A Path Forward
I have officially decided to take steps toward a career in psychology.
I word that carefully, knowing the difficulties I’ve faced recently with simple memory and learning tasks (probably long-term effects of the TBI in 2011, I don’t know, but it’s been bothersome for sure). In the midst of job loss and some doubt within myself that I’ll ever be able to fake it long enough to stay in an awful corporate job like I need to if I am to survive in this world, I daydreamed about if there were another path for me. A cycle of getting and losing jobs I hate for the rest of my life? There has to be a better way. I look ahead and survival looks like such a struggle. Hope vacates.
What future path can I forge that’s viable?
I wanted to be a psychiatrist when I was 17. At that time I was living large, very academically and artistically accomplished. I think I had more accomplishments to pride myself on then than now. A pre-med freshman at the top university in the country. How far we fall. Double major in psych and math. I had dreams then. I have always been so sure in the sharpness of my mind I never hesistated to tackle the biggest goals. I always pulled it off too. I had a habit of not letting myself down, then.
Now, though, dreams are absent. I long now just to survive. Enough doors have closed since I was 17 that I have a much different-looking future on the horizon. 13 years later, now age 30, I’ve faced legal trouble and bankruptcy which has even threatened to close doors such as the one I am writing about today (graduate education). I was told that if you have a DUI you cannot qualify for federal assistance programs like Section 8, and federal student loans.
It’s the feeling of being capable of anything but everywhere you turn a door is slammed in your face until finally it’s just you in a dark hallway and you don’t believe you’re capable of anything anymore. It isn’t true but it’s the doors that make it so much harder. It’s tough when so few are open to hold onto hope that things will improve. Like me having had to deal with the eviction on my record (not my fault) since 2011 which has automatically disqualified me from many-an aparttment. I must count on someone taking it upon themselves to take a gamble on me. I have to count on someone just liking me more than someone else. And I’m not real likeable honetstly. It’s too bad that little things like this snowball into a life you look at and can no longer recognize. That’s where I stand today, many years after first considering the psychology path.
Psychology has always been my “dream” career. There is no arguing that it’s my calling. If you know me IRL you know, this is the job for me. Unfortunately emotional difficulties held me back after trauma sophomore year of college, and I coped with those emotions so poorly that I ended up ditching pre-med and graduating with just one degree, in linguistics (vaguely in the same vein, yes, but really my true interest is in psychology).
For the past 30 years I’ve been teaching myself how to be my own therapist.* This is the best way I can see to make this a feasible reality. Every therapist I’ve seen has been utterly useless. I’m not convinced I can’t do a better job talking things over with myself in my head, if I get a good education under my belt first.
*And doctor, which is problematic because biology is not my strong suit and, well, I’m just not a doctor. Failed by the mental health system, I see now that it is all about money. Not wellness.
My first mistake was placing my faith entirely in a broken system and expecting it would eventually cure me — if I suffered through enough dose adjustments and life-threatening side effects, and stayed patient, I would win. That’s the lie. I didn’t see until today that there are no pure intentions anywhere in the American health system.
How do I know this? Real specific example. Consider the contradictory nature of these two facts.
When I try to get off medication suddenly, by refusing to take the pills any longer, the doctors urge that you consult them before you attempt such a thing by yourself, because it’s DANGEROUS! So much so that you may actually die! If you’re on an SSRI your death certificate will say serotonin syndrome; me on the anticonvulsant mood stabilizer will just Grand Mal her way into the afterlife. This is the picture painted of what will happen should we decide to one day just not take that pill. Bedlam. Painful death. We need to ask our doctor (because we can’t think for ourselves).
BUT…
When the doctor’s schedule only allows for an appointment 100 days out, and Doc gave you 90 days’ of that death-defying anticonvulsant it’s so dangerous to come off of, you call the doctor’s office to get them to call in 10 pills to the pharmacy to tide you over if there are no sooner appointments. They should be able to do that for you but the answer is always no. They can’t help.
In this case, the bullshit excuse was “your old doctor left the clinic, and the new doctor you were assigned cannot prescribe anything to a patient she has not seen before.”
Sure, makes sense. I’d say “I understand” except you’re telling me you can’t help me, which is wrong. It sounds very much like NOT my problem that because my doctor decided to leave your practice. I cannot control my doctor’s career choices. And yet I am punished by her career move in this way. They don’t consider things like this when doctors leave the practice? They don’t provide a provision for cases like these? You’re telling me there’s absolutely, positively NOTHING you can do for me?
