Psychiatry
My journey with psychiatry began with a diagnosis of depression. I was really struggling adjusting to a home environment I never re-settled into after a move away from a traumatic living situation I didn’t want to talk about. I also didn’t want to talk about how it was made worse over time, because it started to appear to me that the more that I say what’s wrong and what I’m stuck with the more I got stuck into it. I didn’t know the help that I needed at the time, and the ways that my pain was presenting was making the whole situation worse. I eventually was able to start SSRI’s and continue living with my family for a bit. Initially, they would see an improvement, then a regression of all of the other symptoms as I B-lined straight for the street drugs again some months later – a mission I knew was becoming quickly a suicide mission anyway. Psychiatry saved my life, then maybe ...ruined it, a little.
What I like about it
Medication was a tool that I could use in the short-term to try and get on my feet and make the changes I need to make in my life. I forgot that was the original goal, because my medication was a team effort between probably over 20 different psychiatrists at this point. It allowed the symptoms that cause some function issues to be quelled: depression, rumination, hopelessness/helplessness. This helps dampen the dysphoria and the symptoms that lead to my memory issues, like rumination into traumatic relapse. I have found this to work only in the short term, because after some time – I begin ‘ruminating’ again, but it become integrated into my daily life in ways I can’t recognize anymore because I don’t feel the emotional effect of that rumination until I have returned to a state of complete crises and don’t remember why I’m feeling what I’m feeling. Medication was a great place for me to go when my back was entirely against the wall and there was nothing out there for me other than just to ignore the past and move on to the next job opportunity. It was great through the pandemic, again, minus the creeping “I didn’t see that coming” collapse of ‘23.
Why I tried them for so long
I tend to go into crises and not remember what led to the crises. I try my best to put together how it became an emergency for me, and struggle to find words – usually ending up speaking metaphors that sound like hallucinations, but are abstract pieces of memory rippling through from the trauma response. When I am there I end up take whatever solution is available to me to help: Groups, pamphlets, medications, referrals. When offered medications, for the majority of my life, it usually only took asking more than once to get me to take the short term solution (meds) and avoid the long term solution (talk about dark scary traumatizing and horrible stuff to a therapist instead of to the random drinking buddies the next time I’m on a bender and remember what I don’t at the moment of prescription.) This is difficult to convey well, because it’s not the fault of the immediate care team, it’s a systemic issue I really see at the foundation.
So Why Do I Hate Psychiatry?
Then, I get out of emergency care and continue taking the medications the best that I can, but I forget what sent me into crises by usually misremembering or confabulating the events leading up to a break. This is compounded by the fact that, now, I am not able to feel the same feelings to remind me the light shifts that happened before I started noticing I was going downhill. This is also compounded by my regular forgetfulness, a busy schedule, missing time, and a system that withholds medications a couple of times a year for one reason or another.
I Don’t Hate Psychiatry
I’m trying to try something different since 2023. I decided I was going to assume that continuing taking all the advice of the doctors that only treat me when I’m in a state I can’t communicate effectively and start tackling as many problems causing symptoms that I can see immediately and asking for help with the iceberg of repressed and severely under-processed stress of the last 20 years compounded to my traumas I began those 20 years with, from 13-14 years old until 33-34 years old. I’m trying something different that I think the entire world should have the opportunity to do. Work on myself without a loaded gun to my head saying that if I’m nervous there’s a pill I can take.
Problems
I am not able to get my medication I need regularly, regularly.
I have an alter that prefers to keep extra medication, refuses to take medications occasionally to save them for emergency, once we’ve missed scheduled dose time. (I know, dumb)
I have an alter that struggles throughout the day with attention.
With CPTSD, I have dissociative amnesia that is abnormal and disrupts daily function, independent of prescription medication, and other drugs.
I get prescribed drugs with the framing that it will be helpful over the long term and not noticeable in the short term, but I argue I have the opposite experience and this is not taken seriously for the decade that I passively brought it up as a reason to hesitate before trying again… before trying again and forgetting why I had the emotional disturbance I had because the trauma goes back to being repressed after the episode. And, then obviously breaking down with even less consistent warning signs in the future because the medications are muting the thing I would need to pay attention to as an early warning sign for my disorder.
Diagnosis’ (respectively)
The system is set up for efficiency, but to the dollar not to the patient.
I have a medication resistant illness.
I have a medication resistant illness.
I have accessibility issues with memory.
These issues are made worse with some medications.
The Root Issue / What Does Psychiatry Do for Me?
The root issue is that we need to go back to realizing that psychiatry is a gentle-touch brute force medical solution. The root issue being we have a tendency within society, to assume the longevity of treatment so much that the patient is somehow responsible for the long term outcome – only when it goes bad. As a field of study, psychiatry has saved countless lives, and I still have a psychiatric framework for why my HRT is successful in my case. And, that case particularly, is a great argument for what I see the root solution to be in psychiatry in general: Trying alternatives first.
Before I transitioned with hormones, I:
tried telling people around me when I was young
tried realizing the difference and doing things more in line with boyhood
tried hiding it and never saying it again
tried thinking more like a boy
tried constantly internally correcting
tried working my gender into daily life without fully transitioning
tried therapy around some on the issues making my gender such a touchy subject for me
tried coming out as a trans woman without HRT
Each of those things that I tried had mixed results, and I don’t wish to explore more politics than I have to, given the age. I did all of that before thinking to myself “What if instead of hiding it for peoples’ comfort, and then fearing the moment they sense I’m hiding something, I just wear it outside so the only people that can see my incongruence when I’m actually doing something that feels incongruent to me, instead of when I am authentically vibing with them?” It hurts to genuinely have a moment I internalize as a ‘girl’ moment, that’s already embarrassing because I’m an adult, also be a sign that I might be into some freak shit I wouldn’t share with nobody. Let me be clear: I am into some freak shit. Ask me about it, it’s no secret. I’ve been into freakier shit, and didn’t like it, now I just like the freaky shit I like and that’s that.
What I want to see in the world.
I want to see as much “pro-health” content as I saw “pro-trans”. I want to see a system that allows people to talk to therapists and connect to groups before it comes to a ‘warm line’ or ‘crises line’ scenario. I am so proud to see the places I see that help people before they become homeless. I just hope in the future that someone like me, that works and tries to do it with the least amount of help as possible and has trauma associated with asking for help, by the time my brutally bigoted bull-horned stampede into faking nuero-typicality has got me so f****d up doctor’s can’t even agree on where to start, other than removing everything the color red from the room.