h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

When I set up my appointment, I let the intake worker know I had been in counseling before and need to be set up with someone who was familiar with PTS. They set me up for an appointment on Saturday at 9.

They told me to make sure I got there a half hour early to fill in paper. There is NO way possible to fill in the paperwork in only a half hour. No, that’s not exactly accurate, if you don’t have any problems, physical or medical history to complete or have never taken any meds, you might get the paperwork finished.

Counselor called me in and as we were walking to her office, I let her know I hadn’t finished the form. No problem, we had a 45 minutes session scheduled and she was going to go over it with me. Great, she was actually going to look at it…we started out with some hope that she just might be competent.

We got to her office and she handed me some literature to read about where it call if I couldn’t make an appointment, how if I needed to cancel an appointment I must give 24 hours notice or would be billed for the missed appointment , etc. While I was reading that, J (to protect me from a libel suit) started reading over the forms I had filled out. One of the first questions was “Why are you seeking help” – My answer PTS and depression.

I finished my reading. She finished hers. J proceeded to go through the form with me. The only medical question was asked, was what is RSD? When I told her what it stood for, she didn’t bother to let me explain that one of the effects of RSD is it causes depression do to constant and pain and lack of sleep. We went through operations and meds, both present and past. When I told her I was on Zoloft, her answer, good, keep taking it.

Then we got to the all important questions, are you suicidal now or have you tried in the past and have you had suicidal thoughts etc. Let her know my thoughts regarding anti-depressants and suicide (I have been on them once before with the same thoughts) and this is when she started to look worried. Wanted to know how recently I had those thoughts and I told her this week. But I also let her know it was my way of crying for help. About this time, I let her know I had majored in psychology. She was rapidly making notes.

We proceeded through the rest of her present – past questions without anything being questioned.

The came the important question: Why are you here?

I told her I had PTS and gave her the thumbnail description of my past – the fall last year and the flashbacks it produced (which was what lead me to seek counseling in the first place – also mentioned I was in a wonderful support group out on the internet), How I had been doing well until the hiking trip when the PTS got triggered off again bringing with it a kaleidoscope of other memories….abusive first marriage, being held up at knife point when I was seven months pregnant, being raped at eighteen, as a child acting as referee for my parents. Explained the whole incident with Shawn and Angel and let her know that Angel is the light of my live and my main reason for living. Yes, I know what I did was the right thing, but now who does she have to protect her? And a key, if minor fact, that I never even got to say goodbye.

Here it comes!

Are you ready for it?

Tada!!!!!!!!

“Sure you’ve had your share of trauma. But. PTS can not be brought on by an accident, abuse, rape, or being held up at knife point, it takes a significant event! These are all things that happened in your past. Get over them.

As for Shawn and Angel. Which is more important, knowing you did the right thing in reporting the abuse or how you feel? Think of them as dead and get through the grieving process. You need to get on with your life.”
(this may not have been a direct quote, but it’s d*mn close)

At this point we were very near our time limit.

Having summed up my problems in these two paragraphs, she proceeded to ask me what I expected to get out of counseling. I told her the most important thing I needed to accomplish was handling the Shawn/Angel problem. That I can’t cope and that is why I was on meds and seeking counseling. Also I needed to work on being able to hear a dog bark, because that triggered the PTS and sent me into crying fits.

She told me I had to eliminate ‘can’t’ from my vocabulary. She gave me a 19 page handout title, “Twelve Forms of Twisted Think or Polarized Thinking” by David Burns, Phd. It contained stuff to read and homework to do and proceeded to tell me we would read it together at our next session. It would take too much space to post it all here, but there is dot com site called feelinggood. She obliviously copied it from the book, but the site does include a lot of what she handed me.

Barton, PC and I read it over on Saturday night. It was better than going to a comedy club. I’m surprised one of us didn’t die laughing. Sometime this week, we are going to scan it into the computer. If any of you want a copy, please let me know. You can write to me at my yahoo address, richendamorgan. I’ll reply back from my real email account.

A couple of things that are just too ‘good’ not to share. “Feeling Good is the book most frequently “prescribed” for depressed patients by psychiatrists and psychologists in the United States and Canada. Surveys indicated that the American mental health professionals fate Feeling Good as the #1 book on depression, out of a list of 1,000 self-help book. Dr. Burns’ Feeling Good Handbook was rated #2.”

