[MotownJohnny]

There are times I do, right now being one of them. I walked into a dr's office about 15 months ago, feeling like I had made a good decision to help myself get past a temporary rough patch. I left there being made to feel like a criminal.

15 months later, I don't recognize my life. Everything is a mess, relationships, finances, career, home life. I live in constant fear and anxiety that I will be outed. I now lie and cover up like Nixon to keep a secret I never wanted in the first place. When I am discovered the world as I know it now, bad as it is, will cease to exist and I will fall down yet another level in the eyes of society. Just "some crazy guy" for the world to shun.

14 months ago, I felt I had no future, and almost killed myself. Sorry now I didn't, because this living Hell is worse than death could possibly be. I have very advantage in life, money, education, career, looks, health, home, community. It's the American Dream incarnate. And nothing I can do, no matter what resource I throw at this thing, ever makes it any better. Vey few people around me know I am going through this, I look like "a winner" to the eyes of the world. Yeah, I'm winning all right, a race to the bottom with Charlie Sheen is more like it.

I will never be anything again but what the US govern still officially calls those of us in the mh community, a "mental defective" (the actual legal term still used in USC, as if they couldn't possibly come up with anything even more stigmatizing.). I don't feel I'm "defective" but apparently the world thinks I belong on the Island of Misfit Toys. Or perhaps just exterminated so I can't cause then any trouble by forcing the "normals" to take an uncomfortable look at themselves in the mirror.

15 months and a world of treatment later, and all I have to show for it is pain, disgrace, humiliation, dehumanization, degradation. Yup, I was right, I have no future other than a race to the bottom and a miserable lonely death to look forward to. Some future. Sorry I wasn't man enough to take care of this when I had the chance. Anything is better than this.

Seeking MH treatment - basically ruined me. I wish I were dead.

Yeah its been 10 years since my diagnosis and starting the med merry-go-round. 10 years of pain and suffering, not just for me but for everyone around me. 10 years of ups and downs, but the ups are never worth the downs. I wish I had died on my first suicide attempt, it would have saved a whole lot of crap for a whole lot of people.

If I didnt go for treatment I would be long gone by now, free of this nightmare.

[ToeJam]

Hard to say. My MH is a series of ups and downs… with the downs being the point that I really needed help with.

If I hadn’t gone for help, in honesty I doubt I’d be here to post… bottom line I guess. By getting help, irrespective of how inconsistent or incompetent some of that help may have been, has allowed for the times of respite where I have in fact lived life… experiences I would not have had otherwise – working abroad, getting married… experiencing changes in technology and being awed by it… reading amazing books.

Yes, there have been missed opportunities... yes, there are times when everything seems pointless, confusing, overwhealming and I'm full of despair... but these are just moments in time.

Being stigmatised is not pleasant, but that's just another challenge thrown at us... it is part of life... our life. Comparing our selves to others is just a path to more unhappiness so we get on with it.

[bronzeowl]

That term bothers me, too. Mental defective. What a lousy term. I don't think any of us are defective. I don't think any person at all is defective. It seems like some people do from time to time, though. That's the part that bothers me about this all.

I'm glad I got help. Usually. I know that I needed it. I had reached a point in my life that was so low that I literally could not function on my own anymore. Had I not sought help, I'm not sure where I'd be right now. I did things right before I sought help... that honestly could have had serious, permanent consequences. Afraid to bring them up because, well, triggers. But I'll say that I am lucky to be here right now, typing this. I realized then that I needed to reach out. No questions asked. My life was just full of so many extreme ups and so many even more extreme downs... Is, still. But the downs have been more tolerable this past month and a half. I hope the meds are to thank for that. I don't think it's the therapy. Maybe it is. But I don't talk much in it yet.

Sometimes? Yeah, I wonder why I went in the first place. Hearing the labels brought up. Being asked Last time you were diagnosed was it bipolar disorder? and being told what I probably have. And that I am showing symptoms of X and Y. It's scary. Scary not because I think it changes who I am, but because I'm afraid it will change other people's perception of who I am. If that makes a lick of sense? It's society that scares me more. If I'm bipolar, or avoidant, or X, Y, Z... I'm fine with that. I'm still the same person. But society? All some people ever see... is the label.

