My Experience With The System

In February of 2018 I got into a very explosive exchange with my mother that immediately led to me refusing to come home for a while. That incident sparked a series of events that would lead to my father making all of us go to family therapy; something I knew would be a waste of time and tried advising against, however I was forced to go anyway.

The first therapist we saw only lasted one session, and for the entire time she would basically nod her head with a squinty look on her face as if she was really taking it all in and then would ask the most useless shit imaginable. She was the kind of therapist where you’ll describe something that obviously made you upset, and then she’ll go “so what you’re saying is that this made you upset?”. That was basically the entire session. The worst thing about her though was that I could tell the session was an ego boost for her to see a family in a state of chaos and people that were clearly fucked up.

At the time, I viewed it as her feeling good knowing that (in her mind) she was “better” and “more complete” than the patients she sees. It was clear that her job is basically a constant affirmation that makes her feel better about herself. The fact that she used a 14 year old child’s intense misfortune to achieve this; I should’ve spit on her. Upon reflection years later, I also think she simply got an egotistical thrill out of playing the therapist role too. She was such a waste of time that even my father decided it was time to find a different one.

The second therapist we saw had all of us do individual sessions for about 3 sessions each before having everyone together for one final session. I don’t really remember much of what I shared but I certainly wasn’t enthusiastic about it. The only reason I even shared anything was cause I figured I’d be in deep shit with my father if I didn’t. The therapist wasn’t too horrible, as a human being she seemed regular. I could tell she at least had good intentions. Definitely quite naive though.

The final session comes around and the only thing I remember about it was towards the end, when she asked me what it is that I needed in order to move forward. I responded saying I need to not have to speak to my mother ever again. Everybody looked at me like I was insane, as if cutting off the person that had ruined my life & drained the innocence out of me was such an unfathomable idea. I wasn’t necessarily scolded for it in that moment, but it was definitely received poorly. The therapist didn’t really agree with it either and seemed genuinely surprised, and tried to question if that was really the right course of action. Despite being deeply anxious the whole time I refused to change my stance on it. I would’ve killed myself I had to deal with her any longer. I never expressed that but it was where I was operating from. I needed her out my life since the day I was brought home from the delivery room. Once it was clear I wasn’t going to change my answer, the therapist brought the session to a close.

I remember feeling a bit betrayed by her in that moment. How the fuck do you hear everything I had to say during those 3 sessions, see it get proven in the group session, and then be surprised by what I had to say? I understood it was her job & desire to see something get resolved but it should never be at a patient’s expense. How could you think there was anything that could be fixed or worth fixing? Especially when the person causing issues can’t even admit they’re a piece of shit? How simple minded do you have to be? Without a doubt my age was a major reason why nothing I said was taken seriously. I had actually allowed myself to be tricked by that therapist into thinking just the tiniest bit that she was actually listening. If someone refuses to pull their head out their ass how the fuck is it my fault?

In December of 2019 my guidance counselor had caught wind from someone else that I was probably going to commit suicide. In response, he pulled me out of my class and had me sit in his office. He explained why I was there and said that by law he’d have to inform my parents about it and that I wouldn’t be allowed to return to school until I passed a psychiatric evaluation. My counselor of course made sure to keep telling me that he was doing all this because he “cares” and that it was to “help” me. I was intensely anxious this entire time to the point of shaking which even he noticed at some point. I had also felt deeply betrayed by several people, which made me feel an overwhelming amount of anger. My mind and my heart kept swirling between these two states. My mother eventually arrives and I honestly don’t remember anything else besides going home and forcing myself to sleep.

The next day I’m being driven to a hospital by my parents where the psych eval would be taking place. I had felt just as shitty as I did yesterday, anxiety and anger still at their peak. Any autonomy I had at that point was basically nonexistent. After a while of waiting I finally get to start the evaluation with some woman wearing a white lab coat. I already knew I was going to lie, with the main reasons being that; I wasn’t gonna let myself get sent to a psych ward, I was more suicidal than ever at that moment, and I also don’t like sharing anything about my life or self with anyone. She seemed pretty easy to finesse so I basically fed her a bullshit story about being a stressed out student that’s struggling to keep up with grades and that nothing else was bothering me. The whole thing lasted about an hour and I managed to pass the evaluation.

Now even though I knew I was going to have to lie to protect myself, I had no idea what I was going to say since I didn’t know what to even expect from a psych eval. I also had no idea what my brain was about to do mentally. My conscious basically checked itself out completely in order to create a consistent narrative, and towards the end of the evaluation I had genuinely started to believe that the lie I was telling was actually real. Once the evaluation was over, my brain went back to normal and my conscious came back to me. I remember leaving and being very confused as to what my brain just did. Nothing that took place in that room felt as if I had done it. It was all so effortless and devoid of any conscious thought. For a very long time I did not have a single clue as to what happened, and the aspect of having actually started to believe the lie had scared me a bit. I always felt like had that session been any longer my mind would’ve only gotten into it deeper.

A few months later in 2020 my life was very different, and for the first time I seriously considered going to therapy. Throughout my life, one of the biggest reasons I actively chose to avoid “professional” help was because I knew that if I tried it and it didn’t work then I’d truly feel hopeless. I knew the damage it would cause to be in a position like that would kill me. I also preferred keeping therapy in my back pocket as the last resort option because even though I never planned to use it, it still allowed me to feel like staying alive and doing what I could on my own to resist suicide was an actual choice. It provided a barrier somewhat; the idea that if I ever did decide to stop resisting there’d still be that “last resort”. Even though again, there were never any intentions to use it. It was just that the concept of having no options left terrified me.

Throughout my life I also never really had any positive views of therapy. When I thought about it in concept there seemingly wasn’t anything a therapist could do that would actually be of use to me. It’s not like they had the power to physically change the things about my life that were damaging to me. I’d be coming home to the same bullshit every day whether or not I sit in that chair. I also knew they wouldn’t take me seriously cause of my age. The first time I ever processed any desire of to go to therapy was around 12 or 13, and I already knew there’d be no point off that alone. The family therapy a year or so later would only confirm this.

The biggest reason I knew therapy wouldn’t work for me though is that they’ll lock you up for a number of things. The thoughts I had swirling in my head at any point in my teenage years were not the kind of things you tell a soul. Especially not someone who won’t hesitate to call the cops on you. All of the issues that already exist in therapy are amplified to an extreme when you’re legally & socially still a child. A lot of would be patients inherently understand this. When you’re also a kid that’s learned early you can’t trust someone just because it’s their “job” to be there for you, the concept of seeing a therapist and keeping it 100 is genuinely laughable.

Growing up I also just simply knew that the mental health system just sucked. Which is odd, because I don’t even know where that stemmed from. But as far back as I can remember, I’ve had a negative view of the system and how it operates. When I think about it, my much younger mind used to view every level of the mental health system in a similar way to how it viewed the concept of going to prison. I’m guessing it was some inherent understanding of the lack of autonomy. I’m not sure.

As I got older though, feelings would change. I think the major shift occurred when my BPD revelation in February of 2020 happened. I didn’t do a 180 on the system but I had certainly felt more open to what it had to offer. I had also simply been made aware of what it had to offer.

In relation to talk therapy, I didn’t really care anymore about using it for circumstances I was actively dealing with. The only true value I thought it would bring me would be to help me process my childhood. Older me already understood why I was treated the way I was treated, it was very simple. But younger me that was still in me still didn’t get it. This was a contradiction I knew I didn’t have the ability to get rid of myself. It was the only thing about my mind I didn’t have the ability to solve on my own. So being someone who still somewhat figured that the advertising of the magic of therapy might not have been complete bullshit, I held on to the belief that it would actually do something for me in that area.

