‘Go get help!’

People throw this around like help is something that can be bought.

As if social support can be substituted with someone only available for money.

Sure, that concept serves a capitalistic, anti social connection and emotional expressive society, but let’s look at what ‘help’ includes as a standard.

See its been twenty four years since my first ‘check-in’ to an institution for ‘help’ when in emotional crisis that lead to an attempted suicid3. 

I had just survived considerable abuse, stalking, the murder of two of my family members (I was supposed to be there with them), emotional neglect during extreme grief, and multiple r’pes by men meant to be family safe. I was desperate to be heard and knew it wasn’t in the cards after habitual abandonment. I could not bear the concept that I was to keep tolerating more abuse, and saw no point in living through it.

So my family checked me in after finding out about my failed attempt. Thirteen and already 5’6” with a resentment for being turned over to ‘pros’ for help with something the other members of my family were supported through. So, when they gave me a 500 question test I did my best to answer the most unhealthy perspective put of spite. They were over crowed with teens so they ditched me in the adult wing with those who were unlikely to ever see freedom again.

My first night I was awoken by a woman much smaller than me, but stronger by far. After years of being held down, I had no urge to fight back. An orderly came in and pulled her off me. They still made me stay the night next to her after they drugged her. By the end of the next day they decided to put me in with the people my age.

A week I spent, heavily drugged, trying to make friends and be heard, earnestly grateful that for once I wasn’t to be alone and punished if I cried or showed frustration. When I was checked out I was given a load of diagnosis, some of which were not at all accurate, none included ptsd. 

They had entirely dismissed the trauma in my life. Sure, I hadn’t reported the child abuse, neglect, and r’pe, but they for real dismissed a year of stalking and two murders…

I was also discouraged from staying in contact with anyone. So no longterm support outside of people that were paid.

This continued and worsened as they upped and added more drugs over and over again. Each making my behavior worse and me a zombie otherwise. The therapy, while life saving and helpful, also taught me to tolerate/survive abuse with toxic positivity and submission. The idea being that I could leave when I reached adulthood; only behavior patterns and tolerance stick around.

My next trip I turned myself in before I made an attempt on my own life. More drugs, though the break from familia abuse was helpful, ultimately I was punished more than it helped. 

My advanced art teacher resented mental health diagnosis, particularly the one my mother insisted was true. The woman I looked up to switched so fast on me I got emotional whiplash. She decided I was to have three days to do TWO pottery projects for the week missed. The school standard was 3 days for every one missed.  Still, the principal claimed hands were tied.

A classmate saw her drop my first piece right out of the kiln. She told me it exploded and that was at the three days she gave so she failed me for the whole project… and class as I confronted her for the injustice which turned into an event that was clearly reactive abuse and medicated de-regulation combined. Her F dropped my gpa below the needed for top 10% on graduation and removed me from being able to join an honor society that would have granted more scholarships.

That makes twice the mental hospital help hurt me more in life, but that’s not the end of my traumatizing reaching for professional help experiences.

Mind you still misdiagnosed and in college the next time I was ready to remove my life. I had gone agoraphobic, lost my job, stopped going to classes, locked myself in the dorm post a r’pe at my first ever real party. I had been drinking and blacked out. Only time I ever drank that much. The person who got out of the car before he took me to r’pe me, was helping me have food and found me with blades around the shower. I had sat there for two hours weeping and ready yet… so she called my mom and I was checked in.

My therapist had decided I needed extra help without telling me what that meant. So this different hospital came with something far more severe: shock therapy. Something I had recently learned was made illegal due to how harmful it was in the birth of psychology… shocked to find it re-legalized and found in a female only hospital. I saw it for what it was: a reinsurgance of sex¡sm in psychology.

They only served pork or eggs for every meal. Something that made my then undiagnosed POTS symptoms worse. IE it increases my adrenal response to standing/ low bp which in turn impacts my behavior/ mood.

For a whole week therapists, psychologists, psychiatrists, even other women framed shock therapy as the only solution to trauma. One nurse even telling me that I was choosing to suffer by not allowing them to begin my treatments. Mind you I was still carrying all kinds of false diagnosis and the amount of pills by this point was a hand full in am and pm. (Eventually a date commenting on that number spurred a dr change that straightened out my true ptsd needs.)

For a week I watch woman after woman who had valid reason to be upset being shocked into compliant silence. They struggled even the day of re-treatment to make proper communication. Their faces empty aside from the strain of trying to understand and exist. Drs insisted that would shift for them over time but even those ready to check out displayed it. So I refused. 

Afterwards, my therapist of ~10 years told me she couldn’t help me anymore. She was the only reason I survived and it hit like a brick. Though years later she did see me a bit more it eventually ended in my attempting to confront her about how she hurt me and her telling me how I was always the problem and didn’t want help.

I did want help. When diagnosed with ptsd the dr told me to move away. He had tried all the ptsd drugs out and my body didn’t take so he suggested I move to a legal state since weed helped me. He advised me to build a new community because I deserved support and the lack of it was part of what caused the trauma to impact me so horribly. (I still haven’t managed that.)

On to the final time I turned myself in ready to remove myself from the world. A three day stay. I looked at someone the ‘wrong’ way so he came at me ready to off me. I hid in my bathroom with my legs locked to keep the door closed for considerable time. They made me stay in groups with him after. He said I looked at him with hate; I never told anyone but I was ‘checkin’ him out sexually instead. Oh periods. The group agreed I had aggressed him. I swore to never enter another space like that again. It was not SAFE or HELPFUL.

Since I have had a few therapists that were harmful as well. One who told me they wouldn’t use ABA techniques who then did. Another who gossiped about me to professors. Another who got her office to reject my request for another after she attempted to repeatedly get me to revert to conservative view points. A couple of retired psychologists in the same town played mind games of manipulation in social settings I was trying to rebuild within.

There was one lady in all of this that held space for me and accepted where I was while helping me dissect and work through reflections of the past. She helped me see how often it was not my fault and that trying to replay to prevent these abuses was only abusing myself for things out of my control. ONE. Another psychologist diagnosed me with a couple additions to ptsd that are accurate. Which makes TWO of those that heard me like a human.

So when you tell people who are seeking social support to go get ‘help’, please understand your avoidance of awareness of their lives isn’t just harmful to yourself and them BUT you could very well be sending them somewhere that could prevent recovery and possibly make it far worse.

Mental hospitals, prescriptions, and therapy are socially framed as ‘help’ from in a time when psychological science was based in forced submission and silencing. Ya’ know when medication was advertised as take home lobotomies!

Yes, SOME of them help SOME people, but they are far from meeting social support needs or solving the real problem we are all facing: 

a society of detachment from humanity in the name of serving the sparse few endowed with excessive prosperity as they ensure it with continued abuse on a massive scale to maintain their wealth.