I almost didn't want a label. We're all human. Isn't that label enough? I occasionally have to remind myself that the reason I'm going is to get better, and that alone shows a lot of strength. Willing to reach out proves that those of us who get help are stronger than we may realize.

I don't know what else to say except that I'm sorry you're feeling this way right now. Sometimes, this all can be a roller coaster ride.

[MoxieDoxie]

I sometimes feel that being in Therapy has made me feel more "Mentally defective" than I ever did. So I have to think.....what have I learned from Therapy and what has gone right?

First of finally I have not binged/purged in a month and that in itself is amazing

Have not resorted to self harm.

I want to kill myself less.

Also here are a few reflections:
Healing happens so slowly that it is only in looking back over long distances can I see how far I have come.

My feelings aren't always a good indicator of reality. I needed to learn to put some room between my feelings and myself so I could perceive what was really going on instead of what I believed is going on.

All of me is acceptable, some of it’s not so pretty, some of it I don’t like, but it’s all human.

There was nothing inherently wrong with me, I just didn’t get what I needed and endured things I shouldn't have had to.

Healing is not reaching a place of perfect peace and safety. It is knowing that you can remain safe and be at peace no matter what you run into. That you’ll come out the other side and still be ok.

A surprisingly large part of dealing with the difficulties of life is knowing you can.

Reaching out to another person when you need help is a sign of strength not a weakness. (Still not sure about this one)

Other people’s boundaries are just that, theirs, and say more about them than they do about me.

I need to be as patient, accepting and gentle of my own shortcomings as of other people. I need to be patient, accepting and gentle of other people’s shortcomings.(Have not learned this fully but I have more patients)

I don’t need to know what’s over the next hill before going over it. I can trust in my ability to handle whatever it is.( I need to believe I have abilities that can be trusted)

For reasons beyond my understanding, having someone witnesses your pain and stay with you through it is incredibly powerful and healing. Going through your own pain teaches you to stay with others through their pain.

i'm with johny.

i don't even know who i am anymore- thought it would be simple, and the easiest option, but hell... i've sure payed for it

[happiedasiy]

To all who posted here,
I have bee in treatment from my cradle till the time that i am ashes in the wind.
It was by court order and cps, in my ages 3-10 and because I told the truth about my abuse I got some more when I got home. During that time, there was a battle in me that I would not accept the responsibility for others actions, I told the truth and i was fine.

I experienced many traumatic events from age 10-16 but was a warrior and had the energy to dismiss a lot.
At age of 28 I was assaulted at work and my neck was broken. Wcomp failures caused major emotional problems and have been in treatment 13 years because everything came to the surface. I needed long term help and went on a healing journey.

This often happens when we start Therapy for one thing, then an emotional flood erases the mask of being well and on top of everything.
Lots of important things to know, is there is no dollar amount that can make things better. Only you and the truth can resolve things and it takes effort and time. Sometimes the more we have or have accomplished get in the way of seeing our true self.
Next what you don't resolve things here and now, it will follow you.
Its like when a person says, if I only had this/that then I would be happy. You are too intelligent to know better. The hell you do know is fluid and you can change, the hell you don't know will be even more difficult and you will have to start all over again far worse than before. I have had those times when it seems like a logical, rational answer. Driving in my car and saying what a wonderful day to.... but that was my pain talking, I have chronic pain, disabled, and emotionally broken. NOT DEFECTIVE

If these are the words in your medical records and YOU have a problem with that You have the authority to change this and it only takes 1 day to get that started.

People still the words like incorrigible, when in fact these are false statements can/are used to discriminate against a person when seeking health./life insurance or a home/apartment or job/promotions. Problematic Probabilistic Models for Relational Data have many variables and you may seek for damages if correction are not made. PM me for more info.

Things are Changing in the medical field.
Medical records are now on computers.
PRIVACY and Protection can never be guaranteed, now I am sure there will be new companies like lifelock which is supposed to guard your money and credit that will promise to guard you against errors in your medical records. that can ruin your life.

