Not being able to trust your reality

Yet another thing (sorry for just spewing out loads of information):

I think I remember you saying that your diagnosis is depression? Or is it depression and something psychotic/bipolar?
In my time as a social worker, I never saw someone admitted for "just" depression unless they'd made a fairly serious attempt to kill themselves. The NHS just doesn't have enough hospital beds.
I also think it's harder to get on a section now, in "austerity Britain" than it was when I was sectioned in 2006 -- in the boom, when NHS trusts had money.

No don't apologise fish, the info is really helpful!

It's 'depression with psychotic features'. The only 2 times the hospital has come up has been my uni pdoc and I've gotten away with it by going home to live with my parents (who agree to look after me) - once was because a med made me so sick I couldn't eat and I lost 10lbs in 2 wks and had psychomotor retardation, and the other was because I decided to leave medschool and he thought I would probably off myself. At home, no-one has ever been that bothered because I'm fairly compliant and turn up to all my appts, though thinking about it now I always did that at Uni too

I think I'll be safe from the hospital. If I do ever decide to off myself, I intend to succeed and not end up in a psych hospital. I think it's just these dreams that are freaking me out...

Oh it made me laugh how the link for the public consultation refers to privatising the NHS as "liberating" it - from what?? Ugh!

Thanks again for all the info

*Willow*

Legall, neither of those circumstances are enough to section you!! You either have to *actually* harm somebody, or you have to talk really seriously about it, usually meaning talking about having a plan to kill yourself . . . Dropping out of med school is not grounds to section you; neither is them making you ill with their drugs!! Unbelievable.

Mind, I have absolutely no faith in doctors following the law on this. They sectioned me several times despite that I've never made a suicide attempt. I have self-harmed, but only after I stopped seeing a psych (because of the trauma they left me with :-/ ). The "harm to self and others" they relied on was me not drugging myself = harmful . . . .

Well he said that I was not eating or drinking enough the first time, and that he seriously expected me to try to kill myself the second time, so both were for causing harm to myself in a roundabout way I guess. The thing is they can twist it to anything they like. He forced me to take meds as he wouldn't sign me off to do medicine without meds, which I was pretty p'd about at the time, but he's actually been the best pdoc I've had (genuinely)! I'm going back to him, hopefully, when I return for my masters (at least he'll have no cause to force meds this time as it's a taught and research course, no clinical contact).

*Willow*

Yeah, that's what bothers me. By the legal standard, neither of things things qualified you under the MHA. But doctors will do whatever they like with it. Not eating and drinking because of the meds THEY gave you is the worse, in my opinion.

I had a doctor who tried to force me to drug myself because I was becoming a lawyer . . . I didn't. It wasn't any of his business. See, I don't believe that anybody who forces someone to take meds is a good doctor. It's plain arrogant, to me. But to each their own Have you ever seen the documentary "The Doctor Who Heard Voices"? I think it's still on 4oD if you ever want an interesting watch.

Unfortunately, unless he signed me off I'd've been up for fitness to practise issues and wouldn't have been allowed to go back to uni. It's perfectly acceptable as far as ftp goes for me to be forced to take meds to be a dr as it was my CHOICE to be a medstudent... It's complicated. Even though he forced me to take anti-psychotics initially (because I was scared to try them) if I wanted to stay in medschool, it was the right call and I appreciate him being straight with me. He was taking a risk saying I was ok when I wasn't; theoretically I could've harmed patients (very theoretically obviously!) He's always been upfront with me about what he sees, explains his decisions, talks to me like an equal and genuinely seems to care about my wellbeing. He is also extremely knowledgeable and takes tertiary referrals for mood disorders so I trust his opinion. As I said, he's the best I've seen, but maybe I've been unfortunate.

I've seen that documentary thanks. It was very thought provoking. And that was before I started with the whole psychosis thing I think. She's playing a dangerous game, though I might've done the same thing if I was functional enough to be able to avoid pdocs. If she said she still heard voices, she would probably be heavily encouraged shall we say (at the least) to take meds. If she gets caught though (by something bad happening at work), because she's not disclosed and played by the rules, she'd likely be deemed to lack insight into the risks of her condition and be medically struck off... :s

*Willow*

i dont care for meds

I'll be disbarred if I ever disclose that I hear voices (whether or not I drug myself). It's considered a sign that you can't give your clients the best advice in line with the ethical guidelines. I just cannot care -- I'm not staying out of a profession just because somebody decided that the way my brain works is an "illness". There's nothing risky about me, my credentials are impeccable and I know when I'm not doing well and need to get other counsel (though I don't say it like that). I don't like having to lie, but I'm certainly not letting a psychiatrist's idiocy end my career.