This still didn’t change the issues I’ve always had with the entire structure of therapy though. Firstly, because it’s a set time every week, I’d have to unpack shit whether I wanted to or not. As someone that had constantly changing moods and updated states of mind every day, I was worried that whatever I unpack one week I’d be forced to follow up on next week when I might be in much better spirits. I didn’t want to put myself in a position where my better mood was at risk due to having to share things in therapy. I was easily able to imagine a heavy session causing suicidal cravings.

Secondly, you only get an hour. That’s it for 7 days. Throughout the entire time I’ve ever desired therapy, I felt like I needed to have at least one session daily just to keep my head on straight and make any progress. Especially considering the sheer mountain of things I’d have to explain and talk about just for the therapist to have a base understanding of what’s going on. At a rate of one hour per week, assuming I just got to talk uninterrupted, it would’ve taken at least a year. This doesn’t even factor in that there would be things currently happening that also need to be discussed.

Lastly, you only get an hour. No matter what sentence you’re in the middle of, or how intense the emotions you currently feel are, once that hour is up it’s over. I hated the idea of getting worked up to a point where I’m feeling all these emotions just to get left behind once the time runs out. To be left in an unpredictable state with no sense of resolution that I’d have to deal with on my own every time. I knew how shitty this would feel. I didn’t want to go through that.

I also didn’t want to have to go through the process of finding a therapist that isn’t dog shit. Having to repeat yourself is already annoying but having to repeat an hour’s worth of words indefinitely until you find someone good enough is frustrating and exhausting. Then you gotta factor in the actual experience of dealing with a therapist that makes you wish you had a comically large frying pan. Over and over.

Throughout the year of 2020 therapy would be something I’d sit on and occasionally contemplate. Then in September very shortly after my nihilist eclipse & panic happened, I took the concept of therapy much more seriously. It still wouldn’t be until October that I’d talk to the snow bunny about me considering therapy and her encouraging me to do it if I think it really would be good for me. That’s when I finally committed to the idea and had my father land on someone within our insurance that I could see.

However when it came time to virtually sign the consent forms I noticed that because I was a minor there would be certain things that the therapist would relay to my father. Obviously I wasn’t fucking with that so I very disappointedly had to back out last minute. When I say disappointing I mean extremely disappointing. In the following months (now the first half of 2021) I still desired therapy for various situational & long standing reasons that I cannot remember. I expressed to certain people this desire & asked what their experience was with therapy if they had any. I also apparently wanted to try DBT, according to old text messages. I’ve never really known anything about it beyond the acronym, I just heard borderlines saying it helped them.

In June of 2022 my father got in contact with a psychiatric nurse who was to evaluate whatever I told her so I could be advised on what to do next. I eventually get on a call with her and started explaining symptoms of what I believed to be psychosis. I didn’t really get to go into much before being told my situation was “very concerning” and that she will give me a list of places to contact. She kept pushing for something called “OnTrackNY”. The email would end up containing psychosis support groups, psychosis prevention centers, and psychiatric hospitals.

In short, the list of resources she gave me were mostly useless. One of the locations I called didn’t even know what I was talking about or who I was asking for because the building hadn’t been used for those services in years. Another location I called was fully booked and the best they could do was put me on a waiting list. The way she explained it to me made it very obvious that the wait list was more of a formality than anything that would actually be taken seriously anytime soon due to how booked they were. This interaction made me realize that getting the help I needed & wanted might actually be impossible since most of these programs are likely full for months. I didn’t realize until after getting off the phone as well that these locations were several hours worth of driving away from me to access them. I’m talking the New York STATE.

I had also called Lenox Hill hospital & NYU Langone Tisch Hospital. Both locations in Manhattan. The Lenox Hill phone experience was so obnoxious I genuinely started laughing. It was nothing but countless menus and having my call rerouted. I did eventually get to have a conversation with someone though. For reasons I don’t remember, I hung up and had to call them back and go through the same process all over again. I think I thought I was done when I hung up and realized I was supposed to wait for my call to get rerouted again or something like that. Whatever the case was, I decided to just say fuck Lenox Hill and try something else.

I then called NYU Langone Tisch Hospital, which seemingly was the only psychiatric hospital in the entire city that doesn’t traumatize the shit out of people. I do remember seeing a Google review about someone allegedly being forced to undergo electroconvulsive shock treatment without their consent while being there, but I cannot find it. Despite reading that, I still figured I’d be alright and that this would be the best option. The facility is voluntary admission only which made me feel better.

From what I remember, I had asked the person on the phone some questions about the unit and what to expect from it. I was told that I would get to see a psychiatrist and that I would be able to tell them everything going on and that I would get evaluated after being admitted. Now one thing about the woman I spoke to was that she was awful. Her entire attitude over the phone was as if she was completely disinterested in doing her job and I was a pest that’s bothering her, which pissed me off.

In the end I spent at least 40 consecutive minutes calling 16 different hospitals and programs. Only 2 picked up with only 2 others calling back later. The rest gave me no response. The experience was awful. I emailed the psychiatric nurse afterwards about my experience and she told me if no other resource is available then I should just go to the ER.

So I called back NYU Langone Tisch Hospital to reconfirm everything. The person on the other end must’ve been the same person since their tone seemed as if they recognized me. Same shitty attitude too. Regardless, I ultimately decided that Tisch was by far the best option.

I had actually really liked the concept of being take care of mentally while away and not having to be home. It felt like a much needed break, and to be receiving the care I’ve always needed psychologically seemed perfect. The reviews of Langone and the way they presented themselves made me honestly think it at least wouldn’t be so bad. I also figured that I’d have much more access to treatment than I would outside the hospital since what else am I supposed to do there all day if not getting treated. I had ideas that the care I’d receive would somewhat be personal.

June 25th would be when I finally make it to the hospital. The Ronald O. Perelman Center (emergency room) of the hospital is where I walked through specifically. I don’t remember waiting after filling out forms so it must’ve been quick. They had a nurse sit me down and ask what was going on, and he was amazing. I wasn’t familiar with the process so I thought I was supposed to get into everything right there, but he had stopped me eventually to tell me I had to save the rest for the psychiatrist. Like I said, he was great. Very down to Earth, respectful, and made me feel like I was in great hands. I then get taken to the psych ward section of the hospital which had a few rooms with patients inside them that you could see through the cell window. There was also this unbearably loud noise coming from the ceiling, I don’t know what it was. They had me change into a hospital gown in their bathroom and submit all of my belongings except my phone into the same bag as my clothes and shoes. I was then told to sit on the other end of the room which had 2 red cushioned chairs.

As I walked over to the other side of the room I saw the way in which the patients were living and it seemed insane to me. If I remember correctly, there was just a round table in the middle and a bed. Nothing else. While waiting I noticed how the psych ward operated, with patients having to ask for permission to do basically anything. They’d talk into a speaker (I believe) to the people behind the long desk that runs parallel to the lineup of rooms. One patient, a middle aged man, wanted to use the bathroom so he could shower but someone else was in there. Significant amounts of time would pass and he still wasn’t able to go.

Another patient, a blue haired woman in her 20s, kept periodically asking if she could use her phone which was in possession of the people behind the desk and the patient was denied several times for reasons I don’t remember. I do remember though feeling as if their reasoning was weird as fuck. The employees behind the desk that facilitate everything in the room didn’t have shitty attitudes, but I had a negative opinion of them. It’s hard to articulate how they were but you could tell they don’t really give a shit about the patients and they don’t really have the same respect for them as they would a “normal” person. They weren’t condescending necessarily or cold or rude, but they never demonstrated any real respect or even acknowledgment of any patients’ autonomy. It’s kinda like they viewed them all as children in a daycare and clearly don’t really understand much of anything about mental health issues.

