Bad experience with therapy ( now im afraid to restart treatment ) (TW?)

[Ven]

I’m putting a trigger warning because I vaguely describe my train of thought when not feeling well

25f on disability for schizophrenia - diagnosed at 20 by 4-5 different psychiatrists/therapists over the years.

I tend to stay with my doctors until they retire/transfer

I recently moved to wisconsin and had to start over with a new health care team

I’ve recently canceled all my visits with my therapist and psychiatrist because in our last visit my therapist told me that I was

“Exaggerating my symptoms” and that she doesnt “believe that I have schizophrenia”

I wont go on a 5 paragraph long complaint about how I wasnt able to speak with her about my symptoms because she would just be googling useless things our entire appointments.

But regardless of that I have hardly even had the chance to tell her about whats happening to me because of my symptoms so for her to say that it upset me and was a huge red flag. ( because what am i exaggerating if i haven’t said anything yet??? )

I have a very hard time talking about my symptoms ( I often cant find the words to explain them, which she said was me being too vague ) and have been using the fact that I was diagnosed with schizophrenia as a way to remind myself that whats happening around me/to me is likely due to it and not to act immediately.

When I was able to tell her this is- is when she told me I was essentially faking it.

And as my personal symptoms go this shattered my mental barrier I’ve been building

and I found myself asking myself things like “am i? am i just crazy? whats wrong with me? is schizophrenia not what I have? Are the things happening to me real? Is she trying to make me think these things? Did she know saying that would make me question if something is happening” and more harmful racing thoughts such as that that only make me spiral more until I feel the urge to vomit.

Is this a common way for some therapists to act? Because I’ve never been told I was lying before- because what reason do I have to lie?

Its true I would rather keep my diagnosis but its entirely for my mental sake of not just calling it anxiety- because as far as I’ve ever been told, anxiety doesn’t cause you to have auditory/visual hallucinations. Which is what she suggested.

I’m feeling sick and afraid that my next therapist could say the same thing and leave me feeling the same confused worried feeling which causes me to have no ground to stand on mentally ( is this relatable? )

I know I need to keep trying- but I’m genuinely scared I’m going to be told that I sometimes am so sure I’m in danger and see people in my house, just because I’m anxious.

I can tell when I’m anxious… I can feel it. What I can’t feel is myself slipping away- and its taken a long time to be able to remind myself theres a name for it.

I’d love to know if this is something thats happened to anyone else here.

[dreamer54]

I see therapy as a complement to meds. Personally I don’t like it and I like to save my time and money.

Can it be useful? It depends on a lot of factors, like your willingness to work with a counsellor, how much do you already know about their procedures (sometimes they won’t bring anything new to the table), etc.

Is it mandatory? Hell no!

[Natron]

Definitely get a another therapist!

[unicornrose]

Yeah i totally get how frustrating that is. I’m really sorry that you’re dealing with such a frustrating and invalidating experience

Considering that you said youve been diagnosed by 4-5 different psychiatrist & therapists over the years, and

• it seems like this one hasnt really gotten the time to actually know you yet,
• and yet she is already jumping to conclusions,
• and also doesn’t seem to want to really listen to and hear your point of view in response
• and she is googling a lot of things

it might be more productive and helpful to find someone else who is more helpful

Are they a psychologist or simply a therapist / counsellor? Sometimes they might not actually know or have the relevant qualifications, ESPECIALLY if they are googling symptoms

Like I’m extremely frustrated with the youth mental health service i’m with right now. Right now they finally agree (current psychiatrist & psychiatric registrar) that it’s psychosis, but that was after dealing with random people from their service like an initial psychiatric registrar, psychiatrist saying it wasn’t

Like with my social worker who i got assigned, she was going to make me do “psychosis education” so that apparently i will be clearer about which symptoms are psychosis and which are not. But then i realise that she doesn’t actually have any psychological background like a psychologist would. So i realised she wasn’t helping one single bit about any of the mood symptoms and other things like recognising i’m spending a lot of money on a certain week, because she doesn’t know that something could be a little more on the mania side rather or psychosis.

I also got diagnosed with autism and before that, there was one psychologist who said she specialised in autism and she only saw me for 4 telehealth sessions and then started insisting that i didnt have autism because she said “your social skills are very good and your english is very good” (when i was born here and ive been speaking english as first language for most of my life).
When i retold this to another registrar, he implied anyway that this psychologist wasn’t experienced

Anyway – in short answer, yes, have also had bad experiences with public mental health system. Only way i got better actual help with therapy was to find an experienced clinical psychologist but it can be much more expensive unfortunately.

My clinical psychologist was the one who actually helped me to understand that increased stress can lead to worsening positive symptoms (hallucinations & delusions). Before that the public service that i was with, they were just saying to reduce stress whenever i was freaked out about hallucinations and delusions, and i was just like to myself “they don’t understand that i’m stressed BECAUSE of the hallucinations and delusions, and i want medicine to help stop those. But they won’t give me the higher meds.”

Anyway my response got long and i got side-tracked.

i’m really sorry that you went through that. It makes you feel so defeated and frustrated when someone pretends they are qualified to say all those things and then also won’t listen to you. I hope you can find therapy again that works for you

[Ven]

Thats very frustrating and I’m super mad for you about the autism comment!!!
I’m quite sure I’m also autistic but I havent bothered looking into it because its just been kind of blatant to me XD
I hate that people unqualified say thing like that to people who are suffering with the conditions in the first place… It can sure hurt for a life time if you never get validation that they were wrong! ( basically stating that you had to be illiterate and shy or your issues are invalid…??? )

Ive put in my applications/emails to other more private therapy offices ( i was going to a hospitals mental health unit ) and I’m hoping i find someone who actually enjoys their profession and can speak to me without using google…
She wasn’t googling symptoms but it would go more like:
Her: what did you do today?
Me: I got a food name here at restaurant name here
Her: Ohh… Hmm… What is… Hmm… hold on… starts googling
Her: and where is that?
Me: Its in town
Her: Ohhh hmm… let me see… googles location ohhh yeah… and thats… like right over there?

and she would do that for everything I brought up so I wasnt ever really able to talk about what I wanted to talk about ( my symptoms ) because half the visit I was sitting there while she slooowly googled.