Or does there come a point when one needs to accept that anything resembling recovery is unlikely to happen.
For me recovery is an illusion. Other people’s mileage may vary.
^ After 42 years(longer than many posters here have been alive) I have given up on any chance of recovery. Perhaps if there had been a more holistic approach that wasn’t almost exclusively confined to administering medication and narrowly focusing on textbook ICD symptoms it might have been different.
Therapy,short as it was,was an abusive farce. Two trained therapists who preferred to pass moral judgement rather than help to cope better with negative experiences. An untrained in therapy member of the resource centre who suddenly announced she was part of a small religious sect, and pulled out when I inadvertently upset her religious sensibilities.
I am well past the acute stage of my illness and the chronic and enduring issue is social.
A problem that has as much or more to do with undiagnosed and untreated aspergic traits/ non verbal learning disorder. Phrases like “has very poor social skills” are bandied about but no actual help is offered.
The difficulties that made social interaction as a child/teenager difficult and resulted in that bullying still very much intact. The paranoia and social anxiety being a product of that bullying and social rejection.
There was a chance to acknowledge the difficulties that likely fall into the category of aspergers/NVLD very early on during first psychiatric admission but instead a pdoc chose to brand me an awkward and troublesome teenager. Cue years of not feeling able to really talk about problems and the negativity of that pdoc being passed down to other pdocs. Once you get a reputation however wrong and abusive it is it sticks.
Forward a couple of decades and gradually find the strength to open and seek more help only to be met with claims of being awkward,demanding and troublesome. Phrases like “very dependent narcissist” abounding. Result total breakdown in the psychiatrist/psychiatric team- patient relationship. A change of dx from schizoaffective mixed type to personality disorder (diagnoses are often changed to this when a pdoc has an antipathy towards a patient and wishes to lay all the blame for a breakdown in the pdoc-patient relationship at the feet of the patient).
Nowadays the relationship is better only as much as it is one of indifference rather than open hostility. I keep most stuff to myself rather than risk a repeat of the abuse and nastiness I was previously subjected to.
I have no friends, am socially isolated and have never worked due to my problems but in the eyes of my psychiatric team I’m doing better because I am docile(more astute people might call it apathetic).
I live independently but in a very restricted way. Having said that I guess I do as well as the mismanagement of my problems allows. I can not hope for anything better.
I stop short of calling for the abolition of psychiatry but can we,in all honesty,say it is fit for purpose? Often it seems to be more about blaming the sufferer than acknowledging the very real effects of environmental,psychological and social factors on a person’s life.