I’m old and my life doesn’t have enough pros to be happy but it doesn’t have enough cons, visible cons, for others to stop shaming me. No matter what I say no one believes me, that and other times I’ll get treated rudely; “kicked while down”
I’ve learn that anytime I tried to explain what is going on, I’ll be painted as “resisting” and “unstable” regardless of how legitimate my words and experience are. Usually I take a deep breath everytime it happens. It doesn’t help my situation, it definetly doesn’t help but only lets me reach this acute solution of few minutes where I regress, get into a daze and dream of a better life. That’s what they perfer then letting me have my word anyways.
I get falsely accused for a lot of things and what feels so heartbreaking is it’s by figures I thought I could trust: police officers, nurses, psychotherapists, psychiatrists, and family. I used to respect these people, I use to trust them. Anytime I see someone talk poorly of them I go into “no one is perfect!” mode or say things like “they’re just trying to help!”, “they’re here to protect us!”, “they’re educated and trained to be good and right!”, “not ALL of them are like that!” or think that those who defied these authoriative figures have something wrong with THEM themselves or just had a rare experience. But they’re there, it’s true and I get hurt because of it.
Like I said before, my life doesn’t have a decent amount of pros but it doesn’t have enough visible cons for those to stop denying me of my experience. Especially if you have been labeled by a mental health professional with a personality order, prepare to be the scapegoat for everything. When I was a put in as an inpatient I was diagnosed as a personality disorder. Now, whenever I have a concern I’m told it’s a symptom of my disorder, they don’t have to listen to me, they just have to put down “unstable.” When I told a psychiatrist of someone who has been treating me unfairly and how exhausting it can get to deal with, she said “I’m going to prescribe you ‘insert drug name here'” when I ask her why she said, “it’s for your paranoia to stop thinking people are after you” I never thought or said that, I on;y mentioned having a bad time like anyone else, but she automatically assumed that I was lying about my experience and that it was all in my head. Strange thing is, whenever I meet a new psychiatrist (I move around a lot) they each have a different conclusion of what I have but regardless all of them still deny me my experience.
I can’t help but notice everytime I am assigned with a different mental health professional (that doesn’t know about my labels), that if I leave out that the poor treatment I am recieving are from mental health proffessionals, they’ll feel a bit more inclined to be supportiive. They’ll say things like “some people are just mean” “some people take advantage of the situation you are in” “it’s easier if they don’t look at themselves” but once they hear it’s from a mental health professional or any other authorative figures they do a complete 180. They don’t know these individuals I speak of, how they are, how they treat people, but because they are in the same field they defend them regardless. Saying the things I use to say “they’re educated”, “they’re only trying to help”, etc. etc.
They way they treat me is used as a confirmation that there is something wrong with me. For example, because I was labeled with a personality disorder, it is used to reject my concerns and experience. When I tell them (using politically correct language e.g. less “you’s” more “I’s”, use the word “feel”) that I feel they are invalidating me they so ironically say that is a syptom of my disorder and it’s all in my head. The irony.
When I was in a group therapy, I cried about this experience, and the therapist didn’t respond to me (but he did with everyone else in the group) but instead faced everyone, except me, and said “there’s mental illnesses like depression, and there are personality disorders. People with personality disorder think they have nothing wrong with them.” Great.
Reminds me of this joke I’ve read.
Judge: Guilty.
Defendant: But I’m innocent!
Judge: That’s what a guilty person would say!
Defendant: What would an innocent person say?
Judge: Nothing, cus you’re screwed.
3 comments
be true to yourself. do not listen to their judgements of you. you know yourself best, you know what is best for you. losten to yourself! quit letting other people try and fix you. only can do that.
Don’t let people ‘gaslight’ you. You and only you know how your feeling and when, perhaps it’s time to quit therapy and go it alone.
Therapy seems to be creating more difficulties for you.
I hear you. It took many years, but I finally found a well-respected therapist who called “bullshit” on them all! I hope you can find the same.if you don’t know what Sarah meant by “gaslight”, I hope you look it up; that was sound advice.