Posted by Medusa on August 18, 2002, at 1:41:42
In reply to How therapists decide who to help, posted by Medusa on August 16, 2002, at 23:34:36
Me again. Guess I'll have to upgrade that SUV and get some high connections in the Netherlands and ... or I could just move to Silicon Valley and set up a practice without a license. You guys are hilarious.
What I meant about who therapists decide to help was, once you're in therapy ... how do shrinks decide who's priority. What makes them so sure that they can go over 20 minutes into my session with their previous patient, because "he's in a lot of pain", but cut my sessions short.
[I'm not looking for a therapist at the moment. I have to meet with DH's 'family coach' (or something like that - she's a therapist but he doesn't call her that - he went looking for coping methods for living with a depressed person and ended up hashing out a lot of his own family stuff) in September, and then she wants to meet with DH and me together, but I don't plan to see her on a regular basis.]
But I've had terrible experiences with therapists of all sorts, enough to make me think it's me, something I'm doing to +make+ myself low-priority on their list.
Possibilities:
-I shower and otherwise try to pull myself together to get to the appointments, which I get to on time, and I try to pull myself together enough to get work done during the session. Often that's been the ONLY thing I've accomplished during the entire week.
Example: One receptionist read off her computer screen to me (via phone) that on the intake form I was listed as "high functioning" (oh boy, can get out of bed to use toilet!) and therefore I shouldn't expect a therapist to call me to schedule an initial appointment for a few months yet.-Sometimes I've been too entertaining, which could be a coping mechanism, but I expect therapists to see through this and deal with the pain.
Example: One therapist seemed to really admire me and said "your life is like a parade!" (her life seemed pretty dull, from what little I could gather, but I wasn't there to be admired), and the therapist who said that sessions with me were "better than a movie".-I don't ask for enough help. (Is that how the coddled patients get help? by asking for it?)
Example: in uni, I _did_ have a therapist (an intern) who came in early a few mornings to give me an extra session. She was an ice queen, but she was the first person who convinced me that someone really believed me.-I don't ask enough questions.
Example: one therapist said that my insurance would cover ten sessions. What she didn't say was that she was out of my plan's normal coverage and was obtaining coverage through her colleague, and that if I'd seen her colleague, the insurance would have covered a lot more visits, but that she didn't feel comfortable with her loophole for more than a unit of ten sessions. If I'd known the rules of my own insurance plan, going in, this wouldn't have happened. As a goodbye, when I told her she wasn't worth 120/hour or whatever, she told me "you should find help somewhere, because your family is really f_cked up." Heh, ya think?-Some therapists are really just loopy. (But not enough to explain this pattern I sense.)
Example: the therapist who canceled sessions, then accused me of missing them; he also told me that bulimia wasn't too bad a problem to have, it wouldn't kill me, and he had patients with much worse problems. He also suggested that I go to church. When I complained about this to a university advisor, the advisor said it was a good idea! End of story, a bit later I read in the New Yorker that this shrink was the therapist for the girl who stabbed her roommate to death and then hung herself in their dorm. No wonder! Too bad we hadn't known each other - we could have taken on the therapist instead of her roommate.Anyway, any input/experiences/suggestions welcome ... I'm not going to see another shrink until I get this worked out a bit, otherwise I'm throwing money into the wind and getting spit on.
poster:Medusa
thread:28812
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20020813/msgs/28864.html