Taking it to the next Level!

[Martin68]

Hello All.

I got my referral letter today (Yay!!) to go to the big city and see the clever kids in Psychotherapy. (About time too!!)

It has only taken 9 months after my initial enquiry, one uneventful appointment with Talking Matters 3month ago, then in the end a rather pushy letter from a sympathetic GP I saw three weeks ago (I am extremely grateful for her intervention), and now I feel like I'm getting somewhere... well... getting to start getting somewhere.

So I read through the letter and started on the paperwork. I started on their questionnaires, one about my symptoms, another about personality, another on mood... and so on.
I expect we all have filled these in more than several times over the years, I know I have.

It strikes me that every attempt I have to make at explaining myself, my feelings, my mood, my problems, my past and all of that, just seems to decrease my ability to explain myself.

I'm not sure if it is apathy or fatigue, not quite sure. I just wondered if anyone else experiences this, and would agree that it doesn't help with recovery/healing when those terrible times in your life feelings now have to be recalled on forms over and over like re=writing a script to the degree that it becomes a real chore!?

Or maybe it's just me.

Anyway, it's moving along, I just need to be patient I suppose.   
 

[Three Roses]

It strikes me that every attempt I have to make at explaining myself, my feelings, my mood, my problems, my past and all of that, just seems to decrease my ability to explain myself.

This is exactly how I feel. A sort of hopeless feeling, or a feeling of fear of vulnerability comes over me; and I am convinced I'll not be believed. It's horrible.

[Martin68]

So I wonder why we are required to repeat all these questionnaires over again, I understand mood questionnaires change, but those asking about our history could easily be passed on to fellow professionals.
I had an hour telephone interview with one doctor who saw me eventually and made me repeat it all again, did he not write it down!?
It just feels detrimental to me, but it may be a necessary evil I suppose.

[Candid]

I expect we all have filled these in more than several times over the years, I know I have.

It strikes me that every attempt I have to make at explaining myself, my feelings, my mood, my problems, my past and all of that, just seems to decrease my ability to explain myself.

I'm not sure if it is apathy or fatigue, not quite sure. I just wondered if anyone else experiences this...

Yes. Me. I too am waiting to see a trauma specialist, following a lengthy and irritating phone call with a psychiatrist. I just hope the therapist I finally get to see isn't another psychiatrist, because for some reason they always manage to make me feel worse.

I would say apathy and fatigue... and a kind of helpless feeling that I'm about to have another go on the misery-go-round that drags up everything and resolves nothing, but that I have no alternative. At 60 I've been in The System more than half  my life and I'm fed up with listener cynicism. The worst question any shrink can ask me is: Why do you think you were the family scapegoat? It strikes me as ambiguous -- why do I think it, OR: what kind of character defect was I born with that my FOO, led by Mother, first rejected and then ostracised me, giving all sorts of damning reasons to the extended family to pre-empt anything I might say in my own defence?

Why do I think it? How do I explain a lifetime of contempt, sneers, punishment following appeals for mercy, and all the horrible things that either wouldn't have happened, or could have been softened, if I'd had anyone on my side?

What kind of brat was I to bring about this treatment? I don't know. My earliest memory is of Mother slapping me and yelling "You bad girl!" ... during potty training.

I feel bound and gagged and so damned lonely. I've been lonely all my life. Relationship is the only game on Planet Earth, but I avoid people. It's *.

On a brighter note, your GP sounds like a 'keeper'. We have to keep clutching at those straws, don't we?

[woodsgnome]

This thread speaks volumes about the difficulty of re-orienting even the so-called therapists who insist on playing history games with regards to a client's life instead of regarding what happened as a necessary reference point, yes; but still grounded in what can happen now, in this field beyond all that pain. And honest help, not just statistics drivers.

I had at least 10 (I think I counted right) therapists, most of whom endlessly went over the same ground. Which is fine, especially at first--they need to know what seems out of synch, but really--to spend all their time on reliving the past of their clients seems to suggest they've lost touch with any notion of care-giving and are just reciting formulas. I had one T who if I'd stayed with him, might have taken forever--I can hear him now saying with a grin..."okay, we've gotten you to age 14; what happened next?" (which was when I pulled the plug on that one--I'm sure he's still worrying that we didn't get to age 15) There's a context in which that can apply, but rote recitation is like history classes that tell all the dates but nothing of what really happened to the real people involved. Not to mention the redundant "and why were you like that" retort. Funny if it weren't so utterly inane.

My current T makes them all seem like blurs who just fumbled around at therapy as a form of amusement for themselves. I say this not to note how fortunate I am, but to point out that there really are good T's around, but gosh it's hard to find them sometimes.

