Posted by Christ_empowered on May 15, 2011, at 18:12:31
In reply to dissocive 'issues', posted by Christ_empowered on May 15, 2011, at 12:28:13
Thanks for your posts. Like your other posts, I found it uplifting, encouraging, and helpful.
I do have a good therapeutic alliance with my therapist, but that might end--I may be joining the church he pastors at some point in the somewhat near future, at which point he will no longer be able to be my therapist. Oh well. I've gotten a lot of work done and I'm now functioning better, so I really can't ask for much more.
Psychiatry has just seemed so oppressive to me, for a long time. Take this, don't take that, doesn't matter that its your brain, do what I say. I mean, I recognize my own need for medication, or at least I recognize that I do better on certain meds than without them (I guess there's something of a difference there), so I'm cool with non-coercive psychiatry, in theory at least.
In practice...I don't think of them as doctors. I mean, what other kind of doctor sees you for 3 minutes and hands you prescriptions, without doing any sort of physical examination? What other kind of doctor prescribes drugs that profoundly affect your brain w/o, you know...checking out your brain? I once thought of psychiatry as sort of like pain management for the psyche, but then I realized: even pain management doctors require MRIs and such before they dole out the meds.
I'm fine with the shrink I have now. He's old school, reasonably friendly. I think he appreciates the fact that I'm doing therapy, looking for work, and trying to keep my medications reasonable. I think one reason shrinks get burned out is that some people (not all patients, but many) are so miserable by the time they get to a shrink that they'll take whatever they can, anything, everything, to blot out their difficult lives. I know I was like that once, years ago.
Thanks again for your helpful post.
poster:Christ_empowered
thread:984747
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20110407/msgs/985409.html