Lady, if I wanted to read a self help I’d go to the library and take it out for free…not pay you to read it to me!

From “Ten Ways to Untwist Your Thinking. – the experimental technique. Do an experiment to test the validly of your negative thought. For example, if, during an episode of panic, you become terrified that you’re about to die of a heart attack, you could jog or run up and down several flights of stairs. This will prove that your heart is healthy and strong."

Hmmm, if I had tried this instead of going to the hospital, could Barton have had a law suit to cover wrongful death? The doctors certainly thought I might be just a little tachy. After all, my heart rate was 170.

“When a particularly bothersome negative thought occurs, I will write it down, then cross it out and write, “CANCEL” over it.” “I will discard the negative beliefs that hold me back. I will write them down, tear the paper in little pieces and throw them away.” When thoughts that I have canceled or discarded recur, I will tell myself, that’s canceled”, or “I no longer believe that.”

Get real! Writing down my thoughts on rape or abuse, etc. etc. and writing CANCEL on them is not going to make them go away. It happened. It was real. There is no way to undo them.

Well, needless to say, I will be calling the mental health center today and try to be assigned to a different counselor. Maybe I should bring J some literature on PTS…before she does someone some real harm.

Updates as they become available!

The person who said this is a bitch...

'“Sure you’ve had your share of trauma. But. PTS can not be brought on by an accident, abuse, rape, or being held up at knife point, it takes a significant event! These are all things that happened in your past. Get over them.

As for Shawn and Angel. Which is more important, knowing you did the right thing in reporting the abuse or how you feel? Think of them as dead and get through the grieving process. You need to get on with your life.”
(this may not have been a direct quote, but it’s d*mn close)'

Its very close to my session with a psychosexual counsellor, where she said that what was happening to me now had no relation to what my dad did. All the things in the first paragraph are significant, how can you get more significant then those things? Its obvious she has never been through any trauma.

Please don't see her again

The word describing a female dog like animal is percisely the word that we by common consensus chose to describe J.

Please note, that while we went through this handout together (and please, let's not even start with the 'exercises' <spit&gt all of the 'conditions' were those that we are all familiar with and are correctly described. The issue here is not the accuracy of the areas of treatement in this approach to depression. This issue is that we couldn't help but take offense at the ignorant and condescending manner that they were presented and, most importantly, at the incredibly Polyanna-ish statements that these issues are all in our minds and that we simply need to get over them.

This man is a behaviorist which means that he has no philosophical basis for his approach other than that which says that all this behavior is the result of bad programming and must be countered with good programming. In the immortal word's of nearly everyone here. "Du'uh!"

(Which if you haven't managed to translate that particular expression yet, into you native brain, is best explained by an incident where a friend of mine went into a sandwhich shop and was told that there were two different sliced cheeses, a yellow and a white cheese. He asked what was the difference between them. The reply, "Du'uh! The color!")

This J can clearly see the color and therefore stops because she has been told there is no other significant distinction.

This treatment plan requires us to pretend that we are cured and as we continue to play this role we will be 'cured' because, socially, there will be no outward symptoms. This is the failure of behaviorism, since it denies that anything interior has any meaningful parameters. After all, if you act like you are normal, then you are normal -- as far as /anyone else/ can tell.

To be fair, this form of treatment can likely work for those who are ready to believe that what they believe is too horrible to be true and must be the result of over-active imaginations and bad thinking. That is, it will work ... until internal evidence begins to outweigh the strength of having been told by an 'authority' that "It's all in your head. Get over it."

The result: the patient begins to think that all shi needs is to continue to pretend and that in addition to everything else, she isn't any good at pretending either. De'uh!

It does no good to pretend that our past never happened or that we simply misunderstood the reasons and intent behind the damage we suffered. The damage was real, the intend was most definitely not for own good, and one of the twelve problems this idiot mentions is called "Ostrich thinking". Du'uh!

We've all been pretending for most of our lives that what we experienced never really happened or that what happened was really for our own good, because the people we still love, even though we don't like them the least little bit, couldn't possibly have hurt us that much; that they couldn't have been that unconcious of the harm they were doing because they simply didn't care what happened to us or acually blamed us and held us responsible for their own problems and mistakes.

