hsphaven

I stare at a blank page not sure where to start this post. A page empty as my life now.

My psychologist of four years had been trying to organise a “support team” for me after watching me deteriorate. She spoke with my inpatient psychiatrist, to my NDIS support coordinator, to my physiotherapist. She had me and my family thinking how lucky I am to have such a caring, proactive psychologist. But she left out one minor detail: she wasn’t going to be part of this team. I’m not sure when exactly she decided this. But on Monday, at our “family planning session”, she dropped the bombshell on us. She told us I’ve got no where with her, am too unstable to work with and she wasn’t going to continue working with me unless I am better. She wanted to dump me in a Community Care Unit where I would live and have 24 hour support.

I didn’t understand where all this was coming from. I had been getting frustrated that she would not even read my emails. I tried to call the clinic that week as I was experiencing some scary dissociative symptoms, and they ignored my call. But I had no idea she would leave me. She had said before she was committed to me, and wanted to work with me. When I went to stay in regional Victoria she was disappointed and said she wanted me to come back so we could continue our work together. Every time we’ve had rifts before she said she valued our relationship, had seen me through so much and it would be a shame for it to end. She won my trust. I thought she was different to the other therapists. But they are all the same. All this time she had one foot out the door. All this time she was pretending to be somebody she was not. The person I thought she was, was a lie. Suddenly I discovered her true colours. She was a sociopath whose care was fake. She had groomed me for years and now it was time to ignore, stonewall and discard me like a piece of trash. She knew all too well how traumatic withdrawing her care would be for me. She knew about all the other mental health professionals who had done this to me. She watched me as I bled when my case manager left. But instead of picking me up, she pulled out a dagger herself and joined the assault.

The mental health system is full of sociopaths. They have an amazing ability to turn their hearts off like a switch. Even though I have encountered many, they continue to slip through my radar. I’m at a point where I do not trust people anymore, especially mental health professionals. I do not trust MYSELF anymore, either. I do not trust my judgement as I continue to let these people get close to me, not knowing they are dangerous. I give them so much of myself. I hand them my heart. I sewed a handmade card for my psychologist one Christmas which she got framed and placed in her office. Similarly, I spent 6 months making a painting for a previous psychologist, only to have her abandon me too. I tried to get the painting back but I could not. I lose a little bit of myself each time. I believe my BPD is a big part of why I attract these people. We slot together like two jigsaw pieces. They immediately recognise the hole in me and my burning need for love. They will then morph themselves into the person they know I long for. The nurturing mother, the hero. A dependency is then formed which feeds their ego. As a person with BPD, I look up to them. I idolise them. They love this. My mum commented that my psychologist acted like she was the hotshot all through the meeting. She went on about how much she knew, even claiming to know more about me and what is best for me than I do myself. She is now studying clinical psychology. She wants to climb to the top. She wants status. I can’t believe I was blinded to her true nature all this time. There were some red flags earlier, such as the way she reacted when I told her I’d found her on Facebook. She blocked my profile, and got her entire family to as well as though I was a dangerous criminal. She even mocked me, changing her name to “U cant find me” and changing her display picture to a rabbit. I just missed her between sessions and wanted to know about her. I was incredibly hurt by her childishness. I guess she didn’t want me to level the playing field. She liked being the one who knew everything about me while I knew nothing about her. Whoever this person was, she feverously didn’t want me knowing. Maybe she knew she was rotten at the core and didn’t want me to find out.

I believe my psychologist is incapable of genuine empathy. My mum commented that when I said I wasn’t feeling good in the meeting, my psychologist didn’t seem sorry, but actually seemed like she enjoyed it. She is capable of cold empathy, of understanding what motivates people and what hurts people. But she is incapable of hot empathy. She cannot feel other people’s pain, which is why she can do such cruel, ruthless things like turn her back on someone in need. My dad stood up for me in the family meeting. He said that she could “dress up” the meeting as a supportive meeting all she likes, but the reality is she is doing the dirty and abandoning me just like all the mental health workers that proceeded her. Everyone saw how traumatic that was for me and she was going to put me through it all over again. I ended up swearing at her in that family meeting and walking out. I was extremely distressed and while I always turned to her for comfort, she was the very person hurting me now. There are no words for how fucked up this all was. I headed for the busy road and almost walked in front of the oncoming cars. It all felt like a dream. I just stood there for a while, then went and lay down on a rocky nature strip next to the driveway. Some ladies who were on their way home from class stopped to help me. I told them I wanted to kill myself. They called an ambulance for me. Then my parents came out. I had a packet of diazepam in my bag and started taking them all I was so distraught. I only managed to have two before my mum grabbed the sheet off me.