Everything I was seeing made me feel deeply uncomfortable and rethink a bit if this was the right decision. I remember seeing how the patients themselves were. They were in such vulnerable states, to the extent that they very obviously shouldn’t really be by themselves. As in, it felt like they could barely take care of themselves and needed someone else to do it for them. All of this combined made me think in my head repeatedly “I don’t belong here”. It wasn’t from a place of feeling as if the advertised benefits of inpatient care were no longer needed, it was from seeing this service for what it really was. But as mediocre as the place seemed, I could tell these people didn’t really have anywhere better they should be.

While I was sitting in the chair waiting to be seen I replayed so many memories. Good ones, bad ones, it didn’t matter. I just couldn’t stop thinking about how every single one all lead to me sitting in this hospital. I was never able to describe this feeling, but it had cut deep.

After a hellish 10-15 minutes the psychiatrist finally comes up to me. I thought she was going to take me to a dedicated office where the evaluation would be conducted and that I would be able to recount every single thing that happened. After the phone calls I made asking and what the nurse told me, why wouldn’t I? Yet to my surprise, the psychiatrist takes out a pen and a small piece of paper that’s already been written on & looks like it’s been used for the past week and starts conducting the evaluation right there. With her standing and me sitting in the same chair that is a few feet away from the employee desk. I was thrown off completely by this, made even worse by her unpleasant attitude.

I awkwardly start explaining to her from the beginning what I was experiencing starting with the death of my grandmother. I went into this knowing that context is everything, since the smallest detail can turn a story of murder to one of self defense. I wasn’t going to reveal every last possible detail, just what I felt was necessary in painting the most accurate picture as to why my current reality is what I’m experiencing. After about a minute or so of trying to talk she started to ask questions that weren’t of any respect towards what I was saying. I’m saying one thing and she’s asking me something that has little to do with it.

Then she keeps asking me to speed the story up every 15 seconds. This had me increasingly agitated each time it happened and had me wanting to tell her to shut the fuck up so I could talk. Then shortly after she stops me altogether asking what any of what I was saying had to do with what was going on. I don’t remember my response but it was probably showing confusion since she then followed up by asking something like “Did you believe you saw aliens or heard a voice telling you to do things or thought about hurting yourself? Anything like that?” which made me realize everything I needed to know about her. She never cared about any details, she just wanted a list of things that would sound insane to any average person due to either the impossibility or presence of violence. I realized that a genuine evaluation was never going to happen. So in my mind, my time here was already over.

Despite the facility being strictly voluntary, I still wasn’t sure what would happen if I said all the shit I really wanted to say to her in that moment. I didn’t trust that if I didn’t behave there’d be nothing they could do to me besides kick me out. All I cared about at that point since I couldn’t voice my anger was getting out of there as fast as possible. I immediately cut my story and started lying so I could get out of there as soon as possible. At one point she got to the questions of if I felt like harming myself or anyone else and I said no which was obviously a lie and would’ve been much less of one 1 minute prior.

She then finishes the “evaluation” and says she’s gonna speak to my father to get his perspective on things, who was still all the way in the hospital lobby. Having no idea how it would influence what happens next, I text him saying that I didn’t like the hospital idea anymore, that the psychiatrist sucks, and to be careful with his answers when she interviews him. She spoke to him for maybe 10 minutes. I waited endlessly afterwards in that same chair to get discharged. All the anger I felt was only being made worse by the unbearably loud noise coming from the ceiling.

I very quickly felt like the only way any mental health “professional” would take my words seriously was if I did something very violent. In my mind, if I did that, I’d finally get the help I was so desperate to receive. For the first time in my life I didn’t process any potential consequence. It truly never crossed my mind. My desperation for somebody to help me mixed with intense anger was the only thing that occupied space. I kept questioning over and over if I’d finally get at least a decent evaluation from somebody if I went outside and beat the first person I saw half to death and dragged their bloody body into the hospital lobby.

After an excruciating hour of waiting I was finally given discharge papers and some legal things to sign. I was also given a small packet of papers containing various resources I could reach out to and a verbal explanation of each group. Two of those resources were Zocdoc & Psychology Today, two websites that were supposed to help me find psychiatrists I could follow up with. I had completely disregarded them in that moment and even felt offended seeing them. I was highly doubtful that the websites themselves would even work or would be worth the time.

On the way home I continued to feel an intense amount of emotions, with an overall questioning of what I was going to do. Assaulting and dragging somebody into a hospital or psychiatrist’s office still felt like the only real option. The only contemplation I felt towards it was that it would cause a lot of drama back home and require a certain energy to commit to doing despite how much energy I already had towards it.

I got home and by chance would end up staring at the two websites that were listed on the paper and actually considering them. With how many hours had passed since the hospital I think some of the initial anger had worn off a bit, leaving my desperation to be more prominent. Trying the websites also meant my already congested mind didn’t have to keep thinking about the only other option I had for a short bit. So ultimately, it seemed worth a try.

I started with Psychology Today first then switched to Zocdoc instead and more seriously. Most if not all options were virtual only, which I was disappointed by. I managed to schedule an appointment with a highly rated & well reviewed psychiatrist that specialized in psychotic disorders for Monday the 27th. I had to do some sort of external communication with him first through a service called Headway. The ease of Zocdoc, plus the high reviews and extremely short wait time all came together to take a significant amount of anger off. I think I was relatively calm for that entire Sunday. I contacted the psychiatric nurse to give her an update but she never responded.

Something I realized that Sunday was that these sessions would be a great opportunity to get officially diagnosed on paper so that I could take advantage of the treatment options. The only issue was that of course, there’s only so much time in a session. I’d have to choose between spending time catching up on the psychiatry I “should’ve” gotten up until that point and getting the much more immediate help that I needed. I already wasn’t even sure if I could get the help I needed in time even if I did focus on psychosis. I remember not being sure if I should write down everything that happened first before going into the session, which I ultimately didn’t. Only afterwards did I feel like I should’ve. For whatever reason, I still never did this.

Something I wouldn’t notice until weeks later was that the psychiatrist had diagnosed me with “adjustment disorder” on my discharge papers which enraged me. It’s surprisingly hard to articulate why exactly this set me off, but it’s directly related to the audacity of bringing up my grandmother’s passing (which was the most offensive thing to me by far) and the fact that she had lazily reduced everything I was dealing with to me simply not adjusting well to her death.

The remainder of this chapter mostly focuses on my experiences with psychiatrists, however I don’t remember the entirety of each session. Everything I’m about to state is from the best of my ability. All sessions were conducted virtually, and each psychiatrist knew that I was seeing them about schizophrenia. The concerns I had about therapy also applied going into psychiatry.

The psychiatrist I saw on the 27th I’ll be referring to as Psych 1. He wasn’t personable but he wasn’t rude or anything like that either. His personality was very neutral, and he conducted the session as plainly as you can imagine. Nothing about the way he conducted himself was offensive to me. I don’t remember what I told him at the beginning aside from my grandmother dying and touching on psychosis & mania but I do know that I didn’t really get to talk about much. I also don’t remember if he shifted the conversation in a way that caused this, but I do remember having a moment where I decided it would in fact be valuable to pivot towards catching up on all the psychiatry I “should’ve” gotten leading up September.

So I started by bringing up borderline personality disorder, however I truly cannot remember a single thing I said regarding it. I do remember though feeling conflicted on where to begin, since every year following 2017 had a plethora of things worth mentioning. I also wasn’t even sure if I truly wanted that diagnosis on paper since I wasn’t sure how it would affect my life going forward. After borderline I mentioned attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder afterwards, in which I couldn’t actually remember any of the symptoms I was exhibiting. It was this failure that made me realize I need to write down everything that needs to be said before going into sessions. Initially he said we should stick to one thing at a time and focus on schizophrenia, then later he circled back and asked me about symptoms of the other two disorders.

