Treatment Makes Everything Worse - What Can I Do?

[cherryblossom]

I too have met my fair share of truly dreadful mental health care providers, be that therapists, psychologists, psychiatrists etc. And it took me forever, with a heck of a lot of setbacks along the way to find the right person to help me. But she was out there, and eventually I found her.

The way I see it, you have 3 options.

• Put your faith in the system, and keep searching, and asking for second opinions until you find the right person to help you.
• Go it alone, and read, read, research, and read some more. Learn everything you possibly can about self-help. https://www.myptsd.com/threads/ptsd-therapy-one-page-as-simple-as-it-gets.16010/#post-202964 and put it into practice.
• Do nothing, and continue to feel worse and worse.

I'm not aiming to be difficult or confrontational, but you honestly, what other choices do you have?

I don't know which is the correct option for you, only you can decide. Maybe it's some sort of combination of options.

It's difficult when you feel like crap, and you want to shout and scream at the world, and you feel that no-one understands you. It's tough. The 'system' is flawed, but if it's all you've got, then you have to find a way to make it work for you.

Fighting for your life, and your sanity is the toughest thing to do when you feel so low and helpless, but you have to find the fight in you somewhere. No-one is going to hand you recovery on a plate. I know that's crap. I know it's unfair. Life isn't fair, it's just not. Crap things happen to good people, and then more crap stuff happens.

Only you can decide if you want to claw your way out of this deep, dark hole. And then, if you do, you need to figure out a way. And it all starts with small steps, and gradually building those small steps up. And taking the hits along the way, but also accepting them as part of the process, and not allowing setbacks to overwhelm you.

The other thing which might help you enormously with regards to dealing with the 'system' is to have an advocate. Someone to go to appointments with you, who will speak out for you. Someone who will help you to put your point across, and not feel intimidated into allowing things to happen that aren't right for you. That doesn't have to be anyone professional, it could just be a friend or family member who knows you, knows your fears, knows how you want to be treated. Just someone who can speak out for you, when you are not able.

Horrible, crappy, shitty things have happened, I get that, totally. Just don't give up. Because if you give up, who else is going to fight for you? You deserve better, but you have to want it, and be prepared to fight for it.

 

[Sunset]

I don't know. I honestly at this point...I really do believe another bad treatment could kill me. I've had multiple meds make me acutely suicidal and multiple cases of practitioners not believing my reaction. I'm terrified. I feel like I'm choosing between accepting a low quality of life overall, and embarking on a course that I think has a decent chance of killing me outright - or at least pushing me to the point where I literally can't recover. What's the choice, continue living a life you don't particularly like, or take a risk that could quite easily end it permanently? I know one thing for sure, and that is that I would rather die before ever being locked up. My freedom is what keeps me going.

Looking at that list, it's #2 that's always been the problem. A fundamental aspect of trauma for me, is that I don't feel like I can trust my own judgement. I don't feel like I know what is safe and unsafe, and as a result I end up feeling unsafe all the time. I've had so many situations that went from ok to scary and dangerous without any warning or anything I could have done. I mean that quite literally, I have several situations where I've looked back and said "There is nothing more I could have done to make that situation safe; it was very dangerous despite my best efforts." I have no idea why these things keep happening to me and no therapist I've gone to has been able to give me anything more than polite cooing and trying to reassure me that the things that have happened to me over and over again from entirely unrelated situations, often with people I merely happened to come in contact with, are rare. I believe them about as much as I believe the people I grew up with insisting that rape almost never happens to modest women.

That's where I'm stuck - I cannot feel safe enough to start dealing with anything. Especially not in a therapist's office. But every single thing in my life that I ever thought was safe has turned out to be a thing that can be dangerous. Your home is not safe, your friends are not safe, your body is not safe, even your mind is not safe from being violated. I have seen all of those turned into hell. Where do you start when you feel that fundamentally living in society is what's unsafe?