Have You Ever Been To A Pyschologist/ Psychiatrist ?

[THUNDER HANDS]

I went five times to a physchologist a few years ago. The guy charged $85 a visit.

I found it very interesting to sit and talk about yourself, but I just thought the whole counseling thing wasn't for me. I kept trying to analyze the psychologist. :D

I found out he used to be a priest, became an athiest and then converted to Judiasm. He was also on his third marriage.

I kept asking him questions, he kept steering the topic back to me. I answered, then would question him some more.

I must have been the most annoying patient he ever had. But that's the way I am. If someone is going to question who I am then I think I have a right to know everything about the person doing the questioning.

So what about you? Ever been to a shrink? If so, was it worth it for you?

[xJlM]

1. Not a shrink

Psychiatrists prescribe drugs. That being said, I don't use drugs. So when i was concerned about my own mental health I saw a psychologist, and he convinced me that my problems were all in my head :)

[Demonaut]

16. Waste of time

All they wanted to talk about was my PENIS

[SiobhanClancy]

2. No,but it sounds like you got a bargain..

My dad was a psychiatrist,and an office visit cost $75 and this was back in the seventies. I'm afraid if I did go to one,I'd be a lot like you were...I know their ways too well:)

[Droopy]

3. Psychologist hasn't helped as much as the psychiatrist

The psychiatrist writes the prescriptions for my meds. I've got a mental illness called schizoaffective disorder that will be with me for the rest of my life. Nothing has helped like those meds. When untreated I get so paranoid and delusional that I cannot function in society. I've been hospitalized three times and the drugs that I'm taking now have done the most for me. I'm not knocking talk therapy because I know how that can help people and I still attend a group therapy session once a week.

[Cleita]

4. I was always being sent to the school psychologist

when I was in school. He didn't think there was anything mentally wrong with me, but told me I shouldn't be questioning the nuns all the time about everything I disagreed with them on.

[Demobrat]

5. I spent seven years in therapy.

There were no drugs involved. Best money I ever spent.

[Bertha Venation]

6. therapist

At age 23, I saw a therapist who suggested I enter the hospital for depression. I fought it for three weeks, then acquiesced, realizing I had serious problems. On the ward where I stayed for two months, I met the woman who was to become the therapist who saved my life -- who changed my life. She was a psych aide on the ward, getting experience for her chosen profession. After a year w/ the therapist I started with, he moved away and suggested that this psych aide I'd connected with, Carol, take over.

She did. Her constant attention through thirteen years of my life saved my life. I was royally fucked up, and she never let me down. I moved a lot; I couldn't pay her; I made promises I didn't keep re: treatment; etc. She never quit. She took me with her through several hospital programs, practices, social programs, etc., making me a patient of whatever program she was involved in. She stuck with me during the worst years, the first three years of our work together, when I was suicidal and desperately angry. In later years she told me that she frequently feared for herself in my presence, but she never let me know it, and she never let me go.

She tells me I did it all myself, that if I hadn't stuck with it I wouldn't be the whole, happy, successful woman I am. But I just give it back to her.

Therapy is what you put into it. If you think you need help, stick with it. Just cross your fingers that you find the best help for you, as I did through sheer providence or kismet or karma or whatever. Luck. Whatever it was.

[Droopy]

8. Nice story, Bertha

You know I hate it when I hear somebody knock psychology. It's stories like yours that show that it really does work. But you got to be willing to put the effort into it. The therapist isn't going to be able just to wave a magic wand and make it all better. If only it was that easy.

[Speck Tater]

7. five different doctors told me my illness was in my head

and sent me to see five different shrinks. Finally another doctor diagnosed me correctly and I realized I'd wasted 10 years with quack doctors and shrinks.

[xJlM]

9. What a bummer

I didn't mean to take anything away from the benefits of the mental health profession in my post, I was simply trying to find some humor in my own situation. At the time i went to see a psychologist I was new to recovery and abstinence from drugs, and I was not used to feeling the things normal folks feel every day. I did not mean to imply anything else in my post. There are mental conditions for which there are no good solutions other than drugs. I probably could not have functioned like that, myself, so my hat's off to any who deal with that kind of problem on a daily basis and yet remain a functioning member of society.

[Nlighten1]

10. I highly recommend it.

Coupled with meditation lessons.

[TrogL]

11. seeing one now

to shake my DU addiction

[beanball]

12. Attention Deficit Disorder

my physchologist gave me a list of famous people with A.D.D.,the currant clown in the whitehouse and all the bush males are on the list.Checkout the book Driven to Distration by E.M.Hallowell M.D. and John J.Ratey M.D.

