I'll Never Overlook Bad Treatment I Took

These days, I'm more balanced, self-assured, and stable. Continuing on, hopefully in a forward motion, allows for slowly resolving past issues and establishing a satisfying quality of life. Treatment with a conscientious and caring psychiatrist (truly caring, not just claiming to be so in an internet blurb) benefits me and gives me faith in the profession, for once. I'm glad I had the opportunity to clean out seven meds I was previously prescribed, with time on my own to know myself better, and to gradually find a progressive, trustworthy psychiatrist. Now I'm a partner in my own care, a contrast from having treatment done at me, often in harmful, dismissive, insulting, or outright abusive ways. I'm grateful, but I'll never shake the imprint bad experiences have left on my mind and body.

In the need to keep revisiting these awful times of years past, so they don't creep into my psyche and overwhelm me, I've put together a brief, illustrative window into what I endured. And I'm not alone. Others also go through horrible and inescapable psych treatment scenarios, particularly inpatient, and it's important to recognize this, no matter how uncomfortable it is to look and hear and try reconciling with the constant bell-ringing to seek mental health treatment. I do encourage finding help when life feels desperate, emotions flat, or confusion and chaos dominate thought, and hope is lost. In these situations, with overriding despair clouding discernment, we rely on mental health clinicians, trusting them to provide real care versus condemning us personally, casting us into a life of further dark mayhem. However, true concern for patients may be suppressed under environments accepting of patient denigration or insisting on one methodology for all, often products of limitations imposed by insurance and healthcare corporations. Personally, I'm not one to try and reformulate the entire system. That's unrealistic. I do call for more kindness. That can happen with conscious attention to calling out when kindness is missing.

Anyway, I said this post was a peek into what I endured, the parts that just weren't pretty or good care, by anyone's measure. The following is a series of collages, photographed and enhanced, with short explanations of what each represents during my four decades tumbled about in the name of treating bipolar, self-harm, and general inner turmoil.

  When police retrieved me from my home, suddenly I became like an object. Hands were on

  me, force, ordering me here, directing me to strip, put on a gown, pee in a cup, submit to a

  blood draw, stay in the bed and wait, submit to questioning, and go to whatever hospital had

  a psych bed available. The process is fully dehumanizing.

  I've been strapped to beds for fear I'll self-harm, left in a room where my only choice for

  coping was to dissociate, leave my body, my mind veiling the intolerable circumstances.

  Eventually I'd be discharged, feeling like I'd been run through a machine, then spit out.

  When ECT happened, literally it was a shock to my system, a violation. Then I was

  told that maintenance treatments continue the benefits, and I felt shame and dejection

  that I didn't benefit. At home, I was plagued with lack of familiarity for where common items

  were, how to do basics, what happened when. After a time, I recovered myself.

  Often I'd lay, inert, memories of my past floating around the periphery, certain I was

  now condemned to the life of chronic mental health patient.

  Therapy became rounds of behavioral change instruction. Therapists were angered

  if I didn't follow instructions or questioned or asserted creativity. There was no flexibility.

  I had to please by showing a compliance that, inside, I rebelled against.

    

  In the end, the finality of a near lifetime in many psych treatment settings, a psychiatrist

  chose to stop several meds without taper. The blame was placed on me for self-protection

  of the mental health services board. My only option was to endure more or set off on my

  own, tending to my own damaged body. I sought to put fragments with rusted edges into

  a comprehensive whole, so I could function, so I might become someone beyond the

  broken and sick person I'd been convinced into accepting as my destiny.

  I'm looking in, attempting to take the form of myself left in the wake and add the details that

  make up richness, complexity, and ability for healthy interaction. Despite my past, I retain

  optimism and motivation for my best life possible.