Today I dont know whats more valuable my credit score or my medical records

I think if my medical record BY LAW must be computerized, there must be a provision for myself/All to Administration of Health care reform, before a doctor sends in his/her notes and dxs I,WE must have a right to agree, disagree, ask for a 2nd opinion signed by both doctor and patient!
Also attached to these should be a page where the patient and dr have a voice on how patient contributed and for the patient how they were treated and signed by both dr and patient!

[dumburn]

This could easily become a long rambling but i'll keep it very much to the point.

Yes, the process is overflowing with (to use your words Motown) pain, disgrace, humiliation, dehumanization, and degradation.

But i know this, if I hadn't started getting help 11 years ago, right now I'd either be in prison, constantly in and out of hospital or probably even dead.
Even in the first couple of years I was often dangerously close to all 3 of those situations.
But then I finally got the right med mix, must have tried at least 20 combinations to find something that works.

Right now I'm med free, and very wobbly, but I'm definitely good slightly more often than not. And even when i'm not so good I'm nowhere near as bad as I was all those years ago.

So, in answer to the title question - most of the time i don't regret it. I often dislike it but I do not regret it

Mental health treatment has save my life and created a better future for me.

Without it I honestly wouldn't have made it this far.

I've had good, compassionate care. I've never been treated poorly by people who are aware of my diagnosis in any way, including professionally and insurance, etc.

Yes, I deeply regret it. It has ended up making me worse off than before, more vulnerable and fragile and much less trusting. And very confused. I wish I could go back and never, ever go through what I have been though with trying to get help for my mental health. HUGE mistake for me. So much damage done.

[eskielover]

My own action to leave my H has been the initiation of the better life.....before that time we all blamed my depression & anxiety on the loss of my engineering career & I had pdoc's & T's who didn't see it either.

I now have a wonderful psychologist & a wonderful DBT group leader who have helped me more over the last 2 years than I have ever experienced since 1994.

I still struggle with issues....but I have the help working through them like I never had before.....along with the freedom away from the bad marriage....it's nice to feel so much improvement over the last 6 years...& it's amazing that it's even noticed by others....even though I came here knowing absolutely no one.....I have grown & am still growing even at the age of 60......it's nice to feel there really is hope.

[felixstratton]

MotownJohnny, I'm right there with you. Even worse than being labeled "mentally defective" is the fact that the treatment has not yet worked for me, and it sounds like it hasn't worked for you, either. If I felt I had gotten something out of all the attempts at getting better, I suppose I could live with the stigma.

I've been at this since I was 16 years old and now I'm 51. Like you, I feel that I have been given every advantage. And yet, I've still failed. I have taken every medication, tried every type of therapy, and have been hospitalized three times. The fact that all this has failed leaves me, at times, completely hopeless. I certainly feel stigmatized and am increasingly feeling like there is no way out.

I hear your desperation and totally get it. But don't worry so much about what labels others put on you; just focusing on getting better. That's what we all have to do. Easier said than done, I know.

[lizardlady]

I had regrets during treatment. The growth and healing was painful. I have no regrets now though. Had I not gone for help I would not be here to write this. I'd have killed myself a long time ago.

[avlady]

Same here!!!

I had bad, maybe even abusive, treatment in hospital as a teen and I still regret that I went in, but what were the options?

Since then I have had mostly good treatment that has helped me, but not given me back my life.

I'm on the fence.

[here today]

I, too, didn’t have a choice. My parents took me in for MH treatment for an eating disorder (starving myself close to death) when I was a teen-ager. I left that therapy better than I went in and accepted my “mental patient” status. That was in 1963 and it wasn’t the same then – Freudian analysis was in vogue then.

In recent years not so, of course. And since the underlying traumatic incidents had been discussed in my early therapy, I did not know that they had not really been resolved. They didn’t know much about trauma treatment 50 years ago. And I could not know what I did not know, either about treatment or about my dissociated emotions.

Unfortunately, nobody can know what they do not know, including therapists.

