this might be more vent-ish and long winded than i intended it to be so i might eventually delete but i desperately need to get it off my chest somewhere and to people who might Get It ?
general cw for topics of mental health and suicide (i’m not sure what else to tag specifically!)
i previously saw the same therapist for 2 years straight and i’ve been bouncing around different ones ever since. i’m on my fourth one since then and it’s probably been the worst experience i’ve had with a therapist yet.
i’m bipolar 2 with adhd, and our latest appointment was the last straw. i was hypomanic this time, but very low and suicidal in the last appointment, which prompted her to oh-so-kindly tell me “thank god you’re feeling better, if you were still suicidal i’m not sure i would be able to keep you as a client because its not something i can deal with.” this was a therapist who advertised herself as specializing in bipolar.
i absolutely should not have done this in hindsight but i couldn’t keep my mouth shut at the time because, well, hypomania and impulsivity and whatnot, but later on in the session i mentioned that i was worried about immigrants in the US and mass deportations and Evil and Doom and that a lot of my friends were scared too. my therapist replied with, word for word, “well, if you and your friends aren’t illegals there’s nothing to worry about right?” i was so dumbfounded i just did not answer for a good 10 seconds and then changed the subject. there was nothing to say. i felt genuinely sick afterwards. i guess it was on me for bringing it up to someone whose opinions i wasn’t familiar with, but when would anyone be familiar with their therapist’s political opinions ??? isn’t that an ethical boundary or something
TLDR needless to say i am once again looking for a new provider. i’ve tried pretty much every website for finding people in my area. i dont like online stuff/zoom meetings so that severely narrows my options. i guess i’d like to know what sort of questions i should be asking people? to narrow out the Weird and Offputting providers if there’s even a way to do that? i don’t know. im just tired bros. any input on how to make things not suck would be appreciated because im just so disillusioned with the whole Mental Health System at this point. thanks for reading this far.
That would have been a last-session conversation for me. That's absolute bullshit. I'm sorry you're going through this, and I'm convinced more and more each day that good therapists are hidden behind a paywall (which I kind of understand because they have to carry so much of other's pain, but it should be free for the patient and this capitalist hellscape can't allow that). If you're able to make the switch, maybe a neurodivergent therapist would be best? Someone on here once linked ndtherapists.com which might be a good place to start if you haven't encountered it before, since you can search by state and specialty. I wish I could give you more than that, beyond empty words from a stranger. Are meds with a psychiatrist an option you've already tried?
i see a psychiatrist for medication management once a month but i find more frequent talks with a therapist helpful too, but this definitely was a last-session convo and i don’t plan on going back to this therapist at all lol. thank you for the link to ndtherapists, i already went through the list for my area and plan on reaching out to someone new from there so hopefully it works out !! i agree with your sentiment about the paywalls. i am incredibly thankful to be on a “good” insurance right now that makes things manageable and accessible but i previously had issues with insurance in the past for non-psychiatric matters and it was kind of a nightmare.
Really hope you can find something/ someone that helps comrade, it's crazy out there