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Originally Posted by 1914sierra
You weren't "sent away" or "locked up". You attended an outpatient program where you were free to leave for lunch, etc.
You can discuss thoughts about death and hopelessness with a therapist without being hospitalized. You were doing more than just expressing thoughts when you were asked to attend the outpatient program. You were actively suicidal as evidenced by your actions that you have discussed elsewhere. There is a difference.
Honestly, what happened in your case is relatively minor in the scheme of things that could and have happened to others in similar situations. You were not forcibly put in a court-ordered inpatient facility where you could have been kept for a great deal of time if deemed a danger to yourself.
I am sorry this is hard for you to accept, but it isn't a life sentence. People go for mental health treatment pretty regularly these days. It doesn't follow you around like a scarlet "A" on your chest.
My gut feeling about you is that you have subconsciously substituted this "trauma" for the real trauma you have been through in your life, and your childhood was truly traumatic. You are unable to really look at and work through the childhood trauma you have experienced, so you have made this whole hospital program thing the focus of your trauma. It seems displaced. Kind a strange sort of transference or something.
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The only thing I disagree with in your statement, I really was or at least felt like I was under threat of something worse, forced into this very much against my will. Not through a formal process, mind you, just the thought that, here is a psychiatrist with the power to call the authorities on me if I don't go along with her, am I willing to risk having the police show up and drag me away from work or home. I was SO desperate to keep this a very, very buried secret, the thought of being publicly hauled away terrified me.
I wasn't actively suicidal when I walked into that office -- I thought about it, but had neither the intent or desire to do it -- it was just a mental image of the act that popped into my mind. I actually walked in saying, and thinking, I was going to improve my life. I was, and freely admit, actively suicidal when I walked out.
Your last paragraph is exactly what my therapist said yesterday, except she didn't explain it in terms of trauma, but in terms of the secrecy, the double life I and my family had to lead when I was a kid, acting outwardly like the perfect family, and having to massively cover up my father's actions and behaviors.
It feels like the Scarlet Letter to me -- I wish I knew how to turn it into a virtue and a badge of honor like Hester Prynn did in the novel. Or if nothing else forget about it and move on.
Seriously, maybe hypnotherapy would work? -- I've tried a LOT of other things, so far nada on the results.