To people who have tried to get effective treatment for years and years – I got to my current therapist because a SUPPORT GROUP friend recognized my dissociative symptoms. She recommended that I consult a trauma specialist whom she knew. Many, many lesser-experienced therapists had not recognized the problem, even at the best psychiatric hospital in my area. So if you’ve had any trauma at all in your background and regular therapy hasn’t worked, please consider going to a trauma specialist. Re-experiencing and re-owning parts of me that experienced trauma has made a really big difference in my life. Very, very painful and disorienting sometimes but ultimately effective.

[healingme4me]

My only regret, was telling anyone in my family, that I was in counseling. I more or less, hate that I confided in my mom, when I was crashing and burning after baby #3. She embellished way too much.

[waggiedog]

Hi yes, couldn't agree more. For like 31 years I was labled a ''time waster'', then quite recently I suddenly changed to BPD. Oh how nice, I've changed from a time waster, lots of suicide attempts to having a REAL disorder , to having a disorder. So, whats changed? Actually sweet nothing. Because now all I'm told is that BPD can't be ''cured'' and it may possibily be ''managed''. Oh how I wish I'd died on those many many suicide attempts, then me and my family wouldn't have had to suffer what they did. Yes I so do understand what everyone has said here, I just totally agree. I so identify with you all here. HUGS and LOVES. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

[Open Eyes]

It depends on what someone is struggling with and how well/accurately that person is "diagnosed" and the "quality" of the therapist the person works with.

Mowtown, you have "complex PTSD" and that simply doesn't get "better" overnight.
If someone expects to go to a therapist and "just quickly get fixed" they will be disappointed, especially with complex PTSD. Also, these "extreme" mood changes/frustrations/ wanting to just end do come and go for a time while working through complex PTSD.

Therapists are people too, and honestly, I wonder how they manage considering all the terrible things they sit and listen to and try to help their patients slowly work through. It is not unusual for a therapist to also need some help because of the stress they are under wanting to "fix" and "help" a patient more then they can.

I have a wonderful therapist that really "listens" and is "calm" and it really makes a difference to have someone that understands PTSD and can validate instead of "pushing or expecting a patient to do better then they can depending on where they are in recovering".

The human brain is amazing, simply amazing at what it can do when it comes to "healing". However, it takes time and "patience" to develop new skills and neuro pathways when it comes to addressing certain mental illnesses.

We are studying the brain, learning all the time about how it really works and for what we do know, there is still much we do not know.

Look at this site for example, how nice it is to be able to interact with others who can relate to our challenges and for the most part, this site is pretty "safe". What did people do who suffered before we had ways of identifying certain mental illnesses? Oh how alone these people must have been.

Misfits?, well, hey, there is no such thing as normal and if you went to a big busy mall and just sat and looked at all the people, what is normal is to be "unique". We are all different shapes and sizes and colors and my guess is our brains are all a bit unique too.

I think that what we tend to consider "the right kind of life" should be adjusted, because not everyone is going to get married have children and that house with the white picket fence, acquiring that doesn't necessarily equate to "fulfillment" either.

I raised a child with dyslexia, I was lucky that this difference in the brain was known about and was also being studied. People who have dyslexia learn differently, they remember things differently, and they tend to be hard on themselves too. They look at words and often these words don't make sense to them the way the average brain can make sense of words.

So I live with a husband and a daughter who both have dyslexia and they do think differently then I do. I can remember things that happened long ago where they don't remember these things the same, that is something "common" with dyslexia. People with dyslexia often struggle with low self esteem, however they also have a tendency to be very "driven and goal oriented too". There are many people who have dyslexia who have become very successful people, but they just do it differently.

Well, that is just "one" difference that can happen in a brain that individuals have to "learn skills to get around this challenge".

In my own journey to understand PTSD and "complex PTSD", I can look back on some of the therapy I received and see that I did not get treated properly, and no, it did not help me. However, I kept "learning" and in spite of feeling like I wasn't going to possibly get better, I did keep reaching out for help and I did find a good therapist that even gave me a discounted rate. I still struggle, and some days badly, but I am doing much better then when I first joined PC and sat at the computer trying to figure out how to get my brain to stop racing and just think one thought at a time.

