[Icare dixit]

I just had an appointment where a clinician evaluated whether I would fit into a group therapy thing.

She must've got neck pain from all the looking down on people, because she was quite bad tempered.

You might have read about my psychiatrist giving me what would have been, without the right meds, a knockout punch, implying laziness and again abnormalcy. She'd sent me to that appointment.

The woman behind the desk gave the standard lecture about routine, sleep hygiene, how treatment costs money so requires absolute compliance (not just med compliance) and how to deal with this severe illness and still accepting it (granted, you really need help with acceptance if you buy into that crap).

She expected me to know nothing about psychotic disorders and even dyslexia (which she had as well), she thought I was just a mystic loony without knowing anything about the brain and what role it played in psychotic disorders (and incidentally, dyslexia). It told her how

was messed up and sickening, literally, even (complicit) in murder.

I felt like doing an audition for "Not One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest" while I thought I was auditioning for "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest".

However, I blocked all her punches and eventually gave her a knockout punch. She instantly became very quiet and very, very kind, not arguing about the very severe accusations about both her and her profession. Writing in my file how I knew a lot about my diagnosis and have accepted it (obviously not in the way she likes to see: absolute subjection).

On leaving, I asked her whether I now had to stop my meds (which she implied with analogy to surgery and post-operation treatment) and she said no.

, in 30 minutes (it used to take longer even with more understanding clinicians).

Just wanted to blow my own trumpet here: victory!



Edit:
Needless to say, we agreed it's probably best if I won't be joining the therapy group. I apologised for wasting her costly, precious time.

[Ocean Swimmer]

You may enjoy free groups thru NAMI DBSA.
When I'm stateside I go every week. It gets me out of the house and I met a few friends there too.

[Icare dixit]

Thank you! I do think support groups via associations or societies for or by mental disorder and psychiatry sufferers are great (or/also something like PC).

I don't live in the US, but there are support groups here as well.

The thing is, I still feel sometimes like being in "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest", sometimes even here, since most with BP (maybe a considerable minority or a majority with SZA/BP or SZ even) are (relative to me) very much in support of how psychiatry works generally, seeing their problems/disorder as an illness and something separate from them and they are still scared of it, but not when separated and contained, like keeping Pandora's box.

Pandora being all-gifted and all-giving, but she opens the box of all evils. The temptations she received as a result of the fires of heaven being stolen. Playing with fire. Touched by fire. Burned by fire. No hope.

One should reintegrate one's mania and depression into oneself, I think. Know mania and depression, but learn not to fear it and bring back more degrees, more emotional and functional states, between mania, depression and stability. Maybe almost like how this can be done with DID.

Since this group is very large, I don't feel like my minority view is not accepted as just a different way of dealing (which I think is superior to having a Pandora's box, but it might not be).

My experience in a "typical" support group were different.

Clinicians really see me as a danger. I can't help feeling (a bit; non-delusional) like Moses (only less talented).