well it was a good run but my family has already scratched the bottom of the new frying pans. ohwhelp.

Spicy hot take: if people could actually get help when they seek it, suicide rates would be way lower. If I take myself out of this world, it will be very much the fault of the mental health professionals who abused me and made me lose any hope that I'll ever truly get the help I need. The help I've been asking for and paying for... for years now.

What's the hot take? I think it's designed this way. The worst cases like me are treated so poorly, like subhuman by these mental health professionals... it's by design. It's easier to make us go away than to put in the "emotional labor" to treat our complex issues.

Actual helpful therapists are the exception, not the rule. This is why you gotta shop around for 5+ therapists before someone can help you. They're not just a bad fit. They're bad therapists who are only really equipped to deal with really simple issues that even I can help most people with.

Nobody has real advice for my complex issues. Other people keep funneling me to "see another therapist" and therapists don't have answers.

People treat me like I'm being irrational when I say this stuff. Start asking shit like "did that therapist really take that tone with you and say those things or are you just catastrophizing?"

The reality is they really said those things to me in that way. I was in a calm state when they did these things to me. Of course I wasn't after the fact. Everyone has this instinct to blame me for the incompetence of the therapists I've seen. I just get gaslighted further by peers who question my sanity when I describe my experiences with these so-called "professionals" and it's not helpful. It only makes me question my sanity for a little while... before I get a moment of clarity and then get mad I was gaslighted to believe that I might have been crazy again. I don't even know if I can trust help and advice from others when it all leads back to seeing me as the problem or insane for being hurt. I've been trying to get help in good faith for years. You tell me what my next fucking step is. I have extreme trauma responses just working with insurance or seeing a new therapist now. What do I do when therapy itself has become a trauma trigger?

I think all of this is more issues with individualism. It's up to the individual to see 5, 10, 100 therapists until they find the "right" one and there's no responsibility on the system or on anyone else for the fact that you were traumatized and emotionally exhausted and left in a worse state by therapists

And then to be told by everyone around you to just see another? as if that will just magically wipe away all the abuse and trauma from previous therapists???

Even if other people or society at large have been the cause of all of your problems, we individualize these issues to put the fault on the individual who needs help. YOU were hurt and traumatized, so it is YOUR responsibility to deal with that all on your own. It's bullshit.

I didn't choose to get abused since infancy, isolated from the outside world for over 20 years. I didn't choose to live in a society that not only allowed that, but does nothing for me now that I've survived that and gotten out. Yet I'm treated like I'm the defective one when I never decided to go through all of this. I'm looked down upon as mentally ill, and treated poorly by even therapists. I haven't done any action that is "wrong" myself, so instead society pathologizes me as inherently broken and lesser for having trauma, no matter how good my behavior is.

Instead, we need to look at what we can do better as a society for the people our current society leaves behind and pathologizes to no fault of their own.

I'm sick of therapy being this end all be all. I keep seeking therapy because I know the second I stop seeking therapy, so many people around me will see that as a sign I have given up on myself, and will more fully give up on me themselves. It will cause fights and end friendships. All because I can't take anymore abuse from therapists. How cruel is that in the end? And society really gives us no other options.

In other words, fuck capitalism, our world is fundamentally broken and the field of psychology tries to gaslight those of us who are aware of that into thinking we're inherently the problem for being broken lesser humans

Like, this is directly ties into capitalism and even authoritarianism.

Therapists get paid whether they help me or not, so why put in the effort? They play their waiting and listening game as long as they can, not actually doing anything, and getting $150 an hour for it. When I actually start asking for advice or input or insight is when they drop me as a client.

