Appointment with Dr. She today.
I tell her I think it is good we upped the meds. I did not even cry (just got a bit teary eyed) at my daughters performances.
But I also feel a bit bored or boring now.
Dr. She is not surprised. She talks about the highs and the processing abilities that can come with bipolar. She tells me how it feels and when it is exhilarating, and how people can be a bit addicted to it. She tells me that is why so many people go off meds. Dr. She seems to understand it so well and describes it so well that I find myself wondering if she is bipolar herself, if she has been manic too. But I don't ask. I'm not entirely sure why. I think I have before and as she explains further she seems to know this from her experience working with people like me.
I remember conversations with my brother-in-law about this too...
and I remember a year ago, after my last recorded appointment with Dr. P -for the record I had another after that but he said he would not charge me and somehow got it off the records- but I remember the appointment where I was as high as a kite in mania, but managing because I have experience and I was believing the email where Dr. P said I was not. But I was high, high, high, and quite childish and I don't know how he could have possibly missed that entirely... But back to my point, somehow Dr. P had a drug like effect and just meeting with him helped to calm the mania, though it did not cure it entirely; just enough though, that I remember substitute teaching in a second grade class a day or two later and feeling bored with it... Even 30 second graders was boring. ...
and hmmm... now as I reframe my thinking, of course they were boring, not because I was level but because I was not. I was still too high, but at least level enough not to do anything rash about the boringness of it all.
That was a different boring; now the real boring starts. I will be a boring person again on medication and even though Dr. She has a lot of experience with people intentionally going back to the excitement, that will not be me. It is too painful and difficult to manage so I am grateful for boring.
Now I can really decide what to do with my life and my time. And that is at least exciting....
though I am really very gun-shy.
Dr. She asks why and she is surprised that I say I am very insecure because she thinks I exude confidence and security. It seems to be a common misconception about me. Maybe I over compensate, or maybe, even though I am insecure, I am still just who I am and not very interested in being not who I am, which just might be what confuses people?
I don't know.
But I think I will work on not being so insecure.
We talked about Dr. P again. I wanted clarification on why Dr. She does not want me to believe Dr. He's boundary violations had anything to do with me. I think she wants me to believe that I am not special or something like that. It was all just him, I was irrelevant. She is a bit confused by my questioning, because she does not understand my insecurity, the invisible that I was when I so desperately needed to be seen, I needed to be special -but really I didn't, I just needed to be seen, heard, and helped.
Dr. She and I do a brief awkward communication dance until we make sense of each other. I was misunderstanding, she wants me to understand that it was not me, I am not to blame for his mistakes. She tells me he held all the cards, it is something that is always hard for me to accept, but I am understanding better and I know how accurate that really is.
I tell her it frustrates me that I still feel an attachment and it does not make sense especially considering how he has handled it, but she is not surprised. She points out, "but that is what you do, you love people." and I do. She tells me that I don't need to love everyone and/or something about discerning better who deserves to be loved.
I tell her, "everyone deserves to be loved."
She tells me, "that is true, but they don't all deserve to be loved by you."
This turns into a funny communication dance and she laughs when I say, "but Jesus says love everyone, and treat them kindly too."
I am not entirely sure how we ended that conversation but I believe it was a good natured, though unspoken, agree to disagree kind of move on.
I ask her opinion. She thinks Dr. P is an idiot. At best he was negligent, at worst malicious. ... lately it feels malicious... Some things have always hinted that way, but I don't say it out loud. She reminds me that she is not so concerned about his motives, she is concerned with the effects. She is concerned with the harm he caused and she wants me to understand that he did cause harm. He did. Not me, him.
She wants me to understand that it was traumatic and that is the only reason she is okay with me ruminating on his motives. She acknowledges that I am improving so that hopefully makes my bringing it up again more bearable for her. She understands the trauma, she can explain it to me and I understand. She explains that I did not do anything that was not within the scope of what would or could be expected. She is not surprised by how my body reacted to the circumstances. She is not surprised by how it has effected me. She is not surprised by the way it still effects me. She speculates he maybe "just didn't care" when I ask "but how could he not know it could not possibly end well for me with the things he said and especially under the circumstances?" ...Right now it does not pierce my heart nearly as sharp to hear that he maybe "just didn't care."
She sees that I return to the concern about motives when I feel misunderstood and even blamed or shamed by others. She explains that she has had many patients who have been harmed by malpractice and they share similar misunderstood blaming and shaming by friends and family members. She says it is too scary and too far outside of peoples comfort zone to accept that the doctors and medical professionals we so highly trust and value so very much could make mistakes and cause harm. She tells me about a lady whose surgeon had left a sponge in her brain and she shared almost identical feelings about how people treated her as if it were somehow her fault. I was surprised and yet also sadly not. But it definitely helped me feel better; my situation is at least less obvious so it is understandable and yet also it would be harder for me to see these reactions to me as their problem and their insecurities and not mine.
It is sad how we re-victimize people and I wonder if that is what Dr. Concussion was up to? She may really be the one who should be held accountable for the very unnecessary suffering of not being medically treated when I was in fact manic and then fading and she just kept trying to pass the buck without providing adequate or appropriate assistance with that. Acting as if she were treating and/or willing to help but then not.
The games.
It is so bizarre to me, the games they played with me. I am not a liability, I am not a toy, and I am not a buck to be passed. I am human and I deserve to be treated as such, regardless of if the provider believes in forever anymore or if they don't want to be bothered.
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