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pachyderm: The trouble is that someone who is emotionally damaged and with poor self-confidence, which most people seeking such help will be, has a hard time telling a good one from a bad. And I have found essentially no correlation between good therapists and professional credentials. One such credentialled person was a horrible disaster for me. And I am coming to believe (partly with the aid of some authors I have read) that the vast majority of the mental health establishment is off the track as to what causes the kind of distress I have experienced -- and they don't know it.

Regretably, I agree with you. I say "regretably" because I recognize that in this culture, the therapeutic route is the route most likely taken but I suspect that many therapists--in spite of their best intentions--are doing far more harm than good. Still, where else would I recommend that someone go--to a shaman? to a priest? to a guru? This culture long ago lost their connections to such people; we replaced them with psychotherapists and so, that's where we feel compelled to go and compelled to send others.

Not long ago, Phil made a post somewhere in which he expressed his anger that these people, these "experts" who are supposed to be helping him, are not helping him. I wanted to respond, but then the thread disappeared and my own life was keeping me very busy and I didn't have time to dig through the archives. Yet, I was pleased in a way to see his anger because with that comes the realization that you have to help yourself. Until we hit that point we can sincerely believe that others possess that which we need and this keeps us in a passive role.

There is a wonderful article by a woman named Judi Chamberlain that captures this realization very well. It's called, Confessions of a Non-Compliant Patient...

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A famous comedian once said, "I've been rich, and I've been poor, and believe me, rich is better." Well, I've been a good patient, and I've been a bad patient, and believe me, being a good patient helps to get you out of the hospital, but being a bad patient helps to get you back to real life.

Being a patient was the most devastating experience of my life. At a time when I was already fragile, already vulnerable, being labeled and treated only confirmed to me that I was worthless. It was clear that my thoughts , feelings, and opinions counted for little. I was presumed not to be able to take care of myself, not to be able to make decisions in my own best interest, and to need mental health professionals to run my life for me. For this total disregard of my wishes and feelings, I was expected to be appreciative and grateful. In fact, anything less was tacked as a further symptom of my illness, as one more indication that I truly needed more of the same.

I tried hard to be a good patient. I saw what happened to bad patients: they were the ones in the seclusion rooms, the ones who got sent to the worst wards, the ones who had been in the hospital for years, or who had come back again and again. I was determined not to be like them. So I gritted my teeth and told the staff what they wanted to hear. I told them I appreciated their help. I told them I was glad to be in the safe environment of the hospital. I said that I knew I was sick, and that I wanted to get better. In short, I lied. I didn't cry and scream and tell them that I hated them and their hospital and their drugs and their diagnoses, even though that was what I was really feeling. I'd learned where that kind of thing got me - that's how I ended up in the state hospital in the first place. I'd been a bad patient, and this was where it had gotten me. My diagnosis was chronic schizophrenia, my prognosis was that I'd spend my life going in and out of hospitals.

I'd been so outraged during my first few hospitalizations, in the psychiatric ward of a large general hospital, and in a couple of supposedly prestigious private psychiatric hospitals. I hated the regimentation, the requirement that I take drugs that slowed my body and my mind, the lack of fresh air and exercise, the way we were followed everywhere. So I complained, I protested, I even tried running away. And where had it gotten me? Behind the thick walls and barred windows and locked doors of a "hospital" that was far more of a prison that the ones I'd been trying to escape from. The implicit message was clear: this was what happened to bad patients.

I learned to hide my feelings, especially negative ones. The very first day in the state hospital, I received a valuable piece of advice. Feeling frightened, abandoned, and alone, I started to cry in the day room. Another patient came and sat beside me, leaned over and whispered, "Don't do that. They'll think you're depressed." So I learned to cry only at night, in my bed, under the covers without making a sound.

My only aim during my two-month stay in the state hospital (probably the longest two months of my life) was to get out. If that meant being a good patient, if that meant playing the game, telling them what they wanted to hear, then so be it. At the same time, I was consumed with the clear conviction that there was something fundamentally wrong here. Who were these people that had taken such total control of our lives? Why were they the experts on what we should do, how we should live? Why was the ugliness, and even the brutality, of what was happening to us overlooked and ignored? Why had the world turned its back on us?

So I became a good patient outwardly, while inside I nurtured a secret rebellion that was no less real for being hidden. I used to imagine a future in which an army of former patients marched on the hospital, emptied it of patients and staff, and then burned all the buildings to the ground. In my fantasy, we joined hands and danced around this bonfire of oppression. You see, in my heart I was already a very, very bad patient!

Source: Confessions of a Non-Compliant Patient


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If you haven't already, I would encourage you to read that article in its entirety. Truth is, no one knows you like you know yourself. No one can identify with your struggles, your hardships, your pain, like you can. I think that many of us--even those who have been deemed the most ill, the most incurable, the most hopeless--have greater insight into what ails us than has been considered. No one will be more motivated than you to find the healing you need. In that seeking, you may find that which might be helpful to others--this is the fulcrum that drives peer-based support. To share what helped me with others because as you (and Phil) have noted, the vast majority of those who are supposed to be capable of helping seem to be out of the loop. They don't know what they're doing, but they don't want to admit it.

Professional therapy is probably the best resource we have going for us, but the truly skilled are few and far between. Carl Jung is dead; John Weir Perry, R.D. Laing, Loren Mosher, Harry Stack Sullivan -- also dead. Jaakko Seikkula is in Finland, which is great, I suppose... if you're a Finnish schizophrenic. The reality is, it's discouraging but it's still up to us to make the best of our personal situation. The words of the dead or the distant might be all we have to guide us, but that will have to do.