iguazo falls
Member
- May 20, 2026
- 12
i dont want to invalidate someone else, or claim their health care/meds/diagnoses or whatnot is total bogus. i just kind of wanted to discuss and hear other people's experiences, even if you do disagree with me
most of my life i feel i was chasing permission to be in pain, from anyone deemed as more authoritative. when i was in school, this would mean seeking validation from teachers, doctors, random people online. i used to ruminate over diagnoses, being in the psych ward, how deep i was self harming etc. i was on some medications, but not for any "solid" illness or whatever, it was literally just not being able to cope with being treated like crap with little reprieve or understanding, and they were prescribed by people who would not have interacted with me for more than 15 minutes total, and people i would never see more than once. i feel like as a society we treat everyone as a liability and resource instead of humans, and i feel that all these "trusted" people that every pamphlet directs you to has more to do with monitoring and self admission of risk over any kind of help.
i had a suicide attempt when i was 12, and it seemed like the fixation was on some sort of "anxiety". i couldn't speak about why i had attempted because my parents were in the room. when i could speak about it, what others had done to me was not focused on, and i did not receive any relevant peer support or anything like that. the focus was on "chemical imbalances". some teachers had known what had happened, and besides "mandatory reporting" (which is a very legal thing unfortunately, yet when as a child i report something to the police that was happening to me and others, i never hear anything back), i was treated as if i was a burden of paperwork, or not seriously. i felt like to be taken seriously i had to be considered "bad enough" but i knew i couldn't' outright say anything about how i felt or my parents would just be told. to recieve help it needs to be documented and worded in a formal clinical way, and needs an acronym saying you aren't just a normal functioning person, you are ill. no in between. i feel like we incentivize illness, not because we aren't struggling, or that we all want to attention seek on tiktok or whatever, but because that's literally how the system works for a chance to be seen. yet when you are labelled as mentally ill, you have less credibility and agency; now that persistant physical ailment must be a figment of your illness, your negative feelings due to others/the world is because you aren't taking your meds, and etc. etc. if you SH or want to die, everyone is scrambling to turn your room upside down, go through your phone, and blame irrelevant bullshit. i would just get into terrible cycles of feeing like everything i went through was just a lie, and that if the ones who were supposed to be "helping me" were siding with the people who have rejected and mistreated me, then i was in the wrong and i deserved it.
recently, i just needed some paperwork (which noone wants to do despite it being pretty easy and anyone is allowed to do it, funny enough, all they have to do is just validate why it's not safe for me to move back home and that noone else is financially supporting me 1000kms away. idk why it's so hard to do that, because if they can't, then it requires getting my parents to admit why - despite being an adult), so i contacted a low cost counsellor to ask. he was pretty flustered and had to stare me in the webcam and seriously ask "do you have very strong convictions that other people find strange?" on top of the other screening questions. he tried to do the validating thing where it kinda sounds like chatgpt. for the first time i felt like we were equal in power because i didn't expect this guy to do anything for me but listen and sign a thing or not, and i realised that he was on an unpaid placement for his masters. feeling like he was on the same level on me and couldn't influence how i saw myself, and also realising how debt riddled and poorly trained these workers are was a lot more healing than i thought tbh. like wow yeah no i don't need these people to make me feel like shit or like i don't "deserve" help when they have so little investment into me as a person.
another thing that opened my eyes, is actually getting my old medical records. this has been a pain in the butt in the way that i have to specify that they should be contacting me as an adult, and not asking my parents for permission because they're not paying $40 - $80 bucks to get stuff mailed to me. and i don't want a bunch of stuff that hasn't been in my control as a minor before to just be chucked to the next doctor. i had a look at the records, and my suspicions were correct - "family tension" was very much in the background, and the focus was on appeasing my parents the school, not helping me. clinicians said i had autistic and schizoid traits, but tried to withhold that information from me instead of letting me understand it.
i've also pledged to myself to not actually allow any clinicians to have my full story until i feel they deserve it or it benefits me. i'm so sick of the humiliation of answering hoenstly to those history of mental health questions. "and how did you try to kill yourself that time?" whatever.
i feel pretty cynical too, realising all this "help" is more just a way of monitoring and red tape and whatever. if it's not peer support, i just won't engage honestly because it's impossible for clinical support to engage honestly with you, and they will always have more power over you, with different motives. in a way, it feels like a life lesson not to trust people, and now i know exactly who to avoid. smiley therapists, smiley "career advisors", whoever is tacked on with the professional role of "support" especially in an environment like a school or workplace, i refuse to trust or disclose to. from my experience knowing people who have psychologists and "helpers" as family, these people still don't actually understand mental health issues, and really bad ones misuse their power as a "helper" in an institution against others. in fact, i have family who were psych ward nurses, and its like they intentionally avoid learning about mental health, and just thrive off the drama and dinner time stories they can tell all their guests. i don't fucking trust anyone after working in mental health/institution adjacent places.