Best to all on this thread; I hope you receive the consideration you deserve. 

[sanmagic7]

from a therapist perspective, as difficult as it is, if i don't get a history from my client as to what went on in the past, i don't know how to proceed in the present to make way for a better future.  i wouldn't necessarily trust info that was written down by some other practitioner - who knows their methods of deduction, observation, or what their biases might be?   there are different ways to go about it, tho, and i think doing it thru questionnaires may be one of the least helpful to the client.

even when i go to the doc and have had to fill out questionnaires on my medical history, it often ties my brain in knots.  having to do the same with traumatic emotional history can very well be re-traumatizing.   i wish you didn't have to do it in this manner.  it's so impersonal, so provocative, and could easily be debilitating as well.  it's the frickin' system, is all, and i personally hate it, mainly because it's so impersonal.  those are generic questions that have little to do with a real person and their history.   ooooh, don't get me started!

why do you think you were the scapegoat?  what a loaded bunch of crapola.  maybe cuz that's what someone else said you were.  someone else's word, not yours.  all you know is your experience, not labels.  labels are for the professionals, to make it neater and tidier for them.   labels don't take into consideration all that you mentioned and more, candid.  i hope you get a good therapist this time, and all goes well for you, at last.

woodsgnome, so happy for you that you finally found someone with whom you work well.  that is a blessing.

martin68, i'm just glad, after all these months of waiting, that you're finally going to get in to see someone.  i hope it's a good fit and that you have a helping and healing experience.   

[Martin68]

On a brighter note, your GP sounds like a 'keeper'. We have to keep clutching at those straws, don't we?

Yes Candid, I believe she is a keeper. My old GP of 30 years had known me through early adulthood and I felt a loyalty to him, which in some ways must have been misplaced I think, especially as my new GP has managed to put wheels in motion for me in such a short time in comparison.

But yes It does feel like we are constantly clutching at straws. And then of course there is the waiting,

Thanks for the reply.

[Martin68]

This thread speaks volumes about the difficulty of re-orienting...

I agree, I imagine it is something we all go through, it's wearing and most service users must find the changes problematic... 

...Not to mention the redundant "and why were you like that" retort. Funny if it weren't so utterly inane.

I know... and "how did it make you feel", well not great obviously!

...Best to all on this thread; I hope you receive the consideration you deserve. 

And thanks for that Woodsgnome, it's good to get it off my chest and share my frustrations, I suppose it's necessary at times.

[Martin68]

martin68, i'm just glad, after all these months of waiting, that you're finally going to get in to see someone.  i hope it's a good fit and that you have a helping and healing experience.   

I am glad also, I've finally been referred up the line to a specialist, at long last Sanmagic.

I have filled in all the paperwork and put it in the return envelope, they give me 2 weeks to reply or they assume I don't require an appointment, I can't imagine pushing this hard just to drop out!?

I wish I could have gone into more detail on the forms, but I felt more and more jaded as the questions progressed.
I hope they don't analyse my hand writing either, it gets more scrappy as the pages are turned... Lol

But yes, it's good news really... yup.   

[sanmagic7]

analyse your handwriting - that's a good one!  i can't even imagine what mine might look like after all that! 

yay for you!   

[Fen Starshimmer]

Martin, I wish you all the luck in the world with the specialist T they allocate you. I think it's often a case of the finding right match for one's present needs. I believe that as we progress, some therapies/modalities become outdated. We take what is useful from them (if anything) and move on. This has been my experience.

As for those forms. I've become very cynical about them, and don't bother with them. A think there's a Big Brother data collection aspect to them, and I don't want my personal info on their database... I stopped government-sponsored programs ever since my first utterly pointless experience of box ticking at a London Trauma Clinic where they said they couldn't help me because I didn't fulfill one of their criteria. I later found out I that I did; it was just that at the time I didn't know what a flashback meant, so couldn't say I had them; no one explained it to me. Plus they kept on wanting to know what "the event" was, and couldn't grasp it was my LIFE! The psychologist was robotic - like others I have met, programmed by their degrees, left-brain, theory driven, low on empathy, rigid. Hope I haven't put you off....  This is just my personal experience which started quite a few years ago when I had certain (higher) expectations of mainstream medicine/psychiatry.

Would love to hear how it goes. Keeping fingers crossed for you!

[Candid]

they said they couldn't help me because I didn't fulfill one of their criteria. I later found out I that I did; it was just that at the time I didn't know what a flashback meant, so couldn't say I had them; no one explained it to me. Plus they kept on wanting to know what "the event" was, and couldn't grasp it was my LIFE!

This is my fear about the trauma specialist I'm yet to meet...