I can see why you don't disclose then. Hearing voices doesn't mean you can't be a lawyer, same as it doesn't mean you can't be a dr. It just means that you need someone you trust to let you know if things are going downhill and you haven't recognised it. My concern is that I don't always realise when things have started to slide. I'll be convinced that I'm being completely logical, when I'm not, like my OP was about. Now I'm back to thinking having sui as a back-up isn't a bad idea, so that 'clarity' in the OP or whatever it was is gone again.

*Willow*

Most barristers are so loopy I'll fit right in, anyway. The man who was going to be my pupilmaster could easily have been OCD because he was obsessed with sanitising everything and keeping it all in a really weird order (like, mug handle must be 45 degrees from computer). And he switches randomly into Latin (not for legal terms!) which I haven't decided if it's him showing off how smart he is or if he's just mad.

........

Sorry, what's sui?

Sorry, that's me being lazy. Sui is short for suicide.

*Willow*

I should have said . . . my therapist helps me understand when I'm getting more nutty. He's helping me know how to recognise it, too; I'm getting better the longer I see him. I'm also getting so much better at hiding the psychosis generally and only "letting it out" around safe people, or letting it out in ways that don't look insane.

Ah OK!
I always think of suicide as a back-up. Have done since I studied classics. In Ancient Greece (and lots of other societies besides), it was not so uncommon or unaccepted to use suicide when life became unbearable/unliveable/impossible. It's mostly just our society that freaks out about preventing it so much.

I said that to a psych once and he thought I was using my book learning to mask my suicidal ideation

Is your T private then? I'm finding it hard to get an NHS one. My last CPN sort-of did CBT with me, but my new CPN doesn't do proper therapy. I've only met him once, but he seems really nice. He's more into treating people as people and usually finds that that helps them 'shift' whatever was 'stuck'.

Yeah I used to be really anti-suicide and euthanasia but I guess I've now realised that there are worse things in life than death. My mum and pdoc think that it's a sign that my logic centres are 'faulty', thinking of suicide as a back-up ("normal" people don't do that apparently), but who knows?!

Ah clever pdoc - found you out! lol They do think they're clever though don't they. My first pdoc liked to pontificate about the nature of life and seemed (to me) to be trying to impressive the medical student (who was actually the patient) with his big brain, rather than listen to me. He was supposedly an expert on schizophrenia and treated me like a medical student instead of a patient by telling me about his research and how "amazing" he thought sz treatment was; I just kept wondering when he was going to ask me about me!!

*Willow*

Yes, private. He's a professor, actually, not a clinician. I saw so many therapists who either did **** all or who refused to even see me because of the sz diagnosis that I ended up going with him. He's been the best thing that ever happened in my 'mental health' experience.


Eugh, I hate it when you have a different opinion than other people and they decide it's a sign of your illness. It makes me so angry I could hit things.

No, that's the thing; I wasn't suicidal.
He asked me about whether or not I was "thinking about suicide", and I asked him how he meant: actually killing myself, or thinking about it as an academic exercise. He asked why I'd ask that, and I told him his wording was ambiguous. Ohhhhh boy he didn't like that, like I should be bothered to intuit everything he wanted to say even when he wasn't saying it. So I started to wind him up more by talking about how I sometimes thought about suicide in history/other cultures.

I had one psych suggest I was manic because I was wearing "revealing clothing". It was a tank-top and knee-length shorts, and all my junk was covered completely. I pointed out that he was hardly one to talk about appropriate clothing given he was wearing a tweed suit in a non-air-conditioned building in the middle of July; but he didn't like that.

Your first pdoc sounds like an idiot. Mind, it seems like there's nothing a psychiatrist can do that makes me think they're not idiots.

I'm glad he's helping you fish. Do you do a particular type of therapy or anything specific that you find helps? Feel free not to answer if I'm being nosy, but I'm interested because I find therapy interesting and because I'm looking for something that will help me.

Sorry I was being sarcastic. Doesn't really come across well via text, which is a shame because I love sarcasm, whether it's the 'lowest form of wit' or not!

I agree that was ambiguous, but no doctor likes being corrected! I can just imagine how pissy he got! lol I think about things like that, but I've not got the academia behind it, by which I mean I haven't read loads of books on topics like that.

LOL about the tweed jacket I'm always really careful about what I wear because I know they're making all sorts of assumptions about what that means. Like when I dress up smart, they think that's a good sign, but it really means that I'm nervous for a certain reason e.g. meeting someone for the first time, wanting to discuss something I'm uncertain of their reaction of etc. I feel the need to 'power dress' when I'm nervous. One T was super groomed and I felt like such a disgusting slob meeting her that I had to choose my outfit in advance so that I was sure she wasn't thinking badly of me. But they have no idea of the real reasons, because they never ask!