Towards the end of the session he prescribed me 25mg of Quetiapine Fumarate. I remember in the moment being uneasy when he prescribed me medication, wishing he had offered me something else. I already figured medication would be the only way my situation would get any better and stabilize, but that still didn’t change the issues I had with it. I think I remember wanting to voice my concerns before the session ending but being too hesitant for whatever reason. I think I thought it would’ve upset him or made him drop me if I had any push back towards it.

It’s important to note that he told me nothing about this medication. If I’m going strictly off memory, I feel like he only gave me about 3 days worth. He also wanted me to journal in relation to my sleeping issues and said this while acknowledging that I already journaled for personal reasons. He figured since I already do it I could easily add that. However at the time I didn’t like the idea of using my personal journal to write down information that was supposed to be shared with a stranger and wouldn’t have been written down otherwise.

Psych 1 concluded the session by saying that my symptoms “definitely range the entire mental illness spectrum” and that it would take more than one session to be able to make a conclusion regarding schizophrenia. Despite the session not going as I expected and feeling like I maybe could’ve done better, I still ultimately felt like I was in good enough hands and that I could trust this would work out. We had decided to schedule the next appointment on July 5th, but I realized after the session that I’d be starting my summer job on the same date during the same hour. I then messaged him and he said he would get back to me in a few days about what he has available, and to inform him on how the medication goes. I knew though that I didn’t really plan on taking them and going down that path.

Firstly, I was already aware that it’s not uncommon for people to be prescribed things they shouldn’t be taking. Secondly, I didn’t want to deal with any side effects. The two that made me the most hesitant were potential rapid weight gain and erectile dysfunction. Those were just associated with antipsychotics in general. I tried to grapple with the idea of weight gain and did make some progress, but the main barrier that still existed was that my entire career involves me being in front of a camera, and if I want to amass as much success as possible I have to be as attractive as possible. As for the erectile dysfunction, there is nothing on this earth I would trade my built in toy for.

Lastly, the concept of taking mind altering drugs in this context really didn’t sit well with me. Something about it didn’t really feel consensual to me. I hated the idea of waking up and having to look at that bottle knowing I’d have to take what’s in it for the rest of my life. I hated the amount of power that bottle would have over me when I look at it. I hated the idea that it would consistently cost an X amount of dollars per week or month just to function. I hated the idea that if I couldn’t take my medication due to circumstance, I’d be screwed.

Despite all this I still eventually decided to at least pick up the medication. July 6th would be when I did so. I remember feeling embarrassed when I had to tell the pharmacist I was there to pick up an antipsychotic. The whole thing was embarrassing to me at the time. I don’t remember how long it would be until I actually took the meds, but it was most likely the same night I had feared I was going hypomanic again (July 12th). The first time I took them just made me drowsy, and the sleep was great. However upon subsequent uses it basically did nothing, and my sleeping problems returned—the same ones I had back in May.

I then finally messaged back Psych 1 telling him the results and asking if he could prescribe me something stronger. I was worried I’d come off as seeking drugs recreationally by asking that, but I was truly fearful for my life if I didn’t get access to an effective medication soon. Ultimately, I would end up receiving no response. At that point in time I thought he had essentially just ghosted me. I figured I took too long to take the meds and that he was agitated by me as a result. The whole thing rubbed me the wrong way and soured my view of the system further, but I did feel at the time that it was my fault it had happened.

On the 21st I got an email saying the follow up session had been rescheduled for the 23rd, but by then I was over it. At the time I was dealing with a major infection I had gotten from a nail salon that made me feel like I was dying once I started antibiotics on the 18th which wasn’t made any better by having 2 wisdom teeth removed that same day. I was barely conscious with a head that felt like it weighed a thousand pounds. If I tried to stand up my head would start to tip over and plummet if I didn’t make any effort to keep it up. It felt like a Samoan was punching my head every single second I was awake. Fever was through the roof, and I had become severely dehydrated to the point of having muscle spasms so painful I had to go to the ER and get lidocaine patches because nothing I drank was working. Horrible fucking week. So while I do remember considering actually going to the session or at least formally canceling it, I ultimately couldn’t give enough of a fuck to do either. I was gonna let him show up to the session with nobody to see. I think part of it was also the feeling that if he couldn’t communicate with me when I needed him to then I’ll just return that same courtesy.

It would actually turn out anyway that the session would get cancelled 20 minutes before it was supposed to start. I again just figured this was part of him dropping me as a patient and ghosting me. It wouldn’t be until writing this chapter that I actually opened the email and found out he had to see a patient in the emergency room. I do believe had I known this at the time it would’ve made a difference in what I thought had happened between us, but it still wouldn’t have changed the fact that there was poor communication on his end and that I was still waiting weeks between sessions. Cause if the second session is taking this long, I doubt the subsequent ones would be any quicker. And how are you going to schedule an appointment without any sort of communication on whether that date is good for me or not? Overall, he was unreliable.

Now according to old emails, I scheduled with 2 psychiatrists one day after the other. I don’t know why, nor do I remember this detail. I’m assuming the reasons were a mix of doubting the next psychiatrist would be the one and the scarcity of nearby appointments. Both “professionals” were highly rated psychiatrists on Zocdoc that specialized in psychotic disorders. August 6th would be when my session with Psych 2 would take place. I had to download an app called Spruce first in order to get the session properly set up.

His personality was very nice. Definitely older like in his 50s but still a bit youthful for his age, if that makes sense. He ended up being 15 minutes late to the session due to being with a previous patient which did concern me since of course I only get 60 precious minutes. I remember filling him in on the death of my grandmother, the existence of a solitude, how the session with Psych 1 went, psychosis, and mania.

Soon after the session began his character became much clearer and my perception of him had dramatically improved. He was not only extremely knowledgable but was also very humble. There was no ego from him. He didn’t view himself as better than me or that I was ridiculous for any of the things I was suggesting. He even commented midway that I was “intelligent”, which felt like the most genuine usage of the word compared to the other two psychs in this chapter. It felt he said it from a perception that I was actually both aware & accurate in regards to what was going on.

From what I remember we ended up talking mostly about mania, in which I mentioned hypomania specifically, and he truly listened to what I had to say. He then explained to me that mania is essentially a small seizure in the brain, and went into detail about what actually happens on a physiological level when a person goes manic. I believe he then added that mania is what happens when there’s too much dopamine. He also specifically told me where in the brain this dopamine builds up. For whatever reason, to this day, I have a visual in my head of a small balloon like object being in the brain and filled with dopamine. Whatever he said is directly responsible for this.

I mentioned how I was only getting between 5 and 5 ½ hours of sleep per night, never any a minute more never a minute less, and he explained to me that this is due to REM cycles. Apparently mania only allows one complete cycle, which is why my sleep only lasted around 5 hours. I mentioned how I woke up one day with this intense amount of energy in me and that at the time it happened I was already convinced that in order to change my life around it would take an immense amount of energy to do what needed to get done. He said that was likely a large part of why that manic shift in energy took place, however I didn’t really buy that. It just felt a bit too insignificant to cause such a change. I never expressed this, it was just an internal thought I had. I think I also mentioned how my brain felt very weird physically and that I was very irritable. Not sure if I mentioned to him about the stress, although I think we may have discussed it.

Moving over to psychosis, I told him about that week in April where I felt like my brain was drugging me. He then explained that when psychosis takes place the brain is essentially just releasing dopamine, which is also why mania has such a direct relationship to psychosis. He said something else that led me explaining how every time I enter a new period in my life I will immediately forget the previous one, as well as all the emotions I was carrying, and my brain will physically feel like it’s shifted. He said that example fits whatever it was that he was explaining to me. I really want to say it’s directly related to the dopamine but I cannot remember how. I did tell him that the first time this happened to me was in April of 2020.

