Journal

 Okay so I have been seeing the psychiatrist for the past two months.  I do believe one of my past journal entries was about our initial visit with one another.  The initial visit did not go quite as expected and in fact it left me feeling even worse than even before I went in but I decided to continue seeing her because I had no other supports at the time and couldn't afford the $150 -$200 it was going to cost to see a therapist or clinical psychologist.   Anyway the next two visits were cut short because she ended up double booking or whatever and the last visit we ended up talking about stuff related to family.  She then gave me a diagnosis of major depression, PTSD, and late onset Bipolar(?????).   After that visit she went on vacation for a month and in the interim I heard back from the agency which I had signed up with many months before and had been on the waiting list to see.   I decided to go and see what they were all about and hooked up with one of the therapists there.   Well after a couple of visits with this particular therapist she had a way different take on the situation and decided to do a DES (dissociation experiences scale test) with me.  This test showed that I was dissociating 55% percent of the time and that while it is really only as self evaluation and truthfully easy to embellish the results if one would so choose most people with dissociative disorders score anywhere between 30%-50% or higher on the test.  Some people diagnosed with DID actually even scored less than 30%.  Anyway I talked with the therapist about the others, the voices etc...and she suggested that I actually bring them up with the psychiatrist since that was what I initially went to see her about in the first place and that I not let this fly by.  The therapist reminded me that I am an intelligent woman and that it is my recovery and that whatever the reason for the voices the psychiatrist is the one who should be helping me with them if they are interfering with my daily life.i.e: all screaming at me at once, telling me I may as well just cut my face off because no one sees me anyway.  I would also like to add that all this time I have been trying to explain to everyone that the voices know/remember things that I don't, have had experiences that I know nothing about etc.. and I explain to the therapist that it is very difficult for me to face up to the psychiatrist because she is a professional and someone in a place of authority which automatically makes me feel inferior and small.  Like I have no right to speak up, like so many others in my position.  She asks me to explain what I mean and I tell her, hey people who are abuse in any way never speak up, most of the time it is people in positions of authority and trust who abuse them and even when they do speak up they are not believed.  Why should things be any different this time??  Plus if I say or do anything out of turn the doctor or the therapist have the power to do things to hurt me in certain ways.  So anyway I start to go further into panic mode...i am not ready to go back to work but I need the psychiatrist to sign the insurance papers.  If I confront her she might not sign them and then I am really screwed.  I am totally in PTSD fight or flight mode, which I have already been in for the past month and a bit over the housing and financial situation.  It is so bad that I am making myself ill every time I think about it.  My initial instinct is to just not go to the appointment..to just ditch the psychiatrist but then I basically screw myself and my family in regards to the financial stuff.    I decided to call my boss and talk to her about it.  She agreed that I am not ready to go back to work, she actually thinks that I have a psychosis and should be on antipsychotics. In fact she sort of thinks I might need to be in the hospital.  Which I don't believe is accurate either.  She tells me that I need to give the doctor one more chance, just get teh LTD forms signed and then perhaps switch to an actual mental health clinic where I can have a case manager and a psychiatrist.  A mental health clinic can actually refer me to other resources out in the community.  I tell her that I don't understand why I can easily fight for the rights of other people-our clients and not my own-- so she tells me to pretend that I am there for someone else.   So the day of my appointment comes, which was this past Tuesday and after many days of preparing and anxiety I just go in there and let it all out.  I tell her what has been going on with the housing and finances.  How unsettling it has all been and why.  She agrees that I have had reason to feel scared and anxious and that I was very brave and did things that she would never have done.  That in the end I got results that she never would have.  We talked about the voices and how I though they were related to a dissociative disorder. I told her I did not believe I have bipolar.  The only thing I could get her to agree to is that I do not have a psychosis and do not need any antipsychotics or the hospital.  We talked about what her theory on the voices is and that they are companions of my own creation--"imaginary friends" that were created out of my loneliness as a child and still come up during times of stress or in times when I believe that I cannot deal with a situation.  In essence it is still me having a conversation with myself from the way she explained it and the whole statement of saying 'well you may as well cut your face off" according to her was a very intelligent and creative metaphor a way of saying that I was indeed being treated as though I was invisible as many woman in our society are.  We talked about that whole concept for a while.  We talked about my going to see the other therapist and what she told me is that it was up to me but that she could not go on treating me if I continued.  She believes that what they are doing is dangerous and that she would rather treat me from a pathological point of view.  In other words as if I have a disease.  (This makes me just want to fucking scream !!!)  She was actually very kind to me through out the meeting but very straightforward ...she told me she did not think I was strong enough right now to withstand the type of therapy that they would put me through and that it was in fact a slippery slope for anyone.  She thought that I would end up being suicidal and hospitalized or that they would end up causing further damage which they would expect her to fix.  She then said that what her intentions in helping me were was to get me well enough to go back to work.  My thoughts on that are this:: well that is great, however what I really wanted from all of this is to have a better quality of life which to be honest I have no idea what that means right now, to be able to look at myself in the mirror and actually know who the person is looking back at me, to not feel the sense of loss that I feel all the time. (which I might add causes the deepest ache in my heart) what good is it to get me well enough to go back to work and then I still feel all of those things inside of myself.  Great so I am functional again big fucking whoopie doo hey....nice to know that I will be well enough to be a functional member of society once again who still has a huge gaping massive bleeding hole in my fucking heart....