So. Was this all planned? Is there a chapter somewhere in the Handbook of Psychiatric Charlatanry that underscores how its not a good session unless you provoke your patient to tears or anger or both?
Receding now… I’m still putting it all together…and the further it gets, the angrier I feel about the consultant’s utter failure to contain issues: his apparent complete and total disregard for any emotional downside to the session.
We ended with me not understanding next steps. Can they block treatment? He says not: but he doesn’t explain what they can or will do.
Confused. Angry. And a black hole opening up. Panic. Close to panic attack in Hammersmith tube. Desire to hurt. Someone else? Me? This can’t be any sort of sane or rational service.
Good thing I am mostly rational. I can feel the darkness clawing out to claim me and if I weren’t so darn rational …if I were depressed…down…we’d be looking at overdose territory right now. Damn him!
Because here’s the thing that I’m guessing you lucky cis people reading my blog don’t know. Which is how it feels to get on to hormones…and how it feels to even imagine losing them. Am I alone in this? I don’t think so. I know others who have transitioned before me who have been treated similarly…and been just as upset.
This is why some of us suicide…because we CAN’T transition when we need. FFS: I thought Charing X knew that.
Still, for now I carry on. I detach. I watch myself going into panic. A PCSO approaches me. I’m now on Kings X station. I appear to be in tears. How did that happen? I glare at him. He backs off.
So what did this consultant think he was doing? Did he really intend to provoke this? I have no idea. How does one separate deliberate cruelty from sheer carelessness.
As I put things back together, I realise it is all about containment – or rather non-containment. He’s hurt me. A lot. And then just shoved me out on to the street in a rush, because he’s on to his next patient. Brilliant.
Care by rote and by the carefully-timed therapy period. On the train, other stuff bubbles up…we picked over relationships. Lightly I passed over abusive relationships I had suffered. Like: guess what…in THIS particular relationship, some nights I just lay awake too scared to go to sleep. Many years ago. But that fear is suddenly back.
Is this how the NHS tends to cover such issues? You got abused? You got hit? You feel bad about it? OK: let’s tick the box and move on.
Boundaries. What boundaries?
jane
xx