As for what else I remember; I mentioned the two days in July where it felt like manic symptoms were coming back, and I didn’t mention the intense increase in hypersexuality despite wanting to. I was just too uncomfortable bringing that up personally and the thought of him having to hear about it made me feel uncomfortable for him.

Towards the end of the session, Psych 2’s energy had randomly shifted and he started to sound very concerned. His demeanor was suddenly a bit standoffish. To this day I don’t know why this happened. It was confusing to me. He said that there was nothing he could do for me and that I needed much more intensive care than just virtual sessions. He said what I needed was to see someone in person 3 times a week and that he would send me a list of locations I could contact. I was actually very happy with this since 3 days a week and in person sounded like a dream. I didn’t even know that kind of thing existed.

He concluded that what I was experienced was “definitely mania” and that I was likely bipolar type 1, and I could tell there was conviction behind that assumption. I mentioned schizoaffective disorder and he said it was possible, but it was very clear to me that he didn’t care much about that and was more so focused on bipolar. He wanted whoever I end up seeing after him to follow up on that. If I remember correctly, he said that the death of my grandmother was likely what triggered symptoms to start emerging. I wasn’t happy about this. Aside from the fact that I didn’t want bipolar to be true, I genuinely felt like it was wrong.

Never in my life have I related to the bipolar experience, and every description of it never felt like it matched what my life was like. The long term cycle of bipolar is one I truly felt like I have never experienced. When I looked back on the previous 3 years of my life, none of it lined up in a way consistent with it. Part of my understanding is that bipolar people go through their cycle at random, unpredictably, and that the periods will last either weeks or months before switching. Every time I had major mood swings or periods of chaos, it was me having a direct emotional response to something specific. A response that was cranked up to 11. Never in my life prior to the event did I wake up on some different shit or have a reaction to something without specific reason. At this point in my life though I was still quite submissive towards the system since I still couldn’t trust myself and there was still the issue that it was hard for me to find any mention of mania online that wasn’t linked to bipolar. So while I still believed deep in my heart that I experienced hypomania without being bipolar, I wasn’t 100% confident in it.

I tried to bring up some other things on my mind but his energy was still the same, and whatever I wanted to add was somewhat dismissed. His only priority seemed to be closing out the session, which he did. Despite this, I was overall extremely happy. I felt like I finally found the type of health “professional” this system keeps pretending it’s loaded with. I truly felt like I was going to be okay and taken care of. I had even spoke to my father about it and how joyful I was.

Unfortunately this was short lived. I got sent the list of places to reach out to and all of the locations were extremely far. There was no way I could realistically be expected to travel that distance 3 times a week. Some of them weren’t even accessible by public transit. So I asked for a list that was much closer to where I lived. On that same day, I called Psych 3 so I could reschedule our session since I wanted to give this in person thing a try. I pushed it back by a month.

A day later I get the updated list of locations and while they were definitely accessible, I noticed a terrible trend across all the Google reviews. Every location had consistent complaints about either specific incidents or the quality of their services. This also includes the original list of locations I was sent. The reviews that stuck out most to me were the ones where the person was told by the “professional” that they were too complex of a case to be helped. Meanwhile, the person just had depression or anxiety. The reviews themselves highlighted how wild it was to be told this under those circumstances. So obviously in my mind there’s no point in me of all people going to any of these places if that’s what they deem too complicated to treat. The reviews also made it clear that these places were just weird as fuck with how they operate. I was extremely disappointed by all this. Again my high hopes had been crushed. This was also the point in which I regretted rescheduling.

I wanted to reach back out to Psych 2 and see if I could just continue seeing him instead, but the way he closed out the session made me feel like that’d be a waste of time. So I called Psych 3 again asking to see if I could reschedule our appointment for as soon as possible. The nearest date available was August 26th. I distinctly remember really hating having to wait that long. By the time I’d see him it’ll have been 2 months without any actual assistance.

The 26th arrives and I finally get to see Psych 3, who I’ll refer to as Mark. His personality was much more casual than the other 2 and lighthearted. His energy was like the guy you could go to a football game with and drink a few beers. When I think about it he reminds me a lot of Dave Portnoy. Something I didn’t know until the session took place was that he runs a mental hospital. In the beginning he asked me a series of questions that was basically him getting a brief rundown of my situation and me as a person. It started with him asking for a brief explanation as to why I felt the need to see him before leading into questions about my personal life. He had asked me if I was in school, working a job, etc., and when he asked me what I planned to do in my life I told him I was going to be a rockstar and exactly how I planned to do it.

He then asked me for a brief description of what my childhood was like and how I’d describe it. I told him it was shitty and the type of abuse I endured growing up from my mother. He then asked something related to if she’s still around or if I moved out, and I just remember telling him that we haven’t spoke in years. He then positively remarked that I’m “good at establishing boundaries”. I think he also asked me something related to suicide because I answered by telling him about 2 attempts I had on January 1st and 2nd of 2020. In retrospect, I don’t know if you would call them that, I’m not sure if I do anymore, but I definitely had zero intention on living to see this decade with what I was experimenting with. It was to the point that my brain could not process the concept of anything existing past January 5th. If it wasn’t so physically painful I would’ve gone through with it. I revealed to Mark what it was I experimented with.

I then got to mention my grandmother’s death, schizophrenia concerns, psychosis, mania, borderline, ADHD, and my previous attempts at getting help including the hospital. I don’t fully remember what happened in regards to schizophrenia and psychosis, but he dismissed them pretty quickly. He said to me that schizophrenics aren’t capable of self reflection or accepting their diagnosis, which I knew was bullshit. I had already engaged with an online community of them who were ironically and truly the most down to Earth and supportive people I’ve ever met. All of whom fully accept their illness. He then said I’m clearly a very bright kid that’s intelligent so there’s no way I could have schizophrenia. I tried bringing up my social media posts which were also immediately dismissed.

When I then tried bringing up borderline personality disorder he had a dismissive reaction on his face and told me that it doesn’t exist, and that it’s really just complex trauma. I had already seen a post on Reddit a long time ago about this in the past so I wasn’t thrown off by him saying that specifically. It wasn’t anything new. But he still dismissed its entire existence as if it isn’t real. Then 2 minutes later he went on to explicitly list symptoms of borderline anyway with a smug look on his face as if I had no idea what he’s talking about—despite the fact that he had just listed nearly every single symptom I had already experienced.

Now obviously this could’ve been a point to interject but I decided to just keep my mouth shut. I think it was a mix of genuine disbelief and not wanting to waste my breath. If something isn’t real how could you possibly start describing it as if it is? He then continued on to tell me, verbatim, that borderlines “cut themselves”, “burn themselves”, and “burn houses down” and then asked me if I had done those things. When I responded “no” he remarked that this was proof that I don’t have it, and said that I don’t seem like the type to do that.

I then brought up mania and how Psych 2 firmly believed that I experienced it, as well as repeating what Psych 2 had told me about what happens in the brain when mania takes place. Mark had dismissed this entirely. I had to witness a psychiatrist tell me that another psychiatrist’s understanding of how a symptom works on a physiological level was completely wrong. Now in my head I still trusted that Psych 2 was right since he was by far the most knowledgeable and likable “professional” I had ever come across, so I wasn’t in a state of not knowing who to believe. I was in a state of disbelief that this really just happened in a well established system. Like I knew this system was bad but disagreeing with colleagues over something that should be impossible to have an opinion on was mind blowing to me. Imagine seeing 2 oncologists and they can’t even agree with each other on how cancer works.