Therapy puts the blame and responsibility on me for all of the abuse I've been through, when I never did anything wrong. And then when you have disorders from extreme abuse like CPTSD and DID, you're considered just so totally crazy that you're not even worth listening to. It's just like how dad convinced anyone outside the household I was just a crazy rebellious kid not worth listening to, it was never true, I was always on my best behavior out of fear 100% of the time. But dad used his authority as a parent to discredit me before I could even speak up. And then therapists use their authority to make you seem crazy and that they totally didn't lie to or abuse you too. This is especially the case in mental hospitals where they strip you of all autonomy and everyone treats you like your own basic judgement about the most basic things cannot be trusted. Nobody will believe a "crazy" traumatized client over the therapist who traumatized or retraumatized them. Just like nobody will believe an abused child over the authority of the parent.

The problem is authority and authoritarianism culture even on smaller scales. A therapist should see you as an equal in the journey of your healing, not lesser. They need to see you as human, not just a mental illness to treat. Authority should play no rule in healing from parental abuse, yet so many therapists act like authorities and even gatekeepers to healing.

okay that was such a read. and honestly, some parts of it did get to me on a deep level, but this part specifically

"I've been trying to get help in good faith for years. You tell me what my next fucking step is. I have extreme trauma responses just working with insurance or seeing a new therapist now. What do I do when therapy itself has become a trauma trigger?"

that part got me hard


i guess that imma provide a bit of info of myself here, but with a bunch of cw or something
CW poor mental health in kids, trauma, that sort of stuff, and probably some info that will change how you look at me:
i have a good amount of trauma and crap like that, from basically all my life. and i am terribly tired of having to walk on eggshells every day of my life, every time i interact with other human beings, to not talk "too much" about me because they will either feel bad, change their perception of me irreversibly, and/or i will have to deal with a great amount of assholery that i dont have to energy to deal with. i tried to off myself from life when i was 7, and tbh i have never found a good enough reason to regret it, because life is fucking horrible about 95% of the time. the last 5% of the time is all the progress i have made to make my life less horrible, but the best i can manage is "not horrible", i cant manage to have "good" even an 1% of the time.

but the thing is, back when that happened, i ended up locked in an hospital for years, and i still have nightmares about it. im not sure if it was months ago or last year, but at some point i opened the wikipedia article of "torture" and the geneva convention and stuff like that and i was like "oh so that is against basic human rights. good to know i guess, maybe that explains why it felt so bad" (tho, to be fair, i already had experienced waterboarding and other stuffs before i got into the hospital, but honestly that was much less traumatic and forgivable)

also, i have the "crappy body hurts all the time and is fragile as fuck" syndrome to the point where i know that passing out from pain is __good__ because otherwise you can get up to the "close to passing out, but actually dont do it" pain level and be stuck there for hours, and that is way worse. and also i have been losing hearing for all my life, gradually, and that is also not good.

both of those last two issues have guaranteed that i spend a good chunk of my life going into hospitals again and again, and every single fucking time i havent been helped. ever. there was only one time, when a dude acceded to do a 5 minute procedure that makes it so i dont lose way more blood, that one was useful, but required about 17 years of asking medics to do it before i could find one that said "yeah, okay, no problem"

and due to the mix of "hospitals have never helped me" and "hospitals have fucking destroyed my mental health", i do have a not small about of trauma with them. i fucking hate hospitals. and the "What do I do when therapy itself has become a trauma trigger?"" part of those messages has fucking touched me deep.

im so fucking tired of everything, the last time i went to a fucking endo she laughed at me and said "of course this med was shit to you, every med is shit to you, so why bother trying anymore?". since then, i've gained 30kg in about 3-4 months, which is not fucking healthy. the last time i went to some medic to ask for an appointment with a psychiatrist and a fibromyalgia specialist, i just got a mix of "hmm, but you're trans, idk" and "try again in a year from now".

i fucking hate hospitals so fucking hard, and indeed trying to get therapy when therapy itself is a problem sounds just too familiar to me. i just wanted to say that. fuck i spent too much time writing this and now im late to class

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mental health, socialization, self compassion

"someone who drowns in 7 feet of water is just as dead as someone who drowns in 20 feet of water. stop comparing traumas, stop belitting your or anyone else's trauma because it wasnt "as bad" as someone else's."