“They’re mine!!!!!” I screamed.

“I want my pills!!!!!!!!!”

I was hysterical.

Interestingly the two ladies were studying mental health. These were people who genuinely had a heart. One of the ladies was incredibly warm hearted. She got me up from the ground and walked me over to the car. Initially an ambulance wasn’t going to be sent, but I think after my mum told them on the phone that I had tried to overdose, they decided to send one. Eventually it came: hallelujah! I didn’t notice, but today when my mum saw me she said that my psychologist came out of her office and headed to her car when the ambulance was there. My mum signaled to her to come over but she turned her back on us and continued on to her car. I think that really says it all. She was just like Betty when my friends tried calling her to tell her I was not ok. They asked if they could speak to her but Betty refused to speak to them. She didn’t want to know about it. It all felt like deja vu.

The ambos were really lovely, as usual. It was two men this time. One of them thought it was pretty negligent that my psychologist did nothing and in the end it was two members of the public who arranged help for me. I was in a lot of distress with the ambos. I often had outbursts where I screamed how betrayed I felt and how could my psychologist do this to me. In the emergency department I was so distressed one of the nurses held me while I quivered and cried. I spent the night in the emergency department and barely slept. Yesterday I was moved to PAPU, a short stay psychiatric unit which I am often put in. The nurses and doctors frequently found me “losing my shit” as they put it where I would be screaming, pounding the ball outside, throwing the pamphlets everywhere and then lying on the floor crying. I was in shock, and whenever I tried to get some rest in my bed all I could think about was this horror of losing my psychologist. Losing this person who I told everything to, who was the highlight of my week and the closest person in my life. This person who I thought was my rock, who would stick with me through thick and thin. Life suddenly became unbearably empty. There was no longer a single thing I looked forward to. My psychologist was a drug and I was in withdrawal. I’ve been shaking, panicking, crying, screaming, suicidal, starving myself, dreaming of her and feeling like I can’t deal with life now that she is gone. I couldn’t stand being alone, and kept calling for a nurse.

“Hell is not a place we go when we die,” I told them.

“It’s right here. I’m living it. There is something hellbent on making me suffer.”

I didn’t know if I was going to survive this, or even if I wanted to survive it. I was given so much diazepam when I came to hospital but it didn’t even scratch the surface.

I’ve bombarded my psychologist’s phone with a million hate messages telling her she’s a traitor and I will never forgive her for what she’s done to me.

I feel so sad as I remember the good times. The time she was late for her class as I was in so much distress after our session that I was going to take some sleeping pills and then drive home on them. I ended up lying on the floor of her office non-verbal as she held my hand and communicated what was happening to me. She waited with me until the ambulance arrived. I don’t know how to reconcile the kind person I thought she was with how she abandoned me in the end. I think it’s hypocritical she calls herself a trauma expert. No intervention that takes power away from the survivor can possibly foster their recovery, no matter how much a therapist may think it’s in their own best interest.

I wrote a previous post which is very relevant to all this. It is called “Narcissists and toxic relationships”.

The thing that’s helping me get through this is telling myself I haven’t lost anything, that the person I thought my psychologist was is a lie. My anger is my friend here, and I need it to destroy my attachment to my psychologist and push her away from me. It’s still going to be very rough for a while. There is a huge hole in my life now that I won’t be seeing my psychologist each Monday now. It was the only thing in my week that I bothered to dress nicely for. There is a part of me that wants to reach out to others and continue believing in love, but there is also a part of me that has given up on love and wants to withdraw from everyone. My psychologist has emotionally abused me and it has really shattered my world. I am not sure yet if I can continue seeing mental health professionals after this. It is hard to explain this kind of abuse to people. I just explain to the nurses here that I was abused by my psychologist which is why I scream and cry all the time.

My mum got the phone numbers of the two ladies who found me on the ground and helped me the other day. We want to take them out for lunch when I am feeling better, and maybe a beautiful relationship will unfold from all this, who knows. I hope real love and genuine care exists. I hope I will stop doing such self-destructive things to myself like starving myself and attempting suicide. I hope there is life after this trauma.