Psych class last night was unbearably triggering because we covered, well, pretty much all of my most serious disorders with the exception of the trich and avoidant personality disorder. We did indeed cover: panic attacks and symptoms - oh joy, panic disorder, agoraphobia, depression, and OCD, along with specific phobias, generalized anxiety disorder, other anxiety disorders, causes, societal labeling, and subsequent life imprisonment. We also covered the differences between anxiety and fear - anxiety is general, irrational, nervousness and worry, while fear is more specific where a person feels direct threat. We also had to watch a video with mentally ill people writhing in anxious obsessive agony...she did warn us that it may be triggering. It was.

I did find the doctor parts of the video, called Dicovering Psychology by Phillip Zimbardo, to be fascinating. Two doctors in particular discussing the system itself and of the way it creates the probabilty of stigma in society along with the way the mentally ill are treated figuratively and literally. One guy, I've actually read a little about in the past but had completely forgottten about, Dr. Thomas Szasz, says that mental illness as it is currently being described and treated is no more than labeling and shunning those who are different (an/or making money off of them). I agree with him on many respects because of the de-humanization I have experienced from "doctors". Another fascinating case is of a group of PhDs, one whose name is David Rosenhan PhD. He and others faked being schizophrenic to be admitted and the mentally ill in the hospital knew they were normal, but the doctors treating them didn't know at all. I'll put a link at the end of this entry if anyone reads this and wants to learn something about the mental health care system...

So thanks to many things, I had a mini-melt-down last night and discovered half-way through it that a spider has either taken up residence or died in the crack of my bedroom ceiling. I had to sleep with my light on because it is in a place I can't get to, otherwise it would be outside. I'm glad it hasn't moved though...

In class, when we got to Agoraphobia, I totally blanked and didn't take any notes. As she talked about the person's world gradually shrinking, I re-lived my experiences from age 10+ and relapses, and ugh...it was so distracting I forgot to take notes about my own disorder. It'll be funny if I flunk a question about agoraphobia.

I was already actively triggered by the discussion of my dosorders, but my teacher said two things in class that really upset me. Both to questions by clasmates. A classmate asked if there are therapists who go to a person's house when they have agoraphobia - she compassinately surmised that it would be "cruel" to make them leave the house to go to the therapy. I accepted her compasion on a personal level within myself as a note that humanity does exist within certain people. My teacher said that's the way it's done - the therapist goes to the house...and I was left wondering - okay so why have i never gotten that then? Well the obvious answer is that I'm poor. Because I'm so severely disabled by my disorders, I'm on Medicaid, which doesn't cover crap let alone actual heathcare. So my teachers response should have been...if you have $150 an hour to pay a private therapist or have a rich relative. Because most of the seriously disabled mentally ill - those who are on SSI disability -- aren't getting treatment because it's not covered by Medicaid, and/or Medicaid pays so little that psychologists won't accept it for payment - they want $150 an hour, Medicaid generally pays 75-95 and hour, but sometimes only 20 bucks an hour in some states...ugh. And they have to be signed up with Medicaid to see you and get paid at all...most therapists in this country don't take medicaid or aren't allowed to by state rules.

So that made me feel like shit, considering I had to figure out how to leave the house after 6 years of being housebound...I did it, not the stupid low-life therapists that wouldnt come to my house. Then there's the issue I've had most recently with exposure therapy not being covered by LPCC's insurance protection - only PhDs can get that insurance apparently, at least that's what all of my counselors told me. But the PhDs usually only take Medicaid to do evaluations, not therapy - FYI evaluations get them around $400 for an hour...can I say cha'ching and have that explain why I'm not working wth a psychologist as I should be? oh - and the reason insurance doesn't cover off-premises treatment? They said it was to stop any possibility of inappropriate involvement..well I'm not trying to screw my therapsts, but after 10 years i still am trying to find someone willing to do exposure therapy to the level I need with the only insurance I have. I've come to the conclusion that getting better on Medicaid is like rowing across the Atlantic ocean in a canoe...

So I cried a lot over that. I think I realized the gravity of cruelty I'm living with, and one person's genuinely felt compassion in my class was swept away by a generalized only partly true statement...

Issue two: Another person in class, a guy I've come to respect due to his desire to want to be human to everyone, asked about any possible cure for mental illness. My teacher said what the psychologists told me at age 18...well they were a bit more direct and cruel - one said to my face to get used to being in the house and try to make the best of it because, on my insurance, I'll never get the help I need. In the paperwork they wrote that my likelihood of life-long relapse was inevitable and that it is unlikely that I would ever function to a normal level. I don't think they realize they're writing about another human being when they write these things for insurance companies. I have a heart and a soul and a mind and a body just like they do - and enormous dreams to boot. An d these people just wrote me off as if i were dead.

Well my teacher said the same thing, but generalized - that there is absloutely no cure, only remission just as with cancer. Mentally ill people never fully recover, there is no such thing - some learn to do things despite it is all, many never do.

And people think I'm pessimistic? At least I think if I get genuine support I'll get better.

So, I didn't speak in class at all, I wanted to - but I can't speak spontaneously in a room that full of people (in this case 18). However, I'm thinking that I may type up something to read about a, ahem, "friend" of mine with agoraphobia and tell ahem, her story regarding why she never got help. ugh...Agoraphobitch doesn't like this, but it may help people in class realize the reasons we have a mental health crisis in this country. And maybe I can get some by-proxy, for a friend, compassion. I'd say it's me were it not for the level of gossip already being spewed at school about me...i don't need more idiots misquoting things about me being weird.

And I need my next 4 weeks to be less triggering. Really.

more on the Rosenhan Experiment *here*

~e