I had no idea that my brain could produce the flashbacks that I have experienced either. I had no idea that when I was traumatized as a child that my brain stored these events the way it has that could just come up so vividly like I am that child in that experience in the right now, so many years ago, who would have thought, because I thought that I survived them and was moving forward, never guessed these events harmed me the way I see them now. BUT, when I work at it and process these memories better, these flashbacks weaken or stop taking place.

Mowtown, I have told you, I have been where you are, can see the stage you are in and I know you "can" do better, I also know how it doesn't "feel that way" for a while though. Well, I have "yet" to take down my mood from being "frustrated". Well, I often am, but not as much as I was.

I remember about a year ago when the powerball was huge. There was a thread asking people what they would do if they won it. Well, I thought about how I would want to design a place people could go where they could get "better help" and support. It just seems to me that there are a lot of people who need that kind of place, but that kind of place just doesn't exist, not a place that is welcoming and "safe" and can help someone develop a good support system. When someone has PTSD, they really need a good understanding support system.

My daughter has dyslexia, and I did my best to have her in a supportive way of life so she could do well. I talked to every teacher and I even made sure I met her teachers in the first college she went to. I "know" people who have support, no matter what they struggle with, can do better and be "happier" in their life. After all, isn't that what life is about anyway? We need to understand that we do and will "learn" all our lives and have to "learn to adjust" to the hardships life also presents us with.

Mental Health treatment is not supposed to make you feel "worse", but it doesn't just "fix" you overnight either. Unfortunately, the quality of "mental health care" isn't so great depending on where someone goes, I do know that first hand. But that doesn't mean someone isn't worth it or should give up either.

OE

[reesecups]

I do not regret it. I DO regret trusting shrinks and their meds, although I still find Xanax helpful on occasion. Talk therapy and group therapy within the last year has help me more than the other 20 yeas I've spent in therapy. Help really does depend on who is providing it. If I could go back in time, I would have never started or allowed myself to be medicated as much as I was.

[@nonymous]

Yes, because therapeutic tools and techniques were used to harm me. But that happened many years ago.

There's a part of me that really really regrets seeking help. It's soooo expensive and it's cost my family a lot just to keep me well. I feel like it wasn't worth it. Sometimes I just feel like I am paying these people to make me sick. I hate taking meds I hate being treated like a baby, or a criminal.

The other part of me doesn't regret it. Now my family knows what I have been struggling with these past few years and they are willing to help me through it. I have a wonderful support team made up of people who really care about my well being and they are there for me when I need them.

[Gus1234U]

yes, like @nonymous, i was healthy until i became stressed, and then i was damaged by the ignorance and bigotry of the world of psychiatry and therapy. i have recovered on my own, but it has taken all my will and energy, and 20 yrs, and there are still residual effects, like memory damage.

it's very rare that you hear me recommend psychiatry and psych meds to anyone~ get coping skills, i say; learn to endure symptoms without freaking out over it; design accommodations and assistive devices; even if you are taking meds, use those too~!

[Fuzzybear]

[Grey Matter]

I don't regret it, no.

I spent the majority of my adolescence and teenage years suffering completely silent and alone. When it was brought up, by my father, that someone from the school contacted him and explained I was showing signs of depression, I became defensive and said "No, I'm fine", which was the farthest thing from the truth because I barely even remember some years (for example, I remember none of 2004. I was fourteen). People tried to help, my parents explained there is nothing wrong with being mentally ill as my mother is and other extended family members. For a while I thought it was me trying to be superior. I realize now it was me just getting by and surviving the best I could while remaining ignorant.

I was put into the hospital after a suicide attempt at 17, and was then transferred to a residential treatment facility. I was there for four months, and for those months, I went from hating it to being thankful to hating it, etc. It ended up saving my life.

I realize I never had an ounce of regret for seeking help. I do, however, regret that we live in a society that has to label those who are mentally ill as "dangerous" or "unstable" or "criminals". That I will always regret.