First admission and after a week settling in was told I was being sent to make dolls’ houses. Something I had no aptitude for due to problems that are ongoing to this day. I went into a state of acute panic at the prospect and was dragged from the path of a hospital bus. Was there any attempt at finding out why I had reacted so badly? Some attempt at understanding? ■■■■ there was. Just some psychiatrist telling me I was an awkward and troublesome teenager and looking at me disapprovingly.
It never dawned on them the damage that incident did. Decades later when I did feel confident enough to speak out and ask for more help? Yes you have got it-labelled awkward,demanding and troublesome. Blamed completely for the breakdown in the patient- mental health professional relationship.
As much as possible I keep things to myself. It’s not worth the risk of abuse to say too much. The damage has been done. I just have to cope as best I can.
Decades later when I did feel confident enough to speak out and ask for more help?
Be more assertive if you can. I mean what kind of help did you ask for? Ask again.
I asked for more help with my problems. If I had had a receptive ear I could have expanded on that.
shrug Sometimes when we receive help, we aren’t really ready to receive it, or we receive it from people who aren’t very good at giving it.
I was resentful of my first hospitalization because it was against my will and because it marked complete abandonment from my family. I was also angry because the doctors there continuously asked me if I was suicidal, and I felt they were teasing me, trying to make me hurt myself so they could write it off as a patient problem and not their fault?
So when my therapist suggested last May that I return to the hospital I felt scared and angry and a little betrayed. But I also recognized that I was getting very close to suicidal and I was not able to cope with anything anymore. So I went ahead.
This second hospitalization went better, because it was a conscious choice. I even had to choose whether to leave after a week (after being on meds for only a day or two) or remain so my meds could be fine-tuned. I chose to stay, and it broke my heart because I really wanted to go home, but I know it was the right decision.
Some of the staffers were… well, condescending. Others were on the level and very helpful. I met some really interesting people inside. I ate well for the first time in months, and I slept, and for the most part I did OK. Had a few scary moments but nothing too bad.
Anyways this isn’t about me. It’s about you, and your experience. What do you gain from holding on to your anger? Why not move forward and get the help you need now, rather than looking back and wishing it had come sooner? Why place the responsibility of healing outside yourself, when you are truly the only one who can heal yourself?
It was a mistake making this thread. It was a mistake posting about something so personal. Naively I had thought I would get understanding.
I’m sorry if my response is what makes you feel making this post was a mistake. Talking about your problems and asking for help is never a mistake, please don’t let my response make you feel that way.
Look… we can’t control what happens to us, or how we’re treated. But we can control how we allow those experiences to affect us.
Anger is healthy and effective when it happens in the moment – when we have to tell someone to stop doing something, or when we have to fix some aspect of our own behaviors – but when we hold on to it it becomes like a poison. Looking back with anger is not going to help any of us.
Looking forward with hope, and learning from our past experiences, will help us create better futures for ourselves. Remember what went wrong, but don’t dwell on it, if you can help it.
I’m sorry you didn’t receive the help you needed when you needed it. Now is as good a time as any to go looking for that help.
It sucks being put in a position you don’t have a good aptitude for. That happened to me in the army.
I am very doubtful that much difference can be made at this late stage. Even if it possibly could(for argument’s sake) it is very hard to proactively ask for help when doing that is what got you abused ie labelled as awkward,demanding and troublesome. I would have to be very certain that I would not be subjected again to the same treatment. An admittance on their part of poor practice and a willingness to show they would do better this time round would make a big difference. The trouble is mh professionals are usually too arrogant/dishonest to admit to past shortcomings.
That leaves me with hoping that they will become intelligent enough to ask me the right questions that trigger the help rather than me forcing the issue and risking abusive treatment again.
Given the failure so far to show much intelligence I am not at all optimistic.
They can’t be blamed for not knowing at the time of making the decision to send me there(I never went as after that incident I ended up on a medium stay ward and was so upset I then ended up soon after on a closed ward). Where they were negligent is in not looking into why I might have reacted as I did. A few intelligent questions would have drawn out that I was not good with constructional/manual tasks and that the anxious reaction stemmed from being earmarked to do something I had no aptitude for.
Instead the lazy option was chosen ie to tell me I was an awkward teenager. Having established the poor constructional/manual ability they could then have gone on to do a profile of my other difficulties and tailored help accordingly.
It was a missed opportunity to really help. Compounded decades later by branding me awkward,demanding and troublesome when I did feel confident and secure enough to seek more help.
I’ve always found artsy craftsy things unbearably tedious. I think they just followed the path of least resistance in your case. It probably would have been easier for you and everybody else it they had listened to you.
The trouble is once the “awkward” label was irresponsibly and lazily applied it stuck and no one had the intelligence or humility to consider alternatives.
MH professionals are notoriously bad at admitting when they got something wrong. That especially applies to pdocs.