I then tried explaining to him all the manic things I had experienced, and he had dismissed them quickly as well, simply stating that none of those things count as mania. All with a very dickhead energy from his face of course. When he was done doing so I tried bringing up the increase in hypersexuality since I wasn’t about to let the mania aspect get swept that easily, in which he then asked me if I actually had sex with any of the friends I was talking about. I told him no, and he had briefly said something about how unless that happened the hypersexuality never took place. The way he had asked that question made it seem as if the consent of my friends was genuinely not a factor in whether or not my answer was yes or no. It was as if my desire to stick my dick in them was the only relevant factor in whether or not the sex I wanted to have happen took place. I was immediately thrown off by this. In that moment I couldn’t tell if he genuinely didn’t understand the concept of consent or if he was insinuating that I was supposed to have raped them.

Now on paper, nothing about what he said or how he worded it implied that. It was the way he said it. It’s exactly like how sometimes you will hear or experience something that wasn’t racist on paper, but still had those undertones. If you told your friends “it wasn’t racist but it just felt racist” they’d understand what you mean by that. You likely understand what I mean by that. It was no different here. And to be clear, internally or verbally insinuating another man of anything related to rape without solid reason is something you just don’t do. I wouldn’t have felt the way I did in that moment unless there was something seriously wrong with how he said what he said, and I certainly wouldn’t be speaking on it over 2 years later as if it was still an issue if I didn’t look back on it the same way.

I thought about asking him if he understood the concept of consent, but asking a grown man something like that seemed wildly disrespectful. I wasn’t sure what to say. There was too much going on mentally. I was in a state of genuine disbelief, the kind that puts your mind on pause, while also juggling the fact that this guy just dismissed manic symptoms over bullshit reasoning with one of them potentially being that I didn’t try to rape anybody. All of this on top of the implication that my female friends’ right to consent doesn’t matter in general, which I took a separate personal offense to. Disrespect towards my friends extends to me by default.

I also wondered what exactly his understanding how sex takes place even was. I was still isolated at the time for the most part and barely seeing anybody. My friends and I also don’t have each other’s addresses like that. Maybe that’s unusual to a lot of people but I have almost never actually needed to give anybody that information or receive it. Nor have I ever wanted to. I have only met 2 people that have ever deserved it. One of the friends I fantasized about was also ridiculously far. So overall it would’ve been physically impossible for the interaction to take place regardless.

Then we have the fact that the friends in question were ones that I had never mentally sexualized in my entire time knowing them. That being the whole reason why the sudden craving to fuck them was so out of character for me. Why would 2 friends that have never seen each other in a lustful light suddenly fuck out of nowhere? So on a mental level it would’ve been near impossible for the interaction to take place. And even if both those things didn’t apply here, it still doesn’t change the fact that for reasons both in and out of our control the interaction still could’ve not taken place anyway. And even if all three of those things didn’t apply it will never change the fact that someone could still change their mind last minute, thus voiding the interaction. The way he asked that question seemed ignorant to all of this.

And while that was its own source of confusion, it directly led to another source, which was how could you invalidate a symptom over a scenario where it easily could’ve been out of my control on what actually transpires? By his logic she could’ve been face down ass up with me about to put it in but because but because something came up causing us to stop, all of it would mean nothing. Imagine trying to max out a credit card but the bank declines you. Now imagine having the behavior that led to that attempt invalidated because the card never actually got maxed out. Obviously that’s ridiculous. Your state of mind matters as much if not more than your actions in contexts like these. Had those friends been right in front of me, and they were magically okay with it, I would’ve fucked them till the sun went down, up, and back down again.

I was legitimately speechless from this whole interaction and the only reason the session kept moving forward was because he kept talking. He asked me if his reasoning made sense since my face clearly showed some disbelief and I just responded “yes” since I was still trying to process what the fuck just happened. Had he not said anything I likely would’ve sat there in silence for several minutes. This interaction would be the turning point of the session for me because this is when I became furious. The deafening kind, where I was barely able to pay attention to anything he was saying. My brain had decided to mindlessly respond to keep things moving. The concept of getting help wasn’t even going through my mind anymore. It was just silent rage and disbelief. He then continued on by asking if I did “any reckless spending or got picked up off the street naked by cops”, stating that those are examples of mania. When I said “no” he used it as further justification.

I don’t remember anything between this and the beginning of the end of the session where he said to me, verbatim, “there’s nothing wrong with you, you just have a bit of trauma”. Upon hearing that it was like something in my brain had just twitched. All the rage I was already feeling had immediately transformed into something else entirely. He commented on my demeanor as being part of his reasoning. That I “seemed fine”. He also made a comment that the psychiatrist at the hospital “didn’t suck” and was just doing her job, which made what was already clear to me so much clearer.

He then harped back to the borderline point casually and said that because I never burned a house down or cut myself that I definitely don’t have to worry about borderline being true. He then added that I don’t have to stress about mania either by restating how I didn’t do any reckless spending, have sex with all my friends or get picked up off the street naked. He mentioned how my life seems to be “in an upward tick” and that I have a bright future ahead of me and that I clearly know what it is I want to do. He also commented that I’m “too sane” and “very intelligent”. It was for all of those reasons he gave that he concluded there was nothing wrong with me. At this point I had kinda gone silent for a bit and I thought I did a good job hiding my feelings from my face but then he then made this remark that was like “Come on! Why the long face? I just told you there’s nothing wrong with you! You’re fine.” I don’t know if I even said anything after aside from an obligatory nod.

Afterwards he doubled down and said to me that I was simply a “very strong kid” with trauma issues and that I need some therapy. He told me not to worry about mental illness and forget about it, I’m “too smart for that”. The rest I don’t explicitly remember but he basically just restated some of his earlier points. The only things he seemingly believed happened for real is that my grandmother died and that my childhood was rough. He seemingly did understand that I do all the heavy lifting on my own, despite him only believing those 2 things.

Overall his whole attitude towards me was basically “Trust me, you’re not one of those crazies. You’re well put together. These sad fucks are too stupid to make it on their own.” It was very obvious that his viewpoint on mental illness is truly that they are crazy, have no self control or awareness and have no linear thought. It was fucking disgusting to think that this is the man running a hospital that vulnerable people are interacting with. The last thing I remember is him saying “good luck on the rockstar thing” and me saying “thank you”. Then the session ended, and once that happened, I immediately began to feel a rage unlike anything I have ever felt.

All the emotion my mind had actively suppressed during the session came flooding out. I was physically furious. I was breathing faster and heavily. I felt extremely hot. My brain was consumed by rage in a way I had never experienced before. It had consumed me completely. To put it in perspective, the rage I felt when I thought my friend had lied to me back in March was like the diet version of this. It felt like every cell of my body and every inch of my psyche had been hijacked by this rage, with their only objective being to release it. As odd of a thought this was to have, I felt like I understood much better why cartoon characters have steam come out the top of their head, because that level of anger really does exist. I don’t remember the specific thoughts I had going through my head after that session, but I do remember them being fucking horrible. So horrible, that despite all of the rage responsible for them, there was still a very small part of me that considered trying something else first before going that far. So I did. However, my motivations for doing so were not really an attempt at self restraint. It was more like, if I’m gonna do anything I might as well do this first.

I decided to schedule back with Psych 2 for August 27th, hoping that he would still somehow assist me despite the way he ended things last time. His assistant then reached out to me in an attempt to confirm my reasoning for seeing him again. When I told her it was for a psychiatric consultation she responded that I already had one and was advised to seek an in person outpatient provider. She then asked if I wanted another copy of the referrals, and sent them again anyway. At this point it was impossible to hold my tongue, so I vented to her everything I was really thinking. All sentiments I’ve already discussed. I ended my message by saying that if Psych 2 is unable to help me then she can just cancel the appointment, which she did.

She also had responded to me, but I didn’t bother opening the message. I had simply saw that the appointment was cancelled and figured whatever they said would be some shit that’d piss me off even more. It wouldn’t be until writing this chapter that I found out she actually did respond like a human being and tried to make an effort. I doubt this would’ve made much difference had I known and worked with her to find a resource, since it wouldn’t have changed how much of a gamble the system is.