Yes ma’am. “Sorry there’s nothing I can do.”
The phone goes dead. Click. Silence. You knew she would hang up but damn, did it have to be like that. So quick to make sure I couldn’t ask any more questions. Which is fine since my questions had turned into desperate pleading by that point anyway.
When I ask you to help by giving me more of the toxin to which my body is physically dependent, you refuse. As such, I risk death for the next 10 days. Is there any good reason for this to happen, really? Why are we putting patients in that huge risk when we could just MAKE A PHONE CALL TO THE PHARMACY. I’m not talking about scheduled substances here either. We’re talking a non-scheduled drug. They act like the reason they give you as to why this can’t happen somehow excuses the fact that in so giving you that excuse they are also saying something loud and clear:
“WE WILL NOT HELP YOU.”
Why?
Why are doctors so insistent they “supervise” your withdrawal should you decide to distonctinue a drug, yet they’re TOTALLY COOL with telling a patient “sorry there’s nothing more I can do” even when they are hysterically crying and pleading and suggesting ways maybe they can do something so I don’t have to spend the next 10 days on PTO because my brain doesn’t work right without this medication. This is the hidden costs of a broken mental health system. Knowing I have to accomodate the medication in my work schedule. That’s how insidious it is.
There are no appointments sooner and you will just have to go without your medication for the next 10 days. That is the result of your pleading. You hear the phone hang up before you can ask any other questions. Click. Silence. You knew they’d hang up, but damn…just like that, couldn’t go any faster.
Yet Doc is super interested in supervising me should there be any chance I emerge long enough from my psychotropic haze long enough to realize the reason why they want to supervise my discontinuation but not my break: They don’t want me to break free.
Medication is slavery. If you disagree, please scroll down and talk to me in that comment box. By the end of our conversation you will no longer believe that. Not after hearing the experiences of me and many others, sadly the rule rather than the exception. Having sought solace from emotional difficulties we are now unrecognizable from the people we were during even the worst times before.
And yeah maybe I have wild ideas sometimes but I’m not even saying anything wild here. Medication is, in fact, slavery. It is a cash cow for Big Pharma and a way to infect the populace into passivity and resignfation. A medicated mass is a quiet mass. My belief is rarely necessary except for some acute crisis situations and for people with severe ongoing difficulties. HOWEVER, I believe this is a tiny fraction of the people who are currently treated with medication. Many of us could have gone to AA for a couple weeks and learned how to deal with life better but now they just take a Valium every night for that instead.
Numb is the new black.
The reason they won’t give me 10 more pills of the drug they got me addicted to, risking my life through the serotonin syndrome or seizures they warned me about, is BECAUSE THEY DON’T CARE ABOUT MY HEALTH OR WELLBEING. THEY CARE ABOUT LINING THEIR POCKETS. I’m actually really disappointed that I didn’t see this sooner when it is so painfully obvious. And is anyone surprised? Once again, it is the almighty dollar guiding the puppet strings. Everything is a facade designed to cleverly hide an elaborate underlying scheme where someone gets rich off of screwing you over.
Increase profit margin by providing dangerous products to consumers? COOL SOUNDS LIKE A BUSINESS PLAN
Selling fake gold is bad, that’s what thieves do. But what these people are doing here is far more reprehensible — they’re screwing people out of their very lives. I feel robbed. 12 years, gone. Nothing but pain and loss to show for it. I still don’t know for what purpose we are enslaved. That will be the question to ponder moving forward. Why the sick and suffering in our society are guinea pigs for radical chemical experimentation.
If you weren’t a conspiracy theorist before taking psychiatric meds you’ll probably be one by the time 12 years have passed and you can’t recognize yourself or what your life has become and in reviewing your medical records you realize all of your problems started with that one little pill…
And your problems have continued as long as you’ve been on that pill…
And the problems are only getting worse…
And yet your doctor urges you, give it more time. Up the dose. Let’s try it twice a day instead. When if you were allowed to think for yourself for half a second you’d actually see there’s a much better solution than that and it’s 99% less time-consuming than any of that. I know it sounds radical, but…
Have you ever considered maybe not taking that medication anymore?
How many years will you let slip by before you see it is not going to work and will never work? When is it okay to give up? How much do we have to have lost before we earn the right to throw in the towel on this all?
