Is This How You People Live? Therapist goes to psychiatrist for the first time

Yeah, you really have to have a network of people who can tell you if your psychiatrist is legit or not. I had a friend (past tense on had) who brought her psychiatrist with her to hang out with us at a bar??? and then he hit on me the entire time with like waaay too much handsy stuff and words I won't repeat here and invited me back to his house although I was 23 at the time and he was like in his late 30's??? also he was married but he kept saying it was OK because they had a open marriage but like...I'm in my early twenties??? Like everything about him was a huge "yikes" and he kept using stuff about me that he must have heard from my friend in their therapy sessions as like a weapon to try and get me to be nice to him. It was crazy.

Basically I told him to never talk to me again or touch me again--and as I'm like "should I get the bouncer" his wife comes over, and drags him away to explain "yo you have crossed a line" and he came back and was like "Don't worry, I have lots of friends and clients like you--you'll like me eventually. No one ever likes me when they first meet me" and it was like...I just told you to stop talking to me wtf. So I freakin ditched them and stood in the crowd of strangers in probably the most sketchy bar I have been in in my entire life rather than hang out with my friend.

anyway, I'm not her friend anymore, for reasons I won't go into. And like, I know not every therapist is like that--but how is he even like...accredited? It was crazy.

I hope that now she has a different therapist, but I had to talk to a lot of my friends who have been to therapy to say "yo is that...normal? At all?" And they were like "No! not at all!" which was...super reassuring.

Not to scare anyone from therapy, of course, but just be mindful that you don't have to take the first therapist you see and you probably won't take the first therapist that you see, especially if you have a budget like this girl did and was basically going to him because she didn't know her other options.

I remember one of the first therapists (idr his credentials) I went to brought up medication within the first 30 minutes of our appointment and insisted I take the prescription with me when I left. (I didn't fill it.)

I just remember being taken aback because I didn't feel all the things he said I was supposed to be feeling. At one point, he isn't I was depressed because I laid down under a table during a performance and people reported it to his office. I wasn't in a depressive mood. I just needed a place to nap for a bit.

I am grateful I found another doctor who helped me learn how to manage my anxiety disorder and treat the negative side-effects it was having on my body. I wouldn't have gotten help if that guy was my only option for treatment.

I've been in and out of therapy for the last 11 years. I've gone to different psychotherapist and have even tried different types of mental therapy. I always feel like I'm being looked done on or mocked. In some cases, I have felt outright ignored. In fact, when I was a teen, one told my mom I was just attention seeking.

I just left the last one right after covid hit last year. I'm so sick of not being able to find someone who will help me and being forced to work on my issues alone. It's so damn stressful and nobody will prescribe me anything because I won't "Cooperate" with them. Like what the hell! Just because I don't want to meet every week or once a month, they don't want anything to do with me.

It just pisses me off that most of my issues are "Made up" or "only temporary." It even stinks when I get told "I don't see you enough to make a proper diagnoses."

Thanks for the resources. I've gone to them and bookmarked them for when I'm ready to try again.

I think it's better than nothing.
Here for example we didn't have any sort of psychiatric or psychotherapist qualified help till like the 2000s maybe (Before that it was more of a tool to get political undesirables away into nuthouses, and a bit after that nobody could care less about psychological health in a falling-apart country), and probably 90% of the "specialists" are either don't know what the fuck are they doing (since we began to catch up with the rest of the world just 20 years ago and there's still psychologists who think Freud was the pinnacle of truth), or just flat out bought their diploma illegally in a crosswalk tunnel.
I'm actually a bit envious that you guys have a working system you trust, and there's no social stigma against seeking this kind of help (Here if you mention that you might have psychological problems, everybody begins to view you either as a whiner that can't just solder on, since you're obviously faking it because you're clearly not a drooling moron or a violent psycho, you're not even suicidal). Sometimes I think I should seek some help, but with no way of knowing in advance if the guy behind the desk will be even competent, let alone sympathetic and not dismissive, and the whole "having sessions with a psychologist" perceived as some premium thing that the rich people do, not the common folk, well... The chance of it being just a waste of rather significant amounts of money (or, at worst, be waste of money AND actually damaging) is rather very high.

I mean i'm still going to a psychiatrist, I just don't have the money to keep paying for a therapist I have to vet first when i'm actually functioning well without one lol

While I found two really good psychotherapists over my years of suffering from depression and PTSD, I never ever managed to find a psychiatrist who was good or listened to anything or was at least a bit careful in the way they gave me their medication. I also went to a clinic for several weeks and the psychiatrists there also tried to shove down the pills, regardless how bad side effects were (we had several people blacking out every day, throwing up, not eating anymore, doing suicide attempts etcetera), because they usually put the medication on a really high level from the start instead of slowly going up and disregarded every complain of the patients that they feel much worse than before.

All the psychiatrists I dealt with in my last 20 years of experience with them, were always like: Yeah suck it up, its normal to have side effects for several months and if you feel like you don't have positive effects, it's cause you are not open enough for the medication, so it's your fault.

I hate them and I decided after taking antidepressants for 10+ years to never again do that and instead have a really good therapist and somehow fight my way without any pills.

I don't say these pills don't help, they surely do for some people. But finding the right one's, the right amount and the right doctor to give them to you is sometimes near impossible.

she tells me "it's great you can still do art on your medication."
This is factually incorrect, fam. Medication does not stifle your artistic impulse. It's a point I make to people constantly, because artists will go off their medication if it threatens their livelihood.

I'd like to draw attention to this point. I agree whole-heartedly. So many people seem to romanticize mental illness, especially artists. People buy into that tiresome cliche of "you must suffer for your art." Meanwhile, going on antidepressants snapped me right out of a miserable artistic slump. It seems mental healthcare providers actually know what they're talking about, some of the time.

Anyway, sorry that you've had such a bad experience with that psychiatrist. I've never had an experience that bad with one. I can't help but wonder if some of her condescension came from other aspects of your identity. You presented yourself as an artist and a married woman, while I am a single male engineer. My guess was that she assumed you were utterly dependent on your husband, too frail to handle your own affairs. At the risk of understatement, she seems overly parsimonious in her assumptions.

I had a therapist once, told them I was an artist and she would constantly tell me that "maybe getting a job would make me feel more fulfilled in life" So I wouldn't feel suicidal anymore!
So I was getting nagged about jobs and moving out at home and at therapy.
when I literally couldn't do either because of my disability.
her also telling me to go to college to get a good job to afford a place to live- when I never even passed my GED just made me feel worse.
I remember telling her she was lucky to have gone to college, most people never do or they never finish it and she got mad at me.

She also thought I was lying when I told her I knew 3 different people who had gotten addicted to prescription medications she said "that's not possible those aren't addictive"
You don't just tell a patient their life experience is wrong.
and the therapist I have now called my BF's A-sexuality a "problem"
but she's the best therapist I've had so far and she's at least putting in an effort to help me, unlike the others.
I just hope she stays cause every other therapist left without warning.

My psychiatrist on the other hand, she just asked me like 3 questions and gave me zoloft which I had a really bad reaction to and made me even more averted to medication. I'm on Buspirone now, so I don't freak out in public and I might need to switch meds again soon too if my therapist ends up diagnosing me with bipolar. But meds are scary idk

yea the last agency I was with was really terrible, they make my mental health worse instead of better

my new therapist is good though, different agency too she doesn't have the "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" mentality despite being part of an agency and she's told me she has no intention of leaving. I like her, she might have opinions I disagree with but she actually tries.

I think its so nice that you added those resources for people in the thread though, I wont need them but thats really considerate of you <3