I don’t know where to begin this. There’s a lot here.

I have been sharing my story with so many people. The court thing, the IOP thing, the boyfriend thing, the school thing, and now a church thing. (The church thing is a whole separate issue, and now there’s a therapy issue that’s the inspiration of today’s rant.)

My mom, who we love to hate because she’s the same as me in all the ways I wish I weren’t myself, says, “You’re upset your boyfriend never stood up for you.”

Fuck.

That was it. She got it.

Somewhere in the series of these blogs over the past few months was a recurrent thread: people were not standing up for me, and choosing instead to harm me. CCU through theit dumb adminstrative shit did this. My neighbors through their dumb inistence that my mental illness needed police violence on me. My boyfriend (the last ex) who brutally turned around the story to defend himself. My recent ex who didn’t stand up for me. The friends at CCU who fucking loved me for advocating for them but refused to value me when I asked them to support and stand up for me, as well. The IOP program full of therapists whose skills to stand up for themselves were so bad I was traumatized. The COT program forced upon me by the court because they said that my proper reading of police misconduct meant they needed to interrogate me as well, and it must be false if I was now in a further mental health crisis from their police brutality placed upon me.

The world is unkind.

I am on a damn soapbox today about how harmful the world is.

The church thing?

In a nutshell, ever since I moved back home, I tried joining back my church from when I was in high school. The people were mean, rude, unkind, and an echo chamber. Asking me to educate them and getting upset when I did with reasonable moderate sources and data that sometimes, not always, called them out for harming me in their stances.

They wanted to fight me that I didn’t know what I was talking about.

They didn’t ask me for my background.

They heard I was a queer DV survivor. And they began to fight me.

And thus my issues run high and my disdain is easily tracked.

I have met with therapists who were so, so poorly trained in PTSD-SP (which I am well aware is fucking rare and a damn mess to treat) that when I would begin to tell the story, their first words were to fight me in retort on all of this.

One day I will change the face of PTSD-SP, C-PSTD, PTSD, and DID treatment.

Today is not that day, though.

Today is the day for my story of wrapping up where people have not stood up for me.

I have met with therapists who have been so, so poorly supervised that they were not led in how to have a discussion on what to do when they don’t agree with a grey area of ethics of another clinician. I have been disrespected by numerous senior-level clinicians who look at my dx profile and assume I must be stupid or unethical.

One day I will change how we supervise and train clinicians.

One day I will explain that supervision and ethics are not a matter of “by the book”.

One day I will fight tooth and nail to alter how we accredit programs to ensure that people aren’t just “adequate” who get through to treat complex disorders.

One day I will change how we train clinicians to market themselves.

Today is not that day.

I do not know if that day will ever really happen.

I hope I get there, though.

People who don’t know how to respond to disrespect are people who sit there and take it. People who are like me fight back, immediately. My first therapist taught me to stand up for myself. Little did she know she needed to stand up to the doctor for me. One therapist didn’t like my vocality; she was appalled that I would say she wasn’t helping or was giving me faulty rationale. Little did she know part of experience is taking critique in a healthy way from your client. Another therapist knew that not having the words meant she needed to sit there before she said something wrong. Little did she know that I knew the words. When I told her how I would respond, she goes, “I appreciate you calling him out; not a lot of people would know how to respond to that”. And I knew what she meant.

The COT program forced upon me did the same game almost.

Asking for everything I needed and wanted was met with false information, false reports and even discrediting my story due to someone else’s definition of me. It was all “you got scared by the court; hope that helps” and thinking I wouldn’t know that was code for you think we fucking care about you, you piece of scum who the court didn’t even listen to?

I tried an IOP to see if they would give me better coping skills to get through it.

Um, well, people didn’t stand up for me there, either. It was a big game of needing them to feel okay about their overwhelm and anxiety. It was telling them how you were feeling harmed and overwhelmed by a lack of services and getting responses demonstrating a lack of ability but a necessity to attend poor service delivery, anyway.

One day I will train schools to teach group counseling effectively.

One day I will educate people in proper coursework on this.

One day my knowledge as a teacher will make it into clinical programming.

Today is not that day, though.

When we are in environments where we are expected not to stand up for ourselves, those are toxic. When we are in enviornments where standing up for ourselves gets turned around on us, that’s abusive. When those spaces force us to listen to them, RED FLAG!

Somewhere in here is me with my coarkboard full of pushpins and string connecting the dots. There are printed pictures and weird words displayed, I’m sure.

Thing is, I know I’m unconventional.

I know I’m not the “ideal” person you’d expect as a clinician.

I get it.

My methods aren’t conventional or in a book.

Hell, I’m writing a “DBT for the Modern Era” with examples from Shitt’s Creek.

I’m atypical, non-traditional, and a basket case at times.

My methods aren’t taught, but damn it, they’re pretty fucking great!

After all, how are we to help our patients/clients if we aren’t willing to push and question some of the boundaries and rules placed on us?

XOXO,

Dorothy B