I never had any fuckin bipolar disorder going into this whole deal, havent had a manic episode since either. And yet the bipolar remains. Once upon a time you were just sad. You probably should have gone to a therapist first but your doctor just gave you the pill — seeing a therapist wasn’t even introduced as an option. It was just Zoloft and be on your merry way.
The negotiation of contract clauses over human lives.
You might as well not waste your time telling me why you can’t call in 10 pills of my non-controlled substance because I know it is a lie. You say you “can’t” and that’s a lie too. We all can. Not helping is a choice. I understand there are rules…but not helping is still a choice.
You don’t have to do very much to help a person. Offer your phone number if they need to text/call. Real simple shit here. This is what we do for newcomers in AA, to help the alcoholic who still suffers. This is how I have been able to help people around me even without a psychology degree — all I had to do was reach my hand out. The fact that some of the people I give my phone number to end up calling, it means our usual M.O. of not opening up and extending ourselves to help others is a grave danger. It means a newcomer who wanted to talk wouldn’t have been able to, unless I had made the effort to help.
The first part being the relevant part because if we weren’t in AA we’d have never given that phone number. We’d never have been able to help that person. I just cannot fathom why people care about money so much. Don’t you all see that money only disappears? Having saved a life is better than the bucks in your pocket. Again, maybe I have wild ideas
Pretty sad when it sounds like a wild idea to care about a person over the procedures for cost-cutting in a corporation in the health system.
Either way, by the end of it you’re pointing at sentences in a legal contract and saying “ma’am I’m sorry we just can’t help” meanwhile a human soul stands before you utterly suffering, pleading, crying, and you know for a goddamn FACT there’s a whole lot more you can do. Liar.
Liars.
I am 30 years old and I see now that my recovery is in my hands after 12 years of waiting for the meds to finally kick in. I think back on the corpus of my life unable to find any significant periods of stability or happiness other than 2006–2007 which was the only time I was unmedicated. What does that tell me? It tells me this shit isn’t working. And I’ve given it enough time, I just handed over 12 years of my life waiting for something to work. I could try another medication, or I could just try the things I know to work, like keeping it simple and getting the toxic chemicals out of my system first and foremost.
The sands of my life are slipping away. The chemical way isn’t working anymore. It’s time for something new.
Instead bitching about the mental health care system on the internet in rants which effect no change on the world, I decided to actually do something this time. This issue is too close to me. My anger about these atrocities, traumas, inadequacies in our mental health system is extreme. What it has cost me, what it has cost the people I love who were abused by the same system. Yes, I think I can help people so that’s why I want to be a therapist, but I also want to someday be an ambassador however I can for the people who can help themselves least. It is a cruel experiment on our sick fellows to medicate them to the point of dysfunction, and then refuse to care for them when they are in crisis. (And who the fuck WOULDNT be in crisis with tardive dyskinesia threatening you with each pill you take every orning.)
Do you know that nobody even ran a simple blood test on me to see if perhaps a vitamin deficiency may have explained my low mood? Why? Because a blood test costs money. A script doesn’t. Nope, here’s your new Zoloft prescription take it twice a day the instructions are right on the bottle and make an appointment for 3 months.
You start to see contradictions everywhere if you look for them. Such as:
- You won’t pay for a blood test to identify possible hormonal imbalances, vitamin deficiencies, etc. and other organic causes of things that can “look” a lot like depression. Imagine if I you were an 18 year-old with a vitamin B12 deficiency and you took Zoloft for your depression instead (like I did) and I ended up manic (like I did) and I ended up wrecking the next 12 years of my life (like I did) finally culminating in a total psychotic break (like I did). Suddenly that upfront extra $500 seems a lot more worthwhile given the incredible risk of NOT running the test. We are talking about people’s lives here. No, cost-cutting is important above human lives. That is the takeaway. There is no sugar coating this reality as desperately as I’d love to find some shred of worth in this system. I cannot. I have searched high and low given the benefit of the doubt and defended that medications are necessary for some. I now doubt why these medications were even created, if they weren’t just experiments on humans. Were they made to make us better or make us more enslaved?
It seems odd to me that chemical slavery is our new norm. Then you turn on the tv which promises freedom for your chemical dependence. Mixed messages. Depend on this but don’t depend on that. This drug is good that one is shameful. This drug will help that drug will harm. If you lump psychotropic medications into the same bucket as recreational drugs, of the 30ish meds and 15ish drugs I’ve had the best success alleviating my symptoms with marijuana. That’s it. Everything else has made me worse.
