Punishing Mental Illness

If contacting your mental health services feels like turning yourself into the police, that’s not part of your problem. That’s the reality.

I’m in a new town with a new doctor and having told him my state of affairs, he’s trying to get me some help so yesterday I had an intake assessment with someone from the local mental health services, they are going to try to figure out what sort of service to offer me.

They did ask what I was hoping for, and I said for some sort of one on one where a human being addresses my story, my experience, where I get to tell my story and somebody takes it seriously. Three times I had to say that, so I don’t get the impression that is one of their services. I told them I was in terrible pain and using marijuana for it. I told them it didn’t “make me happy,” but that enough of it could pull me out of misery and help me function at all.

They used the word “Band-Aid” (bandage, plaster, patch) on me, it was good that I understood it was only a Band-Aid and not a cure, and yes, I said, I had just told them the cure I wanted was to be heard, that someone attempt to understand my pain – but I know what’s going to happen, they are going to offer substance abuse counselling in some form, end of story.

It’s not help, it’s a confession and a prosecution.

I’ve given them their crime now, there will be no reason for them to look elsewhere, same as the ones in the previous town. Carrying on with the Band-Aid metaphor –

OK, I come to the health services people, the hospital, I am in pain, I have a terrible wound and a bandage on it. What happens?

They shame me about the bandage? “Sir, this is a place of health and healthy people! You mustn’t be trapesing about here in bandages. Here. Follow the green line, down to the bandage removal lab, they’ll fix that for you!” ? I swear, it is science denial, along the lines of this pandemic terrorism – no Band-Aid, no wound, just like no testing, no pandemic. The system treats my treatment as the disease and ignores the disease.

Ridiculous, insane, right?

I promise you, that’s what it is, that is what it will be. Their script, their rules will state, explicitly, Band-Aids to the Band-Aid department. Back to the usual topic of my main blog, it’s all social control, and there really is only one model, a crime, a prosecution, a punishment – if my ex had been bloody Medea and killed and eaten my kids instead of simply arranging to destroy and remove me from them by stealth, and I admitted to using some pain killing drug, then believe me, it would still be a drug story.

Because it’s me they’ll have, right?

Me and my errors. That’s all they have to work with – the victims and their errors. Ring a bell? What were you doing out alone, dressed like that? OK.

I make these pronouncements, these indictments, mental health is gaslighting, victim-shaming rubbish, and I basically think it’s all of it and everyone – but it doesn’t have to be everyone, it doesn’t have be a general truth. If it works for you, terrific, if it works for everyone, terrific. But to a victim of narcissistic abuse, a little victim shaming is too much. The cure is nothing but more of the same abuse that laid me waste, it all blames me. It’s true that before, in the other town, I hadn’t quite processed my abuse yet and I was basically telling them my abuser’s story, rather than my own – but again, I’ll have that straight this time, but it won’t matter, they have me for drugs. Care to wager?

I have spoken to some people who have been inside the psych ward, one on both sides of the Plexiglas, and the dark side of the psych ward – there isn’t much bright side either, to be sure – is exactly the only kind of social control humans really practice.

I won’t be entering the system, not voluntarily, anyway.

I know what I need, what could really stop the bleeding and begin the healing and if they can’t offer it, I will survive or not without them, looking for it elsewhere. I’m not throwing away my crutches and walking, mental health is not faith healing either, I’m broken, I need the crutch – a real doctor would understand that and ask about the leg – first.

You fixate on the crutch, I know you’re a fraud.

 

Jeff

May 22^nd., 2020