Over the past few weeks I've drafted a lot of different ways of tweeting this. It's never come out under the character limit so it's my first blog post instead!
There is something remarkably freeing about being the "difficult" patient.
I used to try so hard to please the professionals who were involved in my care that I'd crack under the pressure and give up trying to improve my mental health. I'd smile and pretend things were working even when they weren't, I'd take everything every professional said to be completely true and it would break me, time and time again. It's no secret that some professionals can be especially rude, and I've had more than my fair shares horrific experiences with mental health "professionals" bullying me and making me feel like shit. Instead of actually aiming to recover I would get pushed down by the weight of the expectations and I'd end up nearly dead and no better off than when I started time and time again. I'm a people pleaser, I always have been. It's a common trait of autistic women and girls who grew up masking their symptoms and trying to fit in to a world that isn't made for them.
This approach to "recovery" and services wasn't working for me. It was all backwards. The only people who were benefiting from this were the uncaring mental health professionals, and even then they weren't really benefiting from me grinding myself down. There were a few (admittedly questionable) plus sides to this approach. I was never treated like a "typical borderline" by my own care team, if things dipped or I messed up and missed an appointment I was generally cut some slack by my care coordinator and I was once told I was "one of the good ones" by a support worker. But I was drowning, I was stuck in a cycle of fake recovery, pretending things worked to get approval and then crashing.
The more ill I got the more disillusioned with mental health services I became, and then one day something in me just snapped. I changed my whole attitude to the system and it was so freeing. I stopped trying to fit myself into the little boxes that psychiatry demands of it's patients and I started being selfish. If someone asked for my opinion I told them exactly what I thought. Even when the doctors didn't ask for my opinion (they rarely did) I told them exactly what I thought. I stopped pretending that mindfulness and baths was good enough and I told them what I thought of their so called treatment. At one point I even handed my care coordinator an annotated copy of the NICE guidelines for the treatment of people with my diagnosis, and the pathway set out by the trust I was under.
I stopped trying to make friends with the people who were meant to be caring for me and started treating mental health services the way they had been treating me. I set out my expectations for them and told them to figure it out. I wanted to get better, I wanted to stop going to hospital, I wanted to learn how to manage a crisis.
In a perfect world that would have been enough. My attitude shift would have been enough to kick their arses into gear and they would have started actually treating me. Unfortunately it wasn't. Mental health services rarely respond to brutal honesty from their patients. They started calling me manipulative, saying that I had unrealistic expectations of them (my expectations were maybe therapy and just for them to help me a little bit please). They would say that my "attitude" was typical of young borderlines and that they weren't going to treat me if I behaved like that. I was never knowingly rude to them, all I did was stand up for myself. They said that I wasn't complying with treatment so they wouldn't help me (their idea of treatment was mindfulness and call crisis if I start to not feel safe... crisis never picked up the phone to me).
I was crushed. I didn't realise that it would be this difficult to actually get help. The only barrier to me getting better was (and still is) mental health services.
Despite this, I am no longer suffocated by the weight of pleasing professionals in an attempt to get treatment. I know that no matter how many hoops I jump through the bad professionals won't help me, and the good professionals will appreciate my honesty and help me regardless. I have stopped trying to fit into boxes for the sake of psychiatrists. I no longer jump through hoops and stroke egos in the hope that someone will take pity on me and give me the treatment I deserve.
I refuse to bow and scrape in the presence of professionals and there is an undeniable power in that.
There is something remarkably freeing about being the "difficult" patient.
I used to try so hard to please the professionals who were involved in my care that I'd crack under the pressure and give up trying to improve my mental health. I'd smile and pretend things were working even when they weren't, I'd take everything every professional said to be completely true and it would break me, time and time again. It's no secret that some professionals can be especially rude, and I've had more than my fair shares horrific experiences with mental health "professionals" bullying me and making me feel like shit. Instead of actually aiming to recover I would get pushed down by the weight of the expectations and I'd end up nearly dead and no better off than when I started time and time again. I'm a people pleaser, I always have been. It's a common trait of autistic women and girls who grew up masking their symptoms and trying to fit in to a world that isn't made for them.
This approach to "recovery" and services wasn't working for me. It was all backwards. The only people who were benefiting from this were the uncaring mental health professionals, and even then they weren't really benefiting from me grinding myself down. There were a few (admittedly questionable) plus sides to this approach. I was never treated like a "typical borderline" by my own care team, if things dipped or I messed up and missed an appointment I was generally cut some slack by my care coordinator and I was once told I was "one of the good ones" by a support worker. But I was drowning, I was stuck in a cycle of fake recovery, pretending things worked to get approval and then crashing.
The more ill I got the more disillusioned with mental health services I became, and then one day something in me just snapped. I changed my whole attitude to the system and it was so freeing. I stopped trying to fit myself into the little boxes that psychiatry demands of it's patients and I started being selfish. If someone asked for my opinion I told them exactly what I thought. Even when the doctors didn't ask for my opinion (they rarely did) I told them exactly what I thought. I stopped pretending that mindfulness and baths was good enough and I told them what I thought of their so called treatment. At one point I even handed my care coordinator an annotated copy of the NICE guidelines for the treatment of people with my diagnosis, and the pathway set out by the trust I was under.
I stopped trying to make friends with the people who were meant to be caring for me and started treating mental health services the way they had been treating me. I set out my expectations for them and told them to figure it out. I wanted to get better, I wanted to stop going to hospital, I wanted to learn how to manage a crisis.
In a perfect world that would have been enough. My attitude shift would have been enough to kick their arses into gear and they would have started actually treating me. Unfortunately it wasn't. Mental health services rarely respond to brutal honesty from their patients. They started calling me manipulative, saying that I had unrealistic expectations of them (my expectations were maybe therapy and just for them to help me a little bit please). They would say that my "attitude" was typical of young borderlines and that they weren't going to treat me if I behaved like that. I was never knowingly rude to them, all I did was stand up for myself. They said that I wasn't complying with treatment so they wouldn't help me (their idea of treatment was mindfulness and call crisis if I start to not feel safe... crisis never picked up the phone to me).
I was crushed. I didn't realise that it would be this difficult to actually get help. The only barrier to me getting better was (and still is) mental health services.
Despite this, I am no longer suffocated by the weight of pleasing professionals in an attempt to get treatment. I know that no matter how many hoops I jump through the bad professionals won't help me, and the good professionals will appreciate my honesty and help me regardless. I have stopped trying to fit into boxes for the sake of psychiatrists. I no longer jump through hoops and stroke egos in the hope that someone will take pity on me and give me the treatment I deserve.
I refuse to bow and scrape in the presence of professionals and there is an undeniable power in that.
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