My story involves a lot of misdiagnosis so as a clinician I want to pay careful attention to nuance in the way people describe things. The challenge in psychology is we rely on self-reported information to make diagnostic assessments. That is a challenge for a clinician who lacks insight. Thankfully I’m intuitive as fuck and this stuff just comes easily to me. I can ask just the right question to elicit the desired response from the patient. My fluency with language helps me huge here. I basically ask strangers questions for a living so I’m pretty good at this one already.
Just confounds me why there no thorough diagnostic evaluation done before prescribing drugs with HORRIFIC side effects and risks. These should be last resorts and yet they are first-line treatment. I am perpetually horrified by the lack of attention to detail given by my clinicians in intake appointments. “Have you been depressed” gee can you be more specific? The language a doctor uses to pose questions to the patient is crucial
It is because I’m just not happy with the job ANY doctor does with me that I feel driven to be a clinician who is worthwhile. I’m like not even 10% happy with the quality of the work, no joke, the only thing I can do is put my gifted brain to use by benefiting psychology and being a mental health professional myself. We need to do SOMETHING, this is a joke.
How can people call it adequate that someone who tells you they are having a psychotic break waits 10 days for an appointment? 3 months? These are not exaggerations. I’ve even had doctors pushing 4 months out on appointments. That’s not the kind of system you can rely on. This is the “soonest” appointment they have, they’re so very sorry. They’re always so very sorry but they “can’t” ever help. At that point you know they’re full of shit because everyone can help, not helping is always a choice.
I choose to help, not harm.
So, I’m going to try to revolutionize some shit hopefully someday but that’s long-term. Here’s my near-term.
Best case scenario I’m in school by next fall, PhD in clinical psych. I don’t have much to do to apply, GRE is about it. I get a drug and alcohol abuse counselor cert to use as a way to get experience in my field as I’m getting the clinical psych degree (5 years).
By the end of all this I will have a private practice and make $150–200K annually. By next fall I will be 31, which means I could achieve this dream by age 36 at the soonest, but certainly no later than 40. That seems okay to me. Reasonable.
36 sounds like sort of a big number, but not as big as it might have a couple years ago in my 20s. Time waits for no one. As you get older time speeds up anyway, 5 years suddenly doesn’t seem like very long anymore. I think because of how unhappy I am with the QUALITY of information I have access to, the research I can draw on, the academic route is one which I once discounted but now feel may be the right focus over the clinically oriented PsyD. So I don’t begrudge the 5 years either as they’ll give me what I want, which is a solid educational foundation to be a clinician who can provide excellent care to patients someday. I want to be the kind of therapist a patient looks back to and thinks, I was doing the best then. She was really helping me keep my shit together then. We got something out of our sessions.
Even if my patients don’t tell me I changed their life I will know I have changed their life even if small things like this happen. I will impact the lives of everyone I touch vs. my current existence which is that my existence is irrelevant and not needed by anyone. The lack of purpose is killing my hope. It’s hard to wake up in the morning knowing the world would be exactly the same if you didn’t. Living in near total isolation I look toward therapy as a relief from focus on myself.
It is when I am self-centered that I get unwell. Like in AA it is through helping that I will recover. I see no other way. I have no faith in meds, no faith in therapists, the only one I have faith in is God’s plan and my brain.
Together I think we’ll make a kickass team. You take the wheel and I’ll press the pedal.
— —
So I guess after 13 years I finally admit I’m going to need some initials after my name if I am to have any clout. I will not have clout being a trusted expert if my information source is Wikipedia. I already am an unofficial expert in the area of addiction and mood disorders — I just need to make it official. This should be a breeze for me, I’ve read so much already. I’m curious to see what I don’t already know, honestly. I feel like I know most of the main stuff to know about psych. What I want is to find out more. There’s not enough research on long-term Lamictal and Liver function. Inconclusive googling in determining if elevated AST was from lamictal. It was a question google didn’t have the info to answer!
Which is great because it means I have research topics accumulating already. I do NOT do well on standardized tests so for me the GRE is a definite obstacle, and I wasn’t brain-injured the last time I was in school so it’s hard to say if I will be able to even realistically “do” the act of school still. But I can sure try. If anyone can come back from TBI it’s me.
I see this as my only option for several reasons. The primary is that it has whole new appeal as I look forward to a potentially serious mental illness for the rest of my life which keeps 90% of its victims unable to maintain full-time employment. I see the past 3 jobs I’ve lost, three in a row, and realize that maybe I’ll be one of the 90%, not the 10% that go on to recover. This is now a trend.
