therapy and ‘reflecting’ is all I caught of it)....to selling the house, to you could take drugs for depression ...but they don’t work for you, to the sheer mess of my medical records/misdiagnoses, to why were you let down by former GP and the hospital consultant took advantage of your deficits according to one of the previous therapists, to me being the big, strong supporter for ALL my family and some of them blaming me when I just couldn’t, to why have you had all these bad experiences of negligent doctors/therapist (like how should I know what’s in their minds! It’s the NHS), and so much more...
Any one of those could have/should have taken at least 20 mins to discuss and set in context. We had Ihr 10mins in total. Yet their Qs and opinions all came at me in a completely unstructured way, higgledypiggledy; I tried my best to answer but as soon as I got a short sentence out then they were on to the next thing or off at a tangent. At the end, when I endeavoured to herd-the-cats, so to speak, the doc told me I am ‘stuck’. Well, duh. With the implication or words to the effect that I have to want to unstick myself (If only I knew how....) and choose [something, I don’t know what it is I am supposed to choose, it wasn't explicit].
Then there was the opinion that I “think too much” – though what does that mean?? Doesn’t it presuppose that there is an ‘optimum’ amount of thinking that a human should do? I didn’t even get a chance to say that I do the greatest amount of my thinking on paper/screen, that I don’t sit around over-thinking anything of the past because it’s all just too painful, complicated, terrifying and overwhelming to think about, so I don’t: I just do not ruminate, I avoid. No appreciation whatsoever of how much I’ve worked – with your immense help – to get as far as I have now...
Your immediate reinterpretation along the lines of my creating analytical frameworks (instead of "thinking too much") was most accurate - thank you! It's what I believe I really only do on paper, as accurately as poss for the sake of accuracy and fact. The ‘thinking too much’ thing/analytical frameworking is just the same, uses the same tools and techniques that e.g. [central gvt depts, statutory bodies and local authorities], etc.etc. gladly used to pay me c£500/day for....how is it somehow wrong, unnecessary or unwanted when I become a patient/service user and try to use such skills to frame the problems here and seek solutions?
[My friend] it was all so impressionistic and almost random, leaping across time and space from the mega-horrific to the most minute irrelevances. For me it felt like scores of tiny, chance, transitory pinpricks on an inside out, upside down version of their rather sketchy one dimensional map of one decade of my life. But there was not one fixed point or compass bearing from which to set out and no way points to follow, no logical sequence whatsoever.
I know their intentions are good, but they were overwhelmed (and articulated that - both in words and in body language). I know they haven’t understood how utterly terrified and traumatised I was (to be fair, no one did) in the first two years alone of the stalking which set the foundations for all the rest of the crap. Nor do they get how my brain just doesn’t do such randomish complexity in the moment. I just could not follow them nor get much of a word in edgewise. And, as I said, I know they’ve not grasped how very scared I am of people now and how barely I function and avoid everything I am frightened of – which is just about 90% of life. I know they’re not getting it. How can they with such impressionistic, random bits of snatched information?
Cutting an extremely confusing episode short, I came out feeling that the only thing that's crystal clear is that I’m far too f*cked up and way beyond help, irrevocably broken somewhere, unwanted on voyage, end of the line. I don’t have the energy any more to keep on explaining and asking for help. I’ve done nothing wrong, ever - and I’ve always done my best even though it may not look like anything great. I’m so sorry.
