Appointment Monday Morning

My first appointment with this new therapist is this upcoming Monday morning. I haven’t been able to sleep hardly at all because my anxiety is cranked up. We lost the power here for a day due to strong winds, and I didn’t have any stimulation without the internet, and nowhere to go. My mother and her husband were home as it was the weekend (this past Saturday, or yesterday) so I couldn’t pace around the house like I usually would. I just felt trapped with my thoughts, which made it worse.

I’m afraid this therapist is going to be the only therapist I could find online with her first name, that works in this area. The one that has a page for herself that is all about how she is a Christian, she is very outspoken about it. I can be fine with religious people on a casual basis, but I can’t have a therapist who talks about her religion, or it’ll mess me up even more, and I’ll never be able to talk with her about anything.

I don’t even know what I’m supposed to say to her. I figure she’ll ask something like, “What brings you to therapy?” or “Why are you here?” and I don’t even know where to begin. Plus the way it works at this place, is that you have to see one of their therapists before they will consider letting you have access to the psychiatrist. So someone who is only trained to provide therapy for depression, anxiety, substance abuse and family dysfunctions, will be making a decision on whether or not I should get to see a psychiatrist.

My mind is also getting more wound up and torn about knowing this appointment is coming up. Feels like I am warring with the most common type of delusion issue I tend to get, which seems to be a mixture of grandiose (but scary, not fun) and paranoid.

I think I’m mostly scared to tell her because I’m mostly scared she will agree with me. I don’t want it to be real, it’s terrifying. But if she is religious then she might agree that it’s real or that it could be real, and if that happens then it’s like someone giving me a rough push backwards deeper into my own messed up mind. I’ve already got my grandmother harassing me with emails saying she wants to take me to a priest for a deliverance ritual.

I can’t stop thinking about it, though. I know I shouldn’t have but I wound up up all night watching videos from people who feel and experience the same things I do, or similar things. I just don’t know.

I feel like I’ve been managing to walk around this house for several days now, looking normal, sounding normal, being normal. Holding it all together by the seams. The only thing that gives me away is that I’m not sleeping well, haven’t showered in over a week and am smoking too much, but my mother and her husband don’t pay attention to things like that. They just don’t want to hear about anything, and don’t want to see any negative emotions. I feel this sense of terrible doom that this appointment will somehow go badly, and then the seams will rip, and then everything will get very bad at home.

Just wanted to vent it out.

be sure to gibe this therapist a chance…I say she is nice and could well help you…best of luck…

Yes it’s possible.

If your therapist gets religious on you, be assertive. Tell her you aren’t comfortable with it. If she persists, ask for another therapist. I imagine there are professional guidelines about bringing religion into therapy. There is a chance you might be awfulisizing - making things seem worse than they really are. Maybe your therapy will go smoothly.

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This would be a concern with me, too. It could be very detrimental, especially seeing as how your grandma seems like a religious zealot who wants to put you through the purge…

I also don’t fare well with religious therapists. One teared up when she pushed at the whole spirituality thing-can-help angle and I mentioned that religious sensations were a sign of psychosis in myself. Another gave me therapy while he sat next to a bible. It was there like every session for a year. He could have put that thing on the book shelf like a normal person, but no.

Any chance of looking for a new therapist while seeing this one? Just in case, like Plan B, lol. Is she the only one locally available? Maybe there’s a directory database through your insurance company (I know there’s one for low income gov insurance) to find more providers.

Use the force and break the 4th wall like a deadpool. I believe in you it will be fine. So ive said so it will be.

My current therapist Never brings up Religion or God - I like it this way.

My last therapist tried to bring in God and Spirituality - I quickly objected and put an end to it.

If Religion is brought up, and you feel uncomffortable with it, quickly tell her how you feel about it.

Going to see a therapist should be a painless experience.

Good luck! :smile:

Maybe I shouldn’t give any details at all about what I experience, but just keep everything very vague. I am already in the habit of that in some ways, such as by referring to them as entities, to keep it as vague as possible. The problem is that most of my issues have a strong supernatural theme, so it’s very hard to talk about it without overtly discussing religion in the process. And in my culture, the dominant religion believes that I am experiencing supernatural phenomenon, not symptoms of mental illness. So it’s just a treacherous thing to try to talk about it with anyone, even therapists, and when I found this lady online and saw that her very first thing she says about herself is that she is a Christian (if it is indeed her), it’s just like oh great. It’s even hard to talk about it without accidentally being insulting, because I know that not all religious people are as extremist as the ones I grew up with / am used to, so it’s like how do I discuss it also without accidentally offending the crap out of the therapist without meaning to.

Oh no! Not that i hate that idea!

My mind discombobulates whenever someone tries to explain sz in anyway outside of neurotransmitters/science! I’m in America, and we’re not supposed to believe in that superstitious stuff, but people still do anyways it’s like ugh people read a science book.
Be strong in the face of ignorance!

I’m in America, too, but I grew up in northern Indiana in the 90s, and the community where I lived was widely aggressive Evangelical. My own grandmother is a somewhat prominent figure in the movement. I feel like some people, maybe a lot of people, don’t realize that there are still areas even in the first world where religion is somewhat or quite cultish. My family moved to Michigan when I was a teenager, when my mother remarried, and in this area it is mostly Catholic. Which is funny because the culture I was raised in believed that Catholics were brainwashed and that the pope was a minion of the Antichrist and may very well be the Antichrist (then they thought Obama was the Antichrist, it changes all the time).

Most religious people I meet in a peer type setting are far more casual, they just focus on Jesus and trying to be kind to everybody, and my impression of them tends to be that they are just trying to be good people in general, and I can admire that even if our beliefs may differ (well depending on my mental state). But it’s very hard to not feel tangled by any degree of it, because it’s like this massive vacuum inside my mind. Like some of them will claim they believe in the Bible, but they don’t believe in demonic possession, even though the Bible pretty clearly describes possession as real. My childhood conditioning combined with my own neurotic tendencies will then interpret that to mean they are deliberate deceivers and trying to trick me, and it’ll just take off from there.

It’s all just nuts.

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I had similar beliefs to that…i thought the pope and obama was antichrists and sending people to follow me…if you believe in the bible than these are just demonic forces here to decieve us.

My voices tell me that im the devil and they are miserable and that i am impossible…whenever i hear them i constantly reject everything they say.

I believe no voice that ever speaks to me inside my head is Good even if they say stuff that sounds good.

They speak with double mindedness. Sometimes They love me and sometimes they hate me…i hate them all the time…because they all have no right to be speaking to me or about me where i can hear in the first place