My first one WAS an idiot, no doubt about it. Only saw him 4x because of that fact. My fourth was just as much of an idiot as him too unfortunately. I seem to have all the luck

*Willow*

He's a psychoanalyst by training (and a computer engineer before that!). We've discovered that psychoanalysing me didn't help a lot . . . so he's taken a very different route.
He assigns reading!! He's having me read books about maths now, to keep me occupied on academic things -- using my brain helps me stay grounded -- now that I'm no longer in school.
We've done energy work (he's also a trained acupuncturist and chi qung teacher). Sometimes he "draws out" my excess anxious energy from my heart, which sounds weird and may be totally a placebo thing, but it works for me.
He did a lot of stuff with me that's meant for people with autism -- which I was diagnosed with when I was younger. Helped me be more socially appropriate. His daughter is also a psychoanalyst and she specialises in people who are ESL and she wrote me a nice e-mail about things I can do to calm myself when I'm slipping between English and French/other languages.
Sometimes we just meet and have a coffee and a social chat. When I'm in one of my phases when I can't talk, he just tells me stories.
And mostly, he just lets me vent. He listens, but I think he knows I don't really want him to be "therapising" my problems. Instead, he listens for things I say that sound a bit . . . not like what the rest of the world things. He points them out to me, but he doesn't judge them. A lot of times we get in academic-type debates about these things; that's good for me because he reminds me there are other (often more "normal") viewpoints without telling me that I'm nuts. So, for example, I was going off about how I was raped and I believed all men were out to rape me, which he picked up on as 'probably not true', and we ended up in a debate about feminism and consent.

Haha, OK! I love sarcasm too but it truly doesn't come out in text! (That was not sarcasm )

I haven't really either. I took a course about death in ancient Greece, half of which was about funeral rituals and their afterline, and the other half was about 'attitudes to death', of which suicide and self-sacrifice was a big part. I also used to live in Japan, so I've read a lot about kamikaze pilots and samurai because it took my interest when I was there. And in law school I read A LOT about older forms of punishment; executions and the like. I came across a book about execution and probate (which is administering someone's estate after they died) in the Middle Ages and it was talking about how back then people would kill themselves if they expected to be convicted of an executable offence, because it meant they could be buried in a churchyard (if their priest was feeling generous) and their estate wouldn't go to the crown (which it would if they were found guilty first).

You Brits and the tweed!! I don't get it! (But I do love it so!)

PS: Saw that bag you have in House of Frasier earlier and I LOVE IT! I'm half-tempted to get it in black for myself. Can't afford it right now, though.

Yeah, I did that too. Unfortunately, I had/have a life and couldn't always dress just to please them. The last psychiatrists (the tweed guy & one I saw the longest) was super-in to assessing how I was dressed. He didn't seem to understand that sometimes I would wear jeans and a flannel because I didn't have to go to work after the appointment and sometimes I would wear business clothes because I did!

And I had another psych who always did herself up like Cheryl Cole. She looked horrific. But that is an extreme level of grooming, much like your old T I guess, and I could never match it (nor would want to) -- so she judged me for having "poor self-care". She wasn't big on my argument that if my clothes were clean and covering my naughty bits, and there were no unpleasant smells emanating from me, I should be considered "sufficiently groomed".

I had one good one in Canada. He was pretty relaxed about the whole "mental illness" thing. He asked me what diagnosis I wanted, and agreed that my official diagnosis (he had to have one for his paperwork) would be anxiety, like I asked for. He would hand his patients his prescription pad and let us write anything psych drug-ish on it that we wanted. His only rule was "no narcotics". He just checked the prescription for counter-indications and previous bad reactions, then signed it. I went six months just getting nicotine patches from him!
Then he lost his medical license I don't know the details, but I think it was something of a political thing for using that treatment approach.

He sounds like a really great T. It's lovely that he's so flexible and has worked to find out what works for you My new CPN and I had a chat about how important it is to talk and listen and treat people nicely and as equals and how the rest (therapeutic orientation etc) is all much of a muchness. I'm hoping that means that he will be flexible and we can figure out together something that will be of use to me. Obviously I'm only with him 'til I move in Sept, but I'm hoping it can be useful until them. Am meeting him for the second time next week, so am hoping I've not mis-judged him and he is as nice and flexible as he seemed.

Wow that all sounds really interesting. I've mostly read about people and therapies, but I've not done much reading for a few years now because I just find it so difficult to concentrate. It's a shame because I used to be such an avid reader, but now I just can't be bothered. I just about manage to read my course books and that's about it for me

I totally agree with you. Unfortunately I'm not big on self-care at the moment and I will need to massively work on that to go back to a brick uni in Sept as I have to look presentable. I just had my hair cut which had completely grown out of it's so-called 'style' as I hadn't had it done for over a year :s

*Willow*