What is a person to do??????????????

[Ms Priss]

Have not posted in awhile. Have been too busy being overwhelmed and ashamed...I hate all the shame I carry and feel most of it has been fed to me, and for whatever reason I was all to willing to accept it.

Anyway, a rant and a vent.

So this trauma therapy I started...she is a nice person...better than some I have had. But what i need and what I am getting are two different things. She usually waltzes in twenty minutes late and talks a lot about her Masters degree. And while I respect and admire her for obtaining it, I am rather tired of hearing about it. I suppose it is her way of telling me she is qualified...but enough already.

So since my insurance will not cover the regular DBT classes she has, we are doing it piecemeal in her office...once every three weeks to a month...rural area and they are overbooked. Basically I get 2 pages of handouts a session and if I did not keep track of it she would not have a clue what she gave me. The session before last she gave me the half smile handout and then whisked out the door saying fake it til you make it. I know that saying so well from AA...I faked it for so long...faked that I was okay or faked that I knew what I was doing...guess what...it did not work for me. I can no longer fake it...I am not okay...not at all.

So when I saw her last week...I told her this is not enough...so what they have to offer is limited and then without good financial resources I reach a dead end

It makes me feel so hopeless...and it also pisses me off...I should not be so easily written off...but that is a theme that has manifested many times in my life. Then I get really pissed when I see all the people playing the system...I live in government subsidized housing and most of the people are milking the system for all it is worth...lying, cheating and they get all the benefits for free.

I am so frustrated and frustrated with me too. I feel I should be able to deal with this...but I have no internal resources left...just totally depleted...and, of course, I blame me and beat me up.

Having great difficulty seeing any light. I still exercise, eat healthy, meditate, journal and all that stuff, but it does not seem to help.

So that brings it around to medication. My experience with it is so negative...the last anti-depressant I took affects your histamines and am now left with many food allergies.
So when they bring it up and I am resistant, they see me as non-compliant...I see it as finally advocating for myself.

I have no other support systems and a lot of the time just cannot see extending this purposeless existence. I hate being so negative, but I cannot fool myself into believing I am not.

 

[Deleted member 37474]

It seems to me that seeing a therapist regularly (more like once a week) might be better for you right now. Also, I would recommend that you tell her that you feel like she is spending too much time talking about herself. Not sure how I would word that, though. That would really irritate me. I'm sorry that you are going through all of this!

 

[shimmerz]

Keep following your inner guide. If something doesn't seem right, do your best to find other ways that sit well with you.

It is a challenge with limited or no resources (I know this personally), but it can be done.

Oh, and I don't subscribe to that 'fake it til you make it' bs. I don't do anything that isn't authentic to me these days. Good for you for aiming for authenticity as well!

 

[Ronin]

Not sure how I would word that, though.

'While I appreciate you being qualified to do the work, I would also appreciate spending those qualifications on actually doing the work with me.'

... Cough, sorry, couldn't resist.

 

[Ms Priss]

So tonight I am thinking just how bizarre life is. Thirty years ago when I went to AA, we only put $1 in the basket when they passed it...so fake it til you make only cost me financially a buck. Now I have this degreed counselor which they charge $179 per session ( I do not pay all that), and what do I hear...fake it til you make it...sometimes you just have to shake your head.

Anyway, thanks for the replies. One good thing is I am not nearly as gullible and naive as I used to be and definitely speak my mind.
Do not see her again until the end of the month so am going to put an all out effort into getting myself grounded and maybe some of those inner resources will renew themselves.

 

[EveHarrington]

Your therapist is

A) unprofessional (for being 20 minutes late)

and

B) incredibly insecure (as she has to flaunt her degree)

I'd try to find someone else.

"Fake it til you make it" is a cheesy cliche, not a therapeutic technique.

Faking it means being inauthentic. It means you're LYING.

Who needs that?

 

[Sandstone]

How are you finding the DBT?

 

[Teamwork]

Fake it until you make it is what she is doing, and getting paid to do so. She may well know that she is close to all you can get help from in the area you live and doesn’t see you as a therapeutic relationship but merely a client doing cbt. I could go online and get the papers you are being given and get the same results, do them myself with no feedback. I also have limited therapy due to finances but my psychologist is also available through email. I would encourage you to make good use of us here as support. Many have done the cbt, so get some feedback from those who’ve experienced it and actually want to be in a relationship with you. Keep looking for someone else or somwhere else to either full out replace her or to make it so you can be working on healing with support while you are waiting to see her so that when you do get past the lateness and the self adulation part of your appointment you can hone in on something you really want to pull from her degree. Maybe next time you can come back with a line for her, time is money and your degree and lateness have a way of wasting both.

 

[Ms Priss]

I had a deja vu moment yesterday. It was really weird.

It was like I have been at this point before many long years ago. My mind wanted to take me down this big spiral to the bottom...like you are hopeless, you have made no progress and on and on and on.

But that is a total lie. I have overcome huge obstacles in that time. I also continued to fall down the rabbit hole with other things. So in a moment of being rational I concluded I was being given another opportunity to move forward on more issues rather than being shown what a loser I am.

One of the rabbit holes I have continued to fall down is the mental health system...while I understand it has been beneficial to a lot of people, that has not been the case for me. I wonder why I keep going back...i guess cause i do not know where else to go. But clearly the answers are not there for me...to me the message yesterday was; beware...do you really want to do that again? And the answer is...NO.

To me I find the Eastern philosophies much more adaptable. And, yes, there are many resources online I can access.

DBT is okay, and I can pick up pointers, but it is not the answer.

Anyway, I just wanted to share that, and that is all I am saying for now because at this point I have to keep things very basic and simple and cannot afford to complicate things.