Has a psychiatrist invalided your experiences?

Post Reply New Topic

I know that obviously a mental health professional can't "cure" or "fix" autistic spectrum disorder (ASD), and I myself find those labels hurtful, so that's that out of the way... but at times, in the past, I've often sensed microaggressions from a "therapist" towards me. Maybe they thought with my alternative communication processing "system", that I wouldn't detect it, but it's hard to say. Or maybe they didn't care. Who knows.

I know they also say that people with ASD are more naive and trusting of others, but I've got to admit that I've always been wary of mental health professionals - part of me always thought that they may not be able to suppress their personal bias to do their professional duties, especially for marginalized folk (in a similar vein to how some groups don't trust the police).

From what I've seen from random online searching, there does seem to be (still!) a great deal of ignorance among psychotherapists of how to engage with an autistic person. It's like many of them were trained to take care of "normal people problems", like breakups or divorce or addictions or betrayals.

Some minimizations I've gotten include being given layperson advice like "just avoid those people then, it's their loss" without giving me any advice as to how I could've salvaged or smoothed over certain interactions (at least they weren't blaming or shaming me for the rift with those people), OR this one time when I relayed being assaulted and threatened at a house party, with really insulting ableist kind of language with insinuation that I was gay, and I said that it was a hate crime because it was completely unprovoked, the "therapist" flippantly replied that "no, that was just a scuffle, it happens between young men".

Sometimes, I've felt like screaming at them and telling them that they know f***-all, but I kept my cool. Last thing I want is for them to conflate my condition with "unpredictable and dangerous" and have me committed or something, even if my anger was legitimate.

I know that when it comes to those on the "psychopathy spectrum" seeing therapists, from what I've read online, they face a big dilemma...they typically end up palming off the psycho patient to another specialist, under the guise of "I can't do anything more to help you, so let me refer you to someone who might be able to" - the thing is, the only reason psychos go to therapy is to learn more about how to manipulate others, so they create a ruse to fool the therapist and therapists know this.

That might have sounded like a bit of a tangent, but it's leading up to THIS: sometimes I wonder if therapists are of the same mindset, that they dread taking US as patients, and also try to palm us off to other specialists who might be able to help them.

I've only seen a Psychologist for assessing me for Autism. The assessment process was entertaining and she seemed nice to me. And she noted that, if I wanted, I could continue seeing her but she did not seem surprised that I was not interested. (I was 65 and comfortably, happily retired and, even to my surprise, I was happily married.)

But I wish other medical professionals adjusted to my being on the Autism Spectrum! As I get older I have an increasing number of interactions with medical professionals and I find interacting with them annoying...sometimes in ways I think I can fairly attribute to them not allowing for me being on the Spectrum.

I had one just a few weeks ago suggest a sleep study. Uh, no thanks. I got sensory issues and that would be a torture session for me. Instead of just dropping the idea she brought it up FIVE times until I was in tears and my mom had to tell her to shut up.

Less about me personally, and fairly minor, but -

On a group Cognitive Behaviour Therapy class for anxiety disorder, the instructor shut down anyone who said "but that's not what I do when I get anxious" or "that's not how it feels." Clearly we weren't remembering it right and needed to learn to be more perceptive.

Thing is, they were banging on a lot about the "flight or fight" reaction in the group. Years later, reading a book about animal behaviour, I found out that the real threat response has 4 Fs, not just two. Flight, Fight, Freeze and Fawn. And guess what? I rarely "fight" or take "flight" when I panic, but I "Freeze" like sodding Antarctica. Presumably there were people in the group who went into "Fawn" mode instead, particular if they've had abusive partners or parents. And the course handled none of that - we were just "wrong" to think we weren't in either Fight or Flight.