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So I’ve had my fair share of therapy sessions with no less than four different psychologists within the past four years. I felt I was getting nowhere, so a friend of mine suggested that I should ask my doctor to refer me to public hospital psychiatry. Now, my initial two “interviews,” so to speak, went well. First I spoke with a nurse, a very kind, open-minded lady, who then passed me on to a doctor, who was also very kind. This doctor felt pretty convinced that I might have a case of bipolar affective disorder. This came as a shock, but soon, I realized it made sense in so many ways. He referred me to the department dealing with affective disorders at a specialized hospital in my city.
This is where the real pain comes in.
My recently ex-boyfriend was allowed in with me at the “interview,” and I’m so glad he went with me, because then he could confirm what an uncomfortable and horrible “interview” it had been.
This doctor would constantly interrupt me, letting me know that I wasn’t answering her questions correctly. I tried to tell her about my depressive periods, but apparently she didn’t want to hear about them. She really didn’t want to hear anything I wanted to say; she just wanted me to answer her (sometimes irrelevant, I feel) questions in a very specific manner, as if she already had the answers in her head, and I just wasn’t telling her what she wanted to hear.
It really felt as if she had already decided before she even met me that I did not have bipolar. And that this interview was only for her to prove that I didn’t. She wasn’t there to listen to me. Before the “interview,” I’d even tried to write down this timeline of periods of ups and downs, as the previous doctor had told me to do for this interview, but she would hardly even look at it. And she definitely did not want to address it in any sort of way.
At some point she began focusing on my somewhat rare experiences with anxiety, and I felt like she had begun forcing something on me that I did not feel; she seemed to make a very big deal out something that I do not feel is my most pressing issue.
She was also talking about bipolar as if there is only one single kind, as if everyone does the same things and reacts in the exact same way. So, for instance, if I hadn’t had extreme sex with every guy in town, I couldn’t possibly have bipolar. Or if I hadn’t had extreme fights with my then-boyfriend during what I would call our “honeymoon phase,” then I could definitely not have bipolar. And so on and so forth. Now, I’m no expert or specialist, but I am aware that bipolar plays out in a million different ways, and there are no two cases that are the same. Yet this was what this “specialized doctor” was insinuating.
She also insinuated that if I hadn’t tried to actually commit suicide in one of my depressive periods, then I couldn’t be diagnosed with bipolar.
Uhm.
That was the short version of what happened. I felt terrible afterwards. My ex-boyfriend even felt terrible afterwards. And I was scheduled to meet with this doctor again in two weeks.
No way.
So I called in the next day, explaining all of the above to a sweet and understanding secretary, and asked if I could see another doctor from now on. She was sorry to hear about my bad experience and would try to figure something out for me.
So this is where I stand now. I’m waiting to hear back from them. Hopefully I’ll get to speak to someone just a bit more empathetic next time. Hopefully I’ll get into treatment within the next couple of months. Guess I’ll just have to wait and see.
The Elephants in the Room 