Hey. Struggling right now with not just the cptsd flare but the medical traumas recently that triggered the flare and the flashbacks of previous medical traumas and the unexpected letter from my narc father I have no contact with.
I tried voicing to my clinicians that they were making the situation and arousal levels worse with their restrictions (no court orders, community treatment, no forms of psychotic illness) and they come back with decisions placing further restrictions that include mandating in clinic contact amongst other things when they have already been made aware and witnessed panic attacks and trauma arousal even just accessing pathology within the clinic, and claimed could start on bench outside then got me inside for a prolonged time where I was barely able to hear despite trying to listen as I was in and out of dissociation, and they’d already been made aware it takes at least hours if not days to get my arousal levels down.
I’ve contacted them and said if they’ve not going to involve me in decisions about my life and healthcare and simply dictate mandates to me, in contradiction of the trauma informed collaborative care and consumer empowerment they claim to practice, then I’d rather be basically housebound with less physical function by weaning myself off all my medications and withdrawing from treatment with them than be dictated to about my body and what happens to it, mirroring my abusers (I gave a number of examples including a couple in medical settings though the rest in the home/community).
Basically I ended that they can include me in decisions about myself and in a setting where I’m not generally triggered, or I’m leaving their ‘care’. Feels like further disenfranchisement and dictation of what will be done to me, and I put up with it for too many decades from too many sources.
Part of me is scared, especially of it backfiring, but for the most part I know my arousal levels and feelings of anger and betrayal are high, but I’m also not willing to sit back anymore and just take it. Also scary as whilst previously accused of leaving practitioners because of disagreement, I actually never have, it was always them resulting in me changing care providers (maternity leave, moving overseas, retirement, etc), and because of that previous stigma based on false assumptions plus doing something unfamiliar (standing up for myself), so it’s scary to actually stand my ground.
I know part is coming from a misunderstanding of exposure therapy, but I’m actually already doing that but in a graded way rather than the bombarding their dictates would have, which take days to recover from and is not graded exposure. My main issue is not being included and then dictated to and told the mandates in a setting that causes me to dissociate so I can barely take anything in let alone respond.
I guess see what happens, in coming week as they see my email and may or may not have calls between each other, but I’m prepping to wean off meds as backup (rather than the cold turkey after weeks/months in hospital previous Drs forced on me), pending discussion with my psychologist later this week who wasn’t at the meeting deciding the mandates and seems to have the best understanding of trauma, she specialises with it, I did say I wouldn’t make any decisions until I’d spoken with her and she’d had time to start speaking with the others. Ironically, of all my doctors it’s the pain specialist who best understands the and the physical impacts of it as well as psychological, though given it’s related to the nervous system reactions and he is a neurologist who specialised in chronic pain it makes sense, though one would think psychiatry might have some decent understanding of it, jok.
Thanks for vent.
I tried voicing to my clinicians that they were making the situation and arousal levels worse with their restrictions (no court orders, community treatment, no forms of psychotic illness) and they come back with decisions placing further restrictions that include mandating in clinic contact amongst other things when they have already been made aware and witnessed panic attacks and trauma arousal even just accessing pathology within the clinic, and claimed could start on bench outside then got me inside for a prolonged time where I was barely able to hear despite trying to listen as I was in and out of dissociation, and they’d already been made aware it takes at least hours if not days to get my arousal levels down.
I’ve contacted them and said if they’ve not going to involve me in decisions about my life and healthcare and simply dictate mandates to me, in contradiction of the trauma informed collaborative care and consumer empowerment they claim to practice, then I’d rather be basically housebound with less physical function by weaning myself off all my medications and withdrawing from treatment with them than be dictated to about my body and what happens to it, mirroring my abusers (I gave a number of examples including a couple in medical settings though the rest in the home/community).
Basically I ended that they can include me in decisions about myself and in a setting where I’m not generally triggered, or I’m leaving their ‘care’. Feels like further disenfranchisement and dictation of what will be done to me, and I put up with it for too many decades from too many sources.
Part of me is scared, especially of it backfiring, but for the most part I know my arousal levels and feelings of anger and betrayal are high, but I’m also not willing to sit back anymore and just take it. Also scary as whilst previously accused of leaving practitioners because of disagreement, I actually never have, it was always them resulting in me changing care providers (maternity leave, moving overseas, retirement, etc), and because of that previous stigma based on false assumptions plus doing something unfamiliar (standing up for myself), so it’s scary to actually stand my ground.
I know part is coming from a misunderstanding of exposure therapy, but I’m actually already doing that but in a graded way rather than the bombarding their dictates would have, which take days to recover from and is not graded exposure. My main issue is not being included and then dictated to and told the mandates in a setting that causes me to dissociate so I can barely take anything in let alone respond.
I guess see what happens, in coming week as they see my email and may or may not have calls between each other, but I’m prepping to wean off meds as backup (rather than the cold turkey after weeks/months in hospital previous Drs forced on me), pending discussion with my psychologist later this week who wasn’t at the meeting deciding the mandates and seems to have the best understanding of trauma, she specialises with it, I did say I wouldn’t make any decisions until I’d spoken with her and she’d had time to start speaking with the others. Ironically, of all my doctors it’s the pain specialist who best understands the and the physical impacts of it as well as psychological, though given it’s related to the nervous system reactions and he is a neurologist who specialised in chronic pain it makes sense, though one would think psychiatry might have some decent understanding of it, jok.
Thanks for vent.
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