[rasputin1952]

13. A little while after my dad died in '65...

my mom thought I was a little "wired" compared to my two brothers, so I went to a psychologist for a few visits.

they gave me an IQ test, and a psychological evaluation, and after 4 visits, he told me I wasn't "nuts", I was just exceptionally intelligent, (I kid you not). I said "Thanks doc, that's what I thought", and never went back.

:bounce:

[DemoTex]

14. Almost daily ...

My wife is a PhD I/O psychologist (from Georgia Tech). Dr. DemoTex. But she doesn't shrink heads. She does selection, test design and validation, executive coaching, expert witnessing in federal court and all those other things it takes to keep DemoTex in retirement in the mountain home.

Darling, could you work a little harder? I need a Mini-Cooper for these damn mountain roads!

BTW: We have been married 30 years. Maybe a Porsche 356 for these mountain roads? Dear?

[Deja Q]

15. Been to too many

Since age 15, I've seen something like 10 of them. Got 12 different diagnoses... the latest one is a hoot. He'll ask me questions he'd asked on previous visits, which only made me feel more confused.

I'll agree to the ADD as tests have proven that, though the people who gave me the tests still say it's ADHD (a condition my test results conclusively proven to be false).

I'll agree I have mood swings which the med I've been taking had helped (risperdal), but given certain factors I don't trust the psychiatrist who 'confirmed' the condition. :-(

Being yelled at and treated rudely by the psychiatrist was more than enough for me to stop visiting. I don't know how HE got onto that tangent, maybe he misread what I was saying, and I was 'flustered' at the time. Oh well.

So I live without meds right now. My psych had reduced the quantity I had been taking, without telling me. Given how he's acted on prior visits, I chalked it up to him being incompetent. However, he may have thought I had been taking too much at the time. But he also, without really thinking about it, agreed to my request about Strattera, after prescribing an anti-depressent which he then revoked.

I don't know.

All I can do is survive.

I've lived without people before and I never will.

[Susang]

18. They only call it ADHD now

My sis is a phd in child psychology, with her emphasis on autism and related disorders. The APA now put all attention deficit related disorders under the blanket heading of ADHD. There are two types; inattentive type (they type I have, alas) and the hyperactivity type.

I guess they were trying to simplify things, but IMO it made things more confusing. Seriously, nobody would suspect me of having *adhd*. Hyperactive does not come to mind when people meet me! :-)

BTW, Strattera did jack shit for me. If you decide to take it, I hope it works for you. All it did was make me really sleepy.

[Fenris]

17. I've had six and I'm only 19

It took 3 just to figure out what was wrong with me. No wait, it took four.

[populistmom]

19. My mom used to take me to shrinks all the time

Then both the shrink and myself would get yelled at after the shrink said I was a normal, healthy child, but I was in a family with problems. Ahhhh, joyful memories.

[Philostopher]

20. Psychologist.

The year my first hubby and I separated. My folks were upset and disappointed about it, so even talking to them was more difficult than would have done me any good, and I didn't have any friends who really seemed to want to say anything to me but either 'oh, hang with him, it's just a phase' or 'get the hell out, if that's what you want, I can't tell you what to do.'

Did a couple of months once a week with a clinical psychologist who helped me work through all the reasons staying would be destructive, and all the reasons getting out would be difficult, and what would ultimately be the best thing for me -- and in the process helped me to realize my ex had serious problems of his own, and that he wasn't going to get any better if he didn't get treatment (I'd given him a one-year moratorium and he hadn't done it, that was when I left). Staying would have been the most destructive alternative, if things didn't change, both for him and for me.

See, my folks were too invested; my friends liked having me at their disposal whenever they wanted my company. The person I was paying to talk to had no investment in my life other than to perform as a doctor. She was the one person I could count on to have something like my best interests in the front of her mind when I was talking to her.

It was the best decision I ever made -- going to see her when I did made it possible for me to get through a lot of the garbage that came later without getting in over my head and becoming suicidal. I've been chronically depressed with spikes in the winter most of my life, but she didn't seem to think medication was indicated unless I started having suicidal thoughts. I never got that bad, so I never went on antidepressants. I would if I ever did, but I've never gotten to that point with it.

[onebigbadwulf]

21. Had to go after my parents divorced

when I was 7. However, that's not something therapy or anything can fix. After several thousands of dollars later, and no progress my mom gave up.

For the love of God, if your kid wants to live with the other parent- LET THEM!!!