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Please Keep Me Safe!
Why I wanted to be a psychiatric patient
Did I really want to be a psychiatric patient? Yes, I did, because that was the option that was presented to me, to keep myself safe. But no, I did not, not in the common aware sense of “wanting.” A need to keep myself safe was what drove me to seek psychiatric care. It was an unconscious want and need. A want and need to stay safe, even to stay alive.
And it is even hard to say out loud now, as I feel ashamed, somehow, of that want and need. Though wanting to stay safe and alive is a very basic want and need, I could not admit it to myself, that this was what was driving me to show up as “mentally sick.”
I have spent a lot of time in psychiatric and psychological care facilities, both as a receiver and giver of said care. And I have had a lot of opportunities to observe behaviors, listen to what is said and presented, observe dynamics, etc.
And the stories those observations tell are far from what we might expect about the person receiving care’s relationship to the person giving care, or the “patient” — professional dynamics.
These care facilities and services are really interesting places to be, where the layers of what is actually going on are so complex, it is mind-boggling.