most of my life i feel i was chasing permission to be in pain, from anyone deemed as more authoritative. when i was in school, this would mean seeking validation from teachers, doctors, random people online. i used to ruminate over diagnoses, being in the psych ward, how deep i was self harming etc. i was on some medications, but not for any "solid" illness or whatever, it was literally just not being able to cope with being treated like crap with little reprieve or understanding, and they were prescribed by people who would not have interacted with me for more than 15 minutes total, and people i would never see more than once. i feel like as a society we treat everyone as a liability and resource instead of humans, and i feel that all these "trusted" people that every pamphlet directs you to has more to do with monitoring and self admission of risk over any kind of help.
i had a suicide attempt when i was 12, and it seemed like the fixation was on some sort of "anxiety". i couldn't speak about why i had attempted because my parents were in the room. when i could speak about it, what others had done to me was not focused on, and i did not receive any relevant peer support or anything like that. the focus was on "chemical imbalances". some teachers had known what had happened, and besides "mandatory reporting" (which is a very legal thing unfortunately, yet when as a child i report something to the police that was happening to me and others, i never hear anything back), i was treated as if i was a burden of paperwork, or not seriously. i felt like to be taken seriously i had to be considered "bad enough" but i knew i couldn't' outright say anything about how i felt or my parents would just be told. to recieve help it needs to be documented and worded in a formal clinical way, and needs an acronym saying you aren't just a normal functioning person, you are ill. no in between. i feel like we incentivize illness, not because we aren't struggling, or that we all want to attention seek on tiktok or whatever, but because that's literally how the system works for a chance to be seen. yet when you are labelled as mentally ill, you have less credibility and agency; now that persistant physical ailment must be a figment of your illness, your negative feelings due to others/the world is because you aren't taking your meds, and etc. etc. if you SH or want to die, everyone is scrambling to turn your room upside down, go through your phone, and blame irrelevant bullshit. i would just get into terrible cycles of feeing like everything i went through was just a lie, and that if the ones who were supposed to be "helping me" were siding with the people who have rejected and mistreated me, then i was in the wrong and i deserved it.
recently, i just needed some paperwork (which noone wants to do despite it being pretty easy and anyone is allowed to do it, funny enough, all they have to do is just validate why it's not safe for me to move back home and that noone else is financially supporting me 1000kms away. idk why it's so hard to do that, because if they can't, then it requires getting my parents to admit why - despite being an adult), so i contacted a low cost counsellor to ask. he was pretty flustered and had to stare me in the webcam and seriously ask "do you have very strong convictions that other people find strange?" on top of the other screening questions. he tried to do the validating thing where it kinda sounds like chatgpt. for the first time i felt like we were equal in power because i didn't expect this guy to do anything for me but listen and sign a thing or not, and i realised that he was on an unpaid placement for his masters. feeling like he was on the same level on me and couldn't influence how i saw myself, and also realising how debt riddled and poorly trained these workers are was a lot more healing than i thought tbh. like wow yeah no i don't need these people to make me feel like shit or like i don't "deserve" help when they have so little investment into me as a person.
another thing that opened my eyes, is actually getting my old medical records. this has been a pain in the butt in the way that i have to specify that they should be contacting me as an adult, and not asking my parents for permission because they're not paying $40 - $80 bucks to get stuff mailed to me. and i don't want a bunch of stuff that hasn't been in my control as a minor before to just be chucked to the next doctor. i had a look at the records, and my suspicions were correct - "family tension" was very much in the background, and the focus was on appeasing my parents the school, not helping me. clinicians said i had autistic and schizoid traits, but tried to withhold that information from me instead of letting me understand it.
i've also pledged to myself to not actually allow any clinicians to have my full story until i feel they deserve it or it benefits me. i'm so sick of the humiliation of answering hoenstly to those history of mental health questions. "and how did you try to kill yourself that time?" whatever.
i feel pretty cynical too, realising all this "help" is more just a way of monitoring and red tape and whatever. if it's not peer support, i just won't engage honestly because it's impossible for clinical support to engage honestly with you, and they will always have more power over you, with different motives. in a way, it feels like a life lesson not to trust people, and now i know exactly who to avoid. smiley therapists, smiley "career advisors", whoever is tacked on with the professional role of "support" especially in an environment like a school or workplace, i refuse to trust or disclose to. from my experience knowing people who have psychologists and "helpers" as family, these people still don't actually understand mental health issues, and really bad ones misuse their power as a "helper" in an institution against others. in fact, i have family who were psych ward nurses, and its like they intentionally avoid learning about mental health, and just thrive off the drama and dinner time stories they can tell all their guests. i don't fucking trust anyone after working in mental health/institution adjacent places.