Within a half hour after this I started typing up a rant that wouldn’t be posted to Instagram until September 2nd. In regards to the anger, it took 2 full days for it to dissipate. I still remember what it physically felt like having it slowly go down. When it did, I just remember being in shock at how powerful it was.

By this point I had so many uncomfortable emotions just sitting in my chest. Using the system was officially out the question, which left me completely disoriented. The issues I had in the past I was able to handle myself but if mania is on the table there isn’t shit I can do with that on my own. The system no longer being an option meant that I had to build my own stability by myself. If the system was apart of my life I would’ve had something I could lean on for a while as I picked the pieces of my life back up. It would’ve been something I could center my life around for a bit. I fully expected or at least hoped to be able to do this for 2 fucking months. To have that rug pulled from underneath made me feel like shit. I was just so fucking angry, exhausted and frustrated that after everything I went through, I still had to keep going completely alone. The break I needed years ago was still never going to happen. I had also felt a bit lied to. Despite my pre-existing views of the system, I had still fallen for some of the magic that the system advertises itself to having. Or maybe I was just that desperate that I was willing to be delusional.

I had considered seeing another psychiatrist and just lying to them so I could get my meds but I figured it wasn’t even worth it. There’d be no way to safely get accurate medication even if I did lie my way into a proper diagnosis. The system can barely handle that when someone isn’t lying. A therapist was definitely off the table too since I would’ve used all our time expressing my hatred for the system. I figured that wouldn’t go well.

Within 2 or so days I was online looking into mania again and found out that borderline personality disorder could come with psychotic symptoms, and the things I had read felt much more specific to what I had experienced compared to any description of schizophrenia. Particularly the direct link between stress and elevated psychosis. I was pretty shocked by this, since basically no one talks about it. I had gone years both casually and intensely consuming things related to the disorder, primarily other people’s experiences, without ever hearing about psychosis. Fucked my head up a bit seeing this of nowhere. The information I had found on it also felt like it was somewhat hidden from public view. All of this meant that everything I was originally doing to try and keep my head on straight and one day heal would most likely still work out for me.

In a weird way, it felt nice to be reconnected with borderline again after several months of no longer knowing what the biggest issue with my brain was. BPD with psychotic symptoms still wasn’t a formal explanation for the mania, but my fears had calmed down significantly knowing that I wasn’t doomed the way I originally thought. I had simply concluded that whatever the reality is—when my stress is too high I’m liable to go manic. That’s the only information I really needed. I also figured that either what I experienced in terms of mania was something so obscure that I’ll likely never find it, or the system was too narrow minded to have researched into whatever it was I was dealing with. Essentially the idea that whatever I experienced, the system didn’t really catch up to yet officially.

This now leads to the Instagram post, where I vented numerous frustrations I had with the system. The final version was much shorter than what I had originally written. I realized that Instagram was not really the platform to get out such a large amount of ideas and information, and that a YouTube video would be much more effective and appropriate. The final version was also significantly less intense than what I had originally wrote on the 26th. A lot of it was so bad that I thought it would be in my best interest to leave it out. This final wave of stories would be the last thing I ever posted to that account. I had always intended on eventually returning but over a year later I realized I didn’t care to.

Going back to my previous sessions there’s some things I’d like to add. Across all the psychiatrists I saw, I felt like I couldn’t get a word in sometimes. Meaning that I would want to talk about certain things but I would kind of just get cut off. The majority of important information that needed to be given wasn’t able to be provided. This would’ve still been true even if I could speak since my mind was in a state of chaos and completely disoriented. There were many things I wouldn’t be made aware of or was able to recognize until I reflected back months later. Due to how these psychiatrists were though, I don’t think or at least know if further sessions would’ve allowed me to really add anything anyway. The way they all operated during the session made it seem like whatever else I had to say was genuinely unnecessary, as if I had nothing more, which was strange to me. Both Psych 2 and Mark seemed as if they truly believed it only takes one session to know what’s wrong with a patient.

There was also an issue embedded in the nature of the psychotic event, which is that realistically I cannot show them everything I posted publicly. Not only was it a lot but there’s no way they’d see the value in that, despite it being extremely crucial information in understanding the reality of what took place. I also couldn’t expect to show them my psychotic videos, which were also important. Sometimes the bullet points of a situation doesn’t cut it. If your entire job is to make the most accurate conclusion based on the information you’re given, you can’t always rely on a basic summary. You need to see it for yourself.

I think there’s a meaningful age divide between mental health “professionals” and patients as young as myself. The concept of ranting endlessly on social media for a year doesn’t mean much to them. But if you’re younger, you understand just how severe that really is and how bad that would be for your social life. Even if all you’re aware of is that somebody is intensely ranting to hundreds of people they don’t even know while largely unaware of what they’re saying.

There was also the issue of my calm demeanor during sessions be something that I was consistently punished for, which felt so shitty to me. Like how the fuck do you expect me to conduct myself? I am pretty much always put together no matter what is going on and I don’t have an explanation for it it’s just the way I am. Even when I’m murderously angry I look regular, if not just slightly pissed. I usually don’t show much emotion on my face unless it’s a feeling so strong that it naturally takes over my body, and even in that context, it’s still pretty rare. Being told over and over again that I seem too put together to be in any real distress was such a slap in the face every time I heard it. Like would you rather I yell at you? Which is something I don’t even do either. I can count with 2 fingers the number of people that have ever made me want to yell at them, meanwhile the number of people that have ever enraged me is one I can’t even put together.

Lastly, across all these psychiatrists I do not remember how much these sessions cost. I just know that Mark was the only one out of network with the session costing $650. This concludes my experience with the system.

In regards to what my final thoughts were around this time as to what was going on with me, I had concluded that I was a comorbid mix of borderline personality disorder (with psychotic symptoms), ADHD, with room for whatever else is unaccounted for. I say that last part for 2 reasons. The first being that regardless of the recent revelation, nothing changed the fact that my brain was still more fucked up than I ever imagined. I still didn’t know what my brain was capable of. I hope I never do.

The second reason being that a few months prior I had asked the friends I had at the time what their honest view of me was, and one of them had told me that as someone with OCD (Anonymous 35 from Psychiatry’s Mirror) they related heavily to my stories and how I think. It threw me off quite a bit when I had first read it. The guy in question is extremely chill, like truly not an emotional guy at all. So I couldn’t try to process it as him meaning that he related to the emotion cause that wasn’t really accurate at all. He truly just related to how my brain operated. This was largely confusing to me since why would the OCD person, a thought disorder, relate to how I think in any capacity? My understanding of the condition was that it gets very intense and can cause people to have complete meltdowns, vomit, severe anxiety, etc. I was well aware that OCD was much more serious than just “I like my paintings straight” or “I always check to see if the stove is off before leaving the house”. At the time, I just found it interesting and moved on.

After I was done with the system, I had briefly remembered this and became curious about it. I decided to do a very brief look into it, and while there were some things I did recognize, there wasn’t really anything that I felt applied to me. The things I recognized however were definitely solid matches to things I didn’t realize weren’t normal, and overall made me think about things I always thought were strange but never really questioned.

I’ll summarize those thoughts by saying my entire life I’ve had to interact with a part of my brain that seemingly operates based on absolutely nothing. It’s completely separate from & mostly irrespective of my conscious. There has never been any explanation behind what it chooses to do. I used to have the same intrusive thought a few times a day for months, and they would have absolutely nothing to do with anything relevant. This happened quite a few times since 7th grade. My brain would just decide that this is going to be the new thing you will never go a day without thinking about for months at a time. No emotional connection, no personal connection, just random shit. These would almost always be things my brain knows I don’t want to think about. It’d always be something I think is weird, disturbing or just straight up gross. In recent years I actually get worried when something I think is gross is able to be mentally linked with something I enjoy at that moment, because I don’t know if my brain will force a bond and force me to remember it every time I engage with said thing I enjoy.