When you seek help, please remember that the doctor is working for you. You have no obligation to follow that person down whichever path shi made lead you, simply because you came to hir in desperation after having concluded that you (and others you consult) have not been successful yet and that you need more help. Do not be afraid to make that physician demonstrate hir credentials to your complete satisfaction! Do not be afraid to force hir to validate every statement she makes! And, most importantly, if she contradicts something that you 'know' is true, do not be afraid to make hir prove that shi has some valid (to you) reason to say so.

Of course, we are all desperate for help. But, please understand that psychiatry, psychology, and any 'science' related to any kind of thinking is EXPERIMENTAL. Any physician who maintains otherwise, is a running a con which is attempting to make you accept the particular lie or partial-truth of the moment. You would be just as likely to find relief and care from someone selling magnetic belts via email.

There are those who have been 'cured' with magnetic belts (or hats or suppositories). And obviously, if the cure begins to fail the fault is in YOUR faith in that cure. Approach the same person and a similar 'stronger' cure can be obtained. Or, if pushed to far, that salesperson will simply declare that you have been taken as far as 'science' can take you and that there can be no further hope for you. Don't be surprised, if at that point, shi begins wanting to discuss disposition of your estate or perhaps, a friend of hirs, who is working on a very experimental but potentially earth-shaking technique for cureing life, the universe, and everything. Have I remembered to say, "Du'uh!"

I am starting a new thread at the Surviors Group. Please feel free to contribute to "Get over it!"

Barton

Once I'd gotten over the initial laughter at the fact that I'm possessed of *all* twelve symptoms of a "twisted mind" (as if there was ever any doubt... D'uh!) all I could do was seethe at the condescending tone of the handout Richend was given. It reads like a third-grade homework assignment. If I were even borderline sucidal and was handed something like that to read, god knows what might happen. I'm still ing livid.

It's bad enough to be patronised and met with an utter lack of understanding. We're all well accustomed to that. But to be told point blank that abuse, rape, and accidents are not "significant" events is hugely insulting. And I can't even touch the asinine remark about Shawn and Angel without wanting to wring this "counselor"'s neck. I'd like to give this bitch (sorry, I can't use the word "lady" in this instance, not at any stretch of the imagination) 45 minutes with me and let her see just how much help pretending things "didn't happen" really does. It'd give me the opoortunity to try out my left hook.

Eesh...

I'm fairly ignorant of this type of thing (though less so than I used to be) but even a year ago I would've been livid at that woman! (I won't insult dogs that much... *thinks of suitably vile thing... slugs on the patio after dark when you're stepping out for a second barefoot*)

Richenda

Do you have an estimate of about how old she was?

If she was say, in her 40s or older, she may well have received her training back when they seriously did define PTSD as only war and natural disaster related. Clinical people are required to get some kind of continuing education, but there's absolutely no requirements as far as the breadth of that education -- they can, for example, go and get their continuing ed hours every single year on the same topic. And surveys and whatnot have shown that both counselors and docs tend to go for continuing ed covering topics they already know about, not areas they're deficient on or out-of-date on.

So, someone who got their training back in the 80s could get away with not having any more up to date info since then. Docs have to retake licensing exams every so many years, which forces them to do some degree of getting up to date, but I don't believe counselors do -- or if they do, it's a state-by-state thing, not a national thing like it is with docs.

*sigh*

Seriously, there are good counselors and psychologists out there. But they are devilishly difficult to find (and get insurance coverage for). Looking back over the years, the best ones I've found have tended to be PhD psychologists rather than counselors (although some of the psychologists were just as bad as the worst counselors), and have tended to be men (which continues to surprise me). I discovered more or less by accident that the HMO mental health plans use counselors as the 'first line', and then tend to send the more complicated patients on to the psychologists, especially if you've baffled or failed with more than one counselor, or the counselors decide that you need more legitimate psychological testing. Unfortunately, this isn't a quick process, and I have a feeling I ended up with lots of references to my being a 'difficult patient' in my chart by the end. But, in the end, I got quality care -- it's just sucky that I had to be difficult to get there.


Mikey

I recieved quality care eventually. I had some bad experiences too. There is good advice in the last post.

It is such a heartbreaker to hear of so many bad therapists.
Geesh you could use the internets *happy mail email stuff* to cure you if it's all that easy.

Some sad excuses for therapists in these stories.I cannot imagine the harm they must cause. My bestfriend was so harmed by the "Don't spoil the day Be Happy" philosophy of her parents. That causes severe emotional constipation!