what if i told y’all there was plenty of middleground between “therapists are pure evil who only exist to torture the mentally ill” and “therapists are soft pure cinnamon rolls who can never do anything wrong”
what if i told y’all that you could acknowledge how life-saving mental healthcare can be and how positive your own experiences with therapy are without denying the existence of psychiatric abuse and trying to silence its victims
what if i told y’all that millions of mentally ill people cannot afford or otherwise access mental health care and that survivors of psychiatric abuse are uncomfortable getting help because of their experiences and that your “shut up and go to therapy, there’s no reason not to” attitude is literally doing nothing at all to address these issues or help the people affected by them
what if i told y’all it would be more beneficial to post about how to properly choose a therapist, how to know that a therapist is right for you and when they’re not, and how to tell the difference between simply needing to give therapy (and your therapist) more time to start working and when something is seriously wrong with their treatment than it is to make posts shutting down any possibility that therapy and therapists can ever possibly go bad for someone
w h a t
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I’ve had both abusive experiences with mental health professionals and positive ones (and some in between).
It can be really hard to know if a relationship with a therapist is working out when you’ve never had a positive relationship before.
Heck, I didn’t start to have a positive relationship with any doctors until I was almost 23. Didn’t have a positive relationship with any mental health professional until I was 25. It has been taking a long time to heal from the trauma that mental health professionals did to me as a child and necessity for a diagnosis brought my first psychiatrist and I together at 25.
Personally, I’ve had so many issues with therapists/doctors in their offices that I see my psychologist and my psychiatrist online. They’re in their homes, I’m in mine. I have my whole range of comfort items at my disposal. If they had issues with my stimming, telehealth has many other options. Luckily they have both been great.
I now have a running checklist in my head:
•What do they know about _________? (In my case autism, anxiety, and depression. I throw chiari malformation and other major chronic illnesses/physical disabilities in there as well because autism plays on them to where I either feel them less intensely or more intensely).
•What buzz words about ________ are they using? (Are they referring to me as “high functioning autistic” often rather than just in formal paperwork for insurance/disability accommodations? That could be a problem as an autistic advocate. Are they using people first language exclusively despite the fact that I only refer to myself with identity first language? That could also be a problem.)
•(Psychiatry) What is their medication prescribing like? (Do they suggest medication before you even ask about it or even wanting any particular help for that condition? Do they taper up medication, starting at the lowest dose and staying at the lowest dose you need? If they’re doing/suggesting anything else, run).
•Are they willing to learn about your needs/your experiences/your communities? (This is a big one. If they aren’t listening and aren’t willing to learn, they aren’t worth your time and you should find one who will. Intersection of identities is a major player in our lives and it should be considered in therapy.
We have a saying in education: “If you think you have arrived, it’s time to leave”- meaning if you think you know everything there is to know and you can’t be taught anymore, it’s time to leave the profession. I certainly think that also applies to mental health and medicine.
In an interview with Teen Vogue, Dasha explained what the interview was like. “When I realized I was on Infowars,
I was excited because I figured they would say something crazy and
funny,” she said. “It wasn’t hard to ‘own’ Ashton because nothing she
said made sense or even followed a logical train of thought. I was
honestly stunned when she started talking about rats, so a lot of what’s
happening with me in the video is sheer bewilderment.”
She also
explained her “worms in your brains” comment: “When I said, ‘I just want
people to have healthcare, honey,’ one of their reporters said
off-camera, ‘That’s what Hugo Chavez said,’” Dasha said. “And when I
looked in their eyes, they seemed so sick and crazy, like they had
parasites in their brain that were making them say all this stupid,
confused sh*t.”
Dasha went on to share why she expressed her
support for free universal healthcare, saying, “As an uninsured person, I
feel personally victimized by the idea that anyone should be denied
healthcare. Poor people shouldn’t get sick and die because they can’t
afford to see a doctor, obviously,” she said. She also made a point to
distinguish her socialist beliefs from mainstream liberalism.
“When Infowars
posted the clip on YouTube, they titled it ‘Liberals Defend Socialism
at Bernie Sanders Event,’” she said. “It seems like there is a lot of
conservative confusion and conflation of ‘liberal’ and ‘leftist.’
“I’m
a democratic socialist and a Bernie supporter and believe in things
like wealth redistribution and socialized healthcare,” she said. “I’m
not even an especially political or radical person — I read Marx in
college, which affirmed my views that capitalism is evil and responsible for many of our social ills, which feels to me like common sense having experienced poverty.”
An Infowars post appears to indicate that the original video of Dasha has been removed. But Dasha wanted to make sure future generations could see her answers.
“I
posted the video on my Twitter for posterity,” she said, “and I thought
it was funny [that] they took it down because they’re such failures.”
I’m all for fighting for marriage equality in the LGBT community. But we’re so focused on that no one knows about this problem.
W…wait Thats a thing????
Yep! The man I refer to as my husband? We aren’t actually married. We can’t be.
If I married him, the government would literally expect me to care for him and be his sole source of income. He would lose all of his benefits, including SSDI. Spouses are expected to share income and that effects ALL of his benefits, even his health insurance. We simply can’t afford to be married.
But it goes even further than that. If I were disabled, our incomes would STILL be combined, meaning BOTH of us would have our benefits cut.
For people reviving supplemental income, their benefits can be cut anywhere from 25% of their current income all the way down to 0%
In fact, one of the stipulations of receiving income under the adult disabled child program (which provides benefits for people who were disabled before age 22) is that they LITERALLY never be married.
I normally don’t link to blog posts as resources, but since social service resource sites like to dress this problem up and make it seem smaller than it really is, I’m gonna call it appropriate! Check it out!
The Chaos Bitches 