On average I’d say it takes four to six months to effectively eliminate the effect a new bond has on me. There would also be things my brain compels me to look at every single time I encounter it in public. There would also be specific things as a kid that would trigger me to spit because they made me uncomfortable. I’ve held in spit for entire bus rides letting it build up, just so I could fulfill the trigger when I got off (yes it’s as gross as you think). I grew out of this with age however.

There are also moments where I truly felt like my brain was sexually obsessed with specific things. As if I’m watching someone next to me be that way. The obsessions were all regular things to be sexually aroused by, it was just that my brain would sometimes be fixated to the point of me questioning it. And in those moments, “obsession” was the exact word I always used to describe it. It would always feel beyond my hypersexuality.

One thing I saw really stuck out to me though, which was the perception that something is contaminated, which can also be triggered based on if someone specific touches something. I remember seeing the word choice, “contaminated”, and feeling like an itch in my brain had been scratched that I never knew needed scratching. There are several synonyms for contamination, but the fact that that word specifically was chosen communicated a lot to me. It was a word choice applied to something I had never put a word to before.

My entire life I have viewed objects as being “contaminated” especially if someone I hate touches that same object. I’ll refuse to touch it with my bare hands or any part of my body. If it does, then the exact amount of skin on my body that touched it will feel as if it’s dirty. If it touches my clothes or my hands I need to wash them. If they touch an item of mine it needs to cleaned. It doesn’t matter how brief the touching is. I can’t stand the idea of their imaginary germs transferring onto anything I subconsciously claim ownership of. I say imaginary because it’s not about their literal germs, it’s about the imaginary germs my brain associates with their being. If I have to interact with something that would subconsciously be within their ownership, it’s done so very reluctantly. Every time I remember her genes are in my DNA it makes me feel like there’s toxins all throughout my body. My brain processes it the same way it would having an STD.

This isn’t as intense as it may come off, at least not to me, since I can still function as a person. Like when I say my clothes need to be washed, it’s not like I toss them in the washer immediately. I’ll just consider them dirty like any other laundry that will eventually get washed. I would say hands are the only exception since you can realistically wash them at any time without hassle. However I in general don’t like my hands being in bare contact with many items. And for items that are an absolute daily essential like the fridge or the oven, my brain doesn’t bother with this due to how fucking tedious that would be. However, it may also be because they are so commonly used in the house that I don’t view them as belonging to anyone. Anyways, contamination was the last thing I saw before deciding to stop because honestly I didn’t really want or care to know if OCD was true. I didn’t give a fuck anymore about anything related to psychiatry. The reality of OCD was irrelevant.

It wasn’t going to change the fact that I wasn’t going to receive treatment for it anyway, or the fact that I had a career to prepare for, or the fact that I had to mentally recover from the 12 horrible months I had just went through. The concept of having 3 illnesses on my plate also felt obnoxious. One was more than enough, two fucked me up—I wasn’t interested in finding out if there was actually three. All of the things I had recognized as being explainable by OCD and otherwise having no explanation were things that, while annoying and sometimes concerning, were ultimately ignorable. When stacked up against mania, psychosis, or any of the intensity of borderline, there was no ability to care. It wasn’t like any of those potential symptoms impacted my life enough to give a shit.

There was also the fact that there tends to be a lot of overlap between illnesses and if you’re someone that is applicable to more than two illnesses, the likelihood of a “truly accurate diagnosis” starts to diminish significantly, and so does its relevance. This was a sentiment I had felt back when learning more about ADHD back in September of 2021. There was so much overlap with other shit that it just made me not care if I was actually applicable for something else instead.

All of this would unknowingly be the start of me no longer caring about any diagnostic labels. Between everything that just happened, the reality of the system, me trying to recover, me trying to put my life back together and me trying to get my career started—this was just all so irrelevant to me. I naturally gravitated towards identifying whatever psychotic symptoms I was experiencing and doing what I could to manage them. The label these symptoms could be applicable to meant nothing to me. All that mattered was my current reality. It was more clear than ever that my brain is just an unfortunate concoction of a large number of things. It was also very clear that I could get evaluated by the system several different ways by several different people and all of them would tell me something different. There is no value in a system that cannot produce a consistent result.

This would all lead to where I am today, where I do not perceive myself at all under any diagnostic label. I still believe in the symptoms that make up the illnesses I mentioned and they still matter to me, because they’re much more legitimate, but the label of borderline for example and the concept of it in a diagnostic context are things I don’t care about at all. It means nothing to me when being used in relation to me. My brain is my own, and I don’t believe we have anything adequate enough to describe both it and a lot of other people’s minds. I don’t think the system has matured anywhere near enough to properly “evaluate” people like me.

To be clear, I reject it but don’t object to it. If borderlines decided to label me as borderline I wouldn’t denounce it because I understand why it’s happening. What I’m expressing is pretty rare (I’m assuming) and possibly a new concept for most people so I don’t expect anyone to immediately see it the same way I do. It’s just that personally that label means nothing to me, and I don’t have anything to do with it. Now if they updated those books with shit should actually be in there, then the conversation would be different. But as of now, no; those 3 words, those 3 letters, don’t mean much of anything to me outside of my past attachments to them.

The first one being that, like any label, it allows you to communicate something with a few words that would otherwise take days to explain. That something being, my life. The second attachment is that since February 12th, 2020 I’ve had an extremely personal relationship with it. The night I stumbled onto a video of a woman explaining my entire reality with a jarring amount of accuracy changed my life forever. I’ll never forget the feeling of seeing a stranger I’ve never met use the exact same analogy I came up with a year prior when trying to explain to my ex why my behavior was the way it was. I’ll never forget the feeling when I found out there was an entire community of people that experienced the same life as me. The day I found that video will forever be up there in importance with the death of my grandmother. The final attachment is that I felt & still feel a subtle connection with those that are under that same umbrella. Both me and that individual already understand things about each other without ever actually having to say anything at all. I’ve always consistently connected with those individuals better than any other group of people.

However like I said, the label still doesn’t matter. With Myth being the last piece of the foundation in explaining who I am, I am no longer bound by the label in any capacity. People who have nothing to do with my channel have no business knowing that information in the first place, and anyone that does know my channel can go watch my starting content if they care that much. (Although at this point, Myth is the only piece needed.)

My previous relationship with the disorder also doesn’t magically disappear. The benefits of having discovered it will never go anywhere, and the things I’ve experienced that could be labeled borderline don’t magically disappear from my life story regardless. That subtle feeling of connection with borderlines will never fade either, and no matter what the consensus around me is I still want to do what I can for them specifically as a collective. I don’t need a label or permission to do that.

When it comes down to it my mind & my brain are extremely fucked up and that is all that matters. I stopped feeling defined by my “illness” a long time ago, I don’t interact with any of the online communities, I never had any intention on profiting or benefiting off the existence of any illness, and I have zero intention on ever interacting with this circus of a system again as a patient. So for what reason would I care? A diagnosis changes nothing about my life anymore except for which doors of “treatment” are opened for me. That’s it. Symptoms are the only thing I’m still attached to as a concept, and even then I could barely name you any of them by their official names or descriptions anymore. Symptoms only matter to me for how they truly present, not how the mental health system has chose to perceive and label them.

Managing things on my own has never been fun, and there have definitely been very frustrating moments, but I’m proud of what I’ve been able to accomplish and I doubt any person or system could’ve done it better. My life has made it very clear to me that the only entity that will ever be of any value to me is myself. My experience with the system was nothing but a big reminder.

The next chapter:

The Myth of the Mental Health System

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