So, I ask myself: What can I do to make a bunch of money while also never having to worry about answering to a dick boss or dealing with a sabotaging corworker ever again?
HOLY SHIT WHY DIDN’T I THINK OF IT SOONER.
I’ll work by myself, for myself. I excel one-on-one but group conversations make me nervous; the therapist’s office is my comfort spot.
I’m not sure if anyone really inspired me to get in this career other than myself and the people around me. And as years have gone on what’s made me pursue it in spite of everything is that I simply have not seen quality like I was expecting to see after reading so much material. Is this the best research we have? We need to be asking better questions, looking harder at our methods, controlling for more variables, etc.
My doubt about my ability to hold a typical job (like the one I had and lost) makes the prospect of self-employment EXTREMELY appealing. I had no idea it brought in so much money, either. At figures that high I feel like spending the extra 3 years over the 2 years I originally intended (MA in Counseling Psych) doesn’t even matter at that point because you’ll either be 36 making $150K annually or you’ll be 33 making $35K.
I mean…duh, right? Okay. Next.
I have the saving grace of AA but when it comes to chemicals and medications and cognitive distortions, therapy’s the name of the game.
Not even I have been a regular attendee of therapy, but always due to finances, never willingness. If at all able to, I make it a priority to see a therapist. I believe everyone should see one once a week no matter what. Imagine how much better the world would be if people saw a therapist weekly? Wow. What a distant goal but it’s nice to hope.
I resent that therapy is viewed as a total frivolity in healthcare. $4000 deductible? That means I pay $4000 before you cover my therapy visits? How about I just not and spend that $4000 instead on drugs that will hopefully kill me sooner because fuck my life.
If I don’t do this its waiting to get fired from whatever job I get next after I finish my resume. I plan to have tjat out by close of business today.
The only reason I slog through this garbage is because I need a job to survive. I just didn’t realize I could turn what I’m already doing in being my own clinician and turn it into hella money. I think I just figured it out. About time I guess huh?
How do I know this is right for me?
I asked my sister what subject matter she considered me a trusted expert in. She immediately answered addiction, because I went to rehab where I learned a bunch of science stuff about it and am always consuming material about it. I’m the most reliable source of information in my family for help if they need guidance for an addict.
This was relevant when we found out our dad who used to be addicted to Norcos was doing heroin now. My sister looked to me for answers. That is exactly what I needed to hear. That me rushing home the minute I heard they found him on the apartment floor was for something. My presence was needed. My knowledge offered perspectives others had not considered. I was a necessary part of this little human experience. That’s it, that’s all I really need to be happy.
And finally, I know it is right because the only thing on television which moves me to tears is Intervention. And for someone who loves to indulge in negative emotions it’s surprising to hear that I don’t cry about the sadness they must feel as they engage in the awful junkie behaviors they videotape these people doing.
I cry because they recover in spite of it all.
Just like I did.
I am still recovering.
I am always recovering which means I will always be there to help you recover, too. It’s just how we do (for the alcoholic who suffers like we do). Drunk, crazy, it matters not. Difficulties of emotion manifest in different flavors but the core issues are the same across many domains. The emotions that make a woman overeat to 500 pounds, and the emotions that drive someone to manipulate their boyfriend, might be the exact same emotion just manifested in ways that look nothing alike. One seems like an eating disorder, the other seems like a personality disorder. But really it’s irrelevant entirely what we call the “condition” and stop calling it by any name if you prefer, because the important part is resolving the emotion which causes those two different manifestations. Once you do that you don’t have to worry about what “disorder” you have because you can deal with life. You don’t need to be framed as sick or ill. You are a person who has difficulties like we all do.
I will be here for you where no one else was, because I care even if I didn’t even know you 5 minutes ago. The Universe and its collective energy is my higher power. It is simply that you are a human like I am and that we suffer the same way because of our shared humanity that I care. I do not need to have any stakes or anything to gain.
We’re dealing with lives here. If I ever open up a practice someday, I’ll be sure my patients know they are humans before they are patients. If you need to text me outside of business hours, please, do. It’s not about me getting paid the $0.01.
This is about saving my life and saving yours at the same time.
Since I’m going to keep doing that anyway in my spare time, why not turn it into my career? At least then I’ll have sources other than Wikipedia to quote. There’s not good enough information online. I need actual school if I want to know about psychiatry.
