Posted by TherapyGirl on November 10, 2006, at 17:04:54
In reply to Day 7 - my last day, posted by wishingstar on November 9, 2006, at 19:24:49
Okay, here it is. I'll make it as short as possible, but it's a long story.
I was first hospitalized in June of my lost year. My T (the one I've been seeing for 21 years) urged me to go, was my advocate with the pdoc I'd been seeing and even came and picked me up and drove me to the hospital, where she spent several hours with me while they processed my admission. I was in bad, bad shape. I stayed 8 days and went home on new meds, but nothing really changed.
Then things got worse. They were constantly fiddling with my meds -- at one point I was on Lithium, several antipsychotics, 2 different antidepressants, etc. None of it helped and I just gor worse and worse and worse. I walked out of several T appts. because I just felt too hopeless to sit there. In Sept. of that year we had a pretty bad hurricane for us (we're inland) and my T's house had 8 trees fall on top of it, just a couple of weeks before closing. The only way the sale would go through was to stick to the original closing date, so she was under a lot of stress for several months around that (they had to move into a small apartment until their new house was built). She later admitted that she hadn't been all the way there in therapy; it was unfortunate for me, because just when I needed her to advocate for me, she wasn't available. At any rate, I walked out in late Sept. or early Oct. and told her I was done.
So I went to another T -- this is the woman I was first referred to my senior year in college. She saw me for one session, then called and told me it wouldn't work out because she had dated the father of the guy I was heartbroken over at the time. I made her see me one more time, failed to change her mind and she sent me to my current T. I also saw her for group in the early 90s, which started out okay and ended in disaster, as most things she's connected with do. Towards the end of the group, we were spending the entire hour and a half every week doing individual therapy with one member while the rest of us sat there and twiddled our thumbs. No one else got any attention, no one else got to say anything. I finally just stood up and said, "I feel bad that you are in such a crisis, but I can't afford to pay for your individual therapy." It really wasn't her fault -- the co-Ts just completely mismanaged the group.
Not having learned my lesson, I returned to this woman after I left my good T. Can you tell that I enjoy beating my head against a brick wall? So I saw her for several weeks, during which I was increasingly suicidal. It was really, really, really bad. So ultimately I refused to make another appt. with her (because I was planning to be dead before then). I didn't tell her I was going to kill myself, I just refused to make the appt. Her response was to send the police to my apartment. I had to wait 2 hours with 2 male officers for a female officer to come and "escort" me to the hospital. Then we got out in the yard (where all the neighbors were standing because 3 cop cars had been outside my house for hours at that point), and she turned to me and said, "Oh, I forgot to pat you down." I said, "You're kidding right. I haven't done anything wrong and you're all overreacting." (That was my story and I was sticking to it.) She said it was "policy." So in front of all my neighbors, she patted me down, as if I was being arrested. Don't even get me started on that.
At any rate, you can imagine how cooperative I was in the hospital. I stayed in my room most of the time, refusing to go to group. They made me meet with the pdoc and with the social worker. Then one afternoon, probably 6 or so days into the hospitalization, another patient came and got me and said there was a phone call on the hall phone. I went to the phone, and it was Idiot T, telling me that she had a "family crisis" and would not be able to be my T anymore. Now keep in mind that SHE IS THE ONE who sent me to the hospital and she knew I couldn't get out without a T. I was so furious and hopeless and hurt that I just couldn't say anything to her. I hung the phone up, returned to my room, walked into the bathroom and spent an hour sitting on the floor of the bathroom trying to figure out how to hang myself with a shower curtain. It was the worst hour of my life, and believe me when I tell you I've had a few. After an hour, one of the staff came and got me to go meet with the pdoc. I walked into the office and there he sat with the social worker. It was obvious from what he said that he had known that phone call was coming and none of them apparently thought that was a damaging thing to do to me. I let him talk for 5 minutes before I stood up and said, "I can't do this and I won't do it. You do what you want to me, I just don't care. But I'll be d*mned if I'm going to sit here for this."
I waited a couple days more and then called my good T and left her a voice mail asking if she would take me back because I couldn't get out of the hospital without a T and I was desperate to get out. Just warms your heart, doesn't it? I was so beyond crying at that point, it wasn't funny. But she did take me back, which allowed me to get out after 11 days. A month later, I stopped seeing her again, but this time I wrote her a letter afterwards and explained to her that I wasn't mad at her, no matter how it seemed, but that I believed I was feeling too hopeless to get anything out of therapy. So I walked away. A couple of weeks after that, I got mad at Pdoc for forgetting, again, to call in a refill for drugs I didn't want to take in the first place. Six weeks to the day after I stopped taking all those drugs, the depression lifted. It has never been that bad for that long since. I don't recommend this approach for most people, but those kinds of drugs doing bad things to my brain chemistry.
I didn't see good T regularly for 6 years afterwards, but we did have lunch occasionally (because I didn't want to go anywhere near her office) the first couple of years and then I started going in for "booster" sessions a couple of times a year for several years. Then I started seeing her once or twice a month four years ago, and every week three years ago (after my former boss committed suicide).
I haven't seen or spoken with Idiot T since that phone call at the hospital. I did get a bill from the city for $75 for the police taking me to the hospital. At the time, I owed several thousand dollars to the hospital, which took me YEARS to pay off, and I just refused to pay for that humiliation. So I wrote Idiot T a letter, explaining how humiliating that was and how she had other options she didn't use and "invited" her to pay the bill. I never heard back from her, but I didn't get another bill from the city either.
That's all. Feel free to ask questions if you want. But now you see how much we have in common. I hope we can soon add in common that we found one good T to stand by us.
poster:TherapyGirl
thread:699190
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20061109/msgs/702361.html