Posted by Racer on March 17, 2004, at 9:00:30
In reply to Re: Oh, for heaven's sake -- it gets worse, posted by coral on March 16, 2004, at 19:46:22
Yeah, I know that sense where the beastie is digging in her heels, saying, "Hey! Wake up, pilot! You must not be paying attention, because I can't go that way -- there's something in the way!" My Jellybean was the queen of that. Oh, yeah, and "But my head has to be out there in front, so I can balance! If you ask me to pull my nose in, I'm sure I'll fall down. I can't possibly balance myself without my nose eight feet in front of the vertical..." We'd have some fights about that one, let me tell you.
This situation reminds me of that, actually. With the monster mare, she'd get so far into fighting with me, she'd lose sight of what I was actually asking for. That's what's happening with this agency. When the case manager was here, I tried to tell him what I wanted, what would help me. I said, among other things, that if he returned my calls before the end of the following business day, that would satisfy me. Just returning my calls before the end of the following business day. I made the mistake of adding, "And if you have anything helpful to offer, that's icing." Instead of hearing that returning the call was enough, and helpful was a bonus, he reacted to it with, "But I can't promise I'll have anything useful to offer, that's just asking too much." (I'm neither kidding nor exagerating.) That's like the BitchMare rearing because I was asking her to balance back. He didn't even try to work with me, just looked for yet another way to remind me that I'm being unreasonable in what I'm asking for.
He also used what I said against me. I told him that one of my concerns was that I'm functioning at a higher level than a lot of the people his agency works with, and I think people are discounting my distress because of that. You know, since I know what time zone I'm in, and I know that Al Gore won the last election, I can't really be sick enough to require more care than I'm getting. Well, when I asked him what services he was willing and able to offer, he told me, "As far as I can see, you don't really need any services from me -- you need to work with the therapist, because it's your responsibility and no one will do it for you." What part of, "I can't work with this therapist" isn't clear? "Oh, no, it's up to you to learn to work with her, because therapy is so important for you. It's up to you to do it, you can't keep asking us to do everything for you."
He didn't even get it when I tried to tell him a little secret about me: "You know, you only know me from one thing: asking for help. I asked you what you were willing to do to help me. Your response was that, if you helped me, I could become dependant on you, and never learn to stand on my own two feet and take responsibility for myself. You don't know me, and you don't know how difficult it is for me to ask for help. I'm so convinced that I'll be punished for asking for help, that I keep my mouth shut. But you don't know that, because you've just met me and you've met me in a situation in which I have asked for help. So, from your point of view, all I do is ask for help. That really doesn't mean that asking for help is something I do all the time." He didn't get it. I asked him what he understood of what I'd just said, and he said, "It doesn't make sense, I don't understand it at all."
So, I've cancelled my next doctor's appointment, and I'm considering cancelling all the therapy, too. If they're just going to make this worse, why should I bother beating my head against the wall? Should I do it because I do, desperately, need the help? But if this help is so unhelpful, and it is so painful and damaging to me, why exactly do I keep fighting my way upstream with them?
And here's the other frustration: I *know* that it really is possible to help me. I *know* that it doesn't really take much. I *know* that, if any one of these people were to stop and open the receiver channels in their listening devices, they'd be able to help me with a third the effort it's taking them to fight me every step of the way.
What I don't know is how to go about changing the way I approach them in order to get one of them to listen. I don't know how to change myself to get what I need, because one of the things i need is for someone to help me learn that skill. So, I need someone to teach me something that would allow me to learn to get help from them. Catch 22, does that make sense?
The real hell of it is that I'm slipping so far so fast right now, and I'm still in a place to keep struggling -- dunno for how long -- and I'm asking them to help me. I'm telling them I'm in a crisis, and that it's gone on so long my resources are stretched to the limit. And the response I'm receiving -- whether or not it's the message they're trying to send -- is that I shouldn't be in a crisis, because they're giving me all the care they're supposed to, and I'm just not cooperating by doing my part.
I guess I've been right all along, huh? It's all my fault, I don't deserve to live, there's no point in asking for help because no one will give any, and there'll be no relief from this misery. I'm not quite willing to accept that, yet, for the same reason I kept trying to get that mare to bridle up. When she tried, I rewarded her, and she was such a gorgeous mover.
The hell of it is this: I know that if any one of them would offer me an inch of an opening, if any one of these people stopped fighting me and tried a little, little bit, all this could be mended. It's happened before, so it can happen again. Sure, everything is my responsibility. Sure, Ihave to do all the work. But if one person would say, "How can I help?" and MEAN it, the communications logjam would be broken, and I could start getting better. One person, one effort to hear me and understand me. Instead, I can see that my reputation as a trouble maker has turned all of them against me -- no, I'm not paranoid, either -- so that they listen only long enough to figure out how to deny anything I say.
That case manager really has me over the top. I tried to tell him that I wasn't even reporting physical symptoms to the doctor, because I was afraid of being dismissed as hypochonriacal, or creating phony symptoms to get attention. He seemed to willfully misunderstand. "When you say physical symptoms, what do you mean? Do you mean like the physical symptoms you feel with your husband?" "NO, you great blithering idiot, I mean like throwing up after every time I take one of those damned pills!"
And I'm an adult, and a married woman. You can ask me, "do you mean like sexual sensations? Sexual tensions?" You don't have to use every euphemism you know to ask if I'm hot for the pdoc -- only lukewarm at this point -- and you can assume if I'm complaining about the drugs it's not because I feel uncomfotable having a sex drive.
Oh, my goodness. So, would you like to analyse everything I've written here and advise me on where I've gone wrong? Explain to me how unreasonable it is for me to say I want a different therapist when the one I have is perfectly good? After all, I can't complain that I need therapy when I have a therapist. I must be unreasonable.
Coral, you want my horses? You can come and have them. Be nice to the boy, he's a simple creature, and does try hard. Or he's just very trying. The missy is a mare, like all mares, opinionated and self-sufficient. You earned them today.
Thanks!
poster:Racer
thread:324976
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/2000/20040213/msgs/325223.html