Words from the soapbox

Thou shalt not try me

Mood 24:7

(Seen on T-shirt on young woman in the Long Circular Mall parking lot.)

Recently, I saw myself described as a mental-health advocate. I’m not saying this is wrong; it’s just not something that would have occurred to me. Many things don’t occur to me.

But, since it’s out there, I have a few things I’d like to conjure. I played with some other words before landing on “conjure,” but they all sounded like simpering, begging or hopeless. So I went for magic. Of course.

Take that therapist someone recommended. You went to her and she seemed to listen to your problems and asked the right questions and you felt you had a safe space.

Then somewhere towards the end of the session the whole thing turned on its head and you started to feel she was rushing you to a neat wrap-up.

The way she was doing this was by making you feel that nothing was really wrong at all. That everything you had shared was you making a fuss for no good reason and you just needed to pull yourself together.

Just like that, she stopped being of any use to you. Just like that, I believe, she stopped being anything her profession asked her to do.

I know practitioners like this. They leave you feeling worse than before and – worse than that – utterly disempowered.

I do not believe we are allowed to throw rocks at these people, but if you can speak beyond the tears that may be choking you, please tell them how they have disappointed you.

Have you been to an analyst who keeps you in session week after week telling you about themselves, about the news, about the weather, about their shoes? There is definitely a point at which all can agree you’ve moved past the phase of their trying to make you comfortable.

Now it’s starting to feel like you’re paying them to listen to their chatter.

I’ve had this one too. Sometimes this can be a tricky one to ditch, because maybe you’re not really ready to talk about your problems, and maybe they are fun to talk to (and how convenient is that? I had a doctor who talked about football all the time. It was great. I got zero help, but had a blast.)

But be not sidetracked. You. Must. Resist. It is hard. But you are there to get help. You must ask for it. Nicely, not-nicely. It really depends on the way the relationship of irrelevant conversation has been building.

Doc, it’s been great, but are we going to talk about my pervasive anhedonia?

A long time ago I was taken to a doctor with an excellent reputation for dealing with young people. At the time, I was a young people. He was kind and intelligent. He was not put off by my bristly manner, my hostility, my know-it-allness. I was about to take the bait.

And then he offered me god. Nothing wrong with that. He did not try to pray with me or convert me. But, like others before him, I saw that he felt there was little he could do to help me and he wondered if perhaps the divine held any appeal for me.

To the doctors who do that, I ask only this: why? Is it written that you must? If you come from a religious family (and in TT, it’s hard to think that someone in your family is not of god) that’s your first port of call when someone is very ill, and especially if they are ill in a way you do not quite understand.

How does the medical fraternity understand the manner in which patients process this suggestion? When you say, “Pray,” we think to pray for comfort. Pray for release from pain. Pray for a solution. Pray for understanding.

You see, once you tell me to pray, I believe that you do not believe the medical world can help me. And is now I want to pray. So only ask me to pray if you have some reason to believe that I will derive some actual benefit from it, and not because it is an automatic fallback.

We have some great therapists, and we deserve the best from them. They will fall short sometimes, and we need to understand that. But what we can’t do is accept that as the norm.

If we don’t even try to ask for better, we won’t get it. And then we won’t get anywhere.