When I come across as too angry

I have to remind myself that it’s okay to be angry. That I don’t have to justify my anger anymore to anyone or to “prove” myself to anyone anymore. Or to say why. Or to say over and over that anger isn’t a disease. This is a fact and if no one likes it they don’t have to stick around.

If they don’t believe me they don’t have to. I am who I am. I choose to speak up and many others are grateful that I continue to speak up. The doctors that wronged me can do nothing to silence me now.

Either I die, or I won’t. Everyone dies eventually. Either way, those doctors and therapists that wronged me will lose. As long as I live, I will continue to speak out, and if I die, others who have also been abused will continue onward.

Never, ever shut up.

What has been started will not end. It was a spark, now a roaring fire. I was abused in so-called “mental health care” and in so-called “hospitals” and the reality stands. I am not delusional and I am not lying about what happened. This “help” is not help. This “care” is not care. Force isn’t ever healthy, nor does it lead to anything resembling wellness.

Do we want to live in a rigid police state? Or do we want love?

There is no gray area here.

There is no excuse for abuse.

There is indeed such thing as saying, “Julie, I am sorry.” I do, in fact, accept apologies. In fact, if those shrinks had only said to me, “I admit I was wrong, and I deeply apologize that I caused you such harm.” I surely would have accepted their apology. But no, they did not. Instead, they tried in every way they could to force-drug me and incarcerate me and take away every Constitutional right I have as adult citizen of this country.

That I know of, they will continue to attempt to do this until the day I die. They are so desperate to shut me up. I hate to inform them, but I have no plans to do so.

 

Things people say that are no longer acceptable to me

I no longer accept the following:

That my feelings are wrong. No one’s feelings are wrong. No one’s feelings are inappropriate.

That any feeling should not be expressed. No feeling is so horrible or painful or full of joy that it cannot be stated aloud.

That expressing my feelings and thoughts is inappropriate or diseased or disturbing to others or “negative,” the latter being the latest label. This statement implies that I don’t even deserve to exist on the planet. It is dismissive to me as a human being. I am entitled to self-expression.

Thanks.

Great presentation last night by Matthew Cohen!

I ventured into Boston last night to hear a speaker, Matt Cohen give a talk called Anti-Oppressive Mental Health Paradigms.

As you folks know, I had a tough week last week and I was scared to go.  Scared of another social situation that was going to end up awkward.  It’s so hard after you’ve been abused to be around people, really any other people at all.  You want to scream out to everyone and tell the whole world, “Yes, it’s true!  It’s all true!  Abuse is REAL!”

The more I am validated, the more I can relax and feel okay and settle down and resume some sort of regular life again after all this has occurred. However, the more people continue to say, “This never happened,” or, “It was right that the hospital abused you,” the more I become stuck in this frenzy.

It’s so sad that I was so invalidated for years.  I wasn’t even aware that it was happening. I look back now and realize it. I can see how everything began to erode so insidiously well before I was abused in the hospital in 2011.

How was I invalidated? By my own shrink. It was so gradual that I was unable to perceive it. By the time I ended up in the hospital in 2011 and they were abusing me so badly, that woman (Dr. P) simply had no clue who Julie Greene was anymore.

In 2007 or so, I started seeing a new therapist. I liked her a whole bunch but only the first session was good. After that, she was just plain irresponsible.  She shouldn’t have been practicing therapy, sorry to say.  She didn’t really do therapy as I thought of therapy. She would yap about her nieces nonstop and and nod off during every session.  After a while I figured I knew plenty about those nieces (and about the T) and she knew nothing about me!

So when I was raped, she was hardly listening. She had over 100 patients and I honestly think she hardly noticed me.  The psychiatrist had total trust in the therapist, so when I fired the therapist my psychiatrist did nothing but yell at me and trivialized that I had been raped.  I had to find a rape crisis counselor myself who would listen to me.

That’s called survival.  When none of your regular people will listen, out of necessity you go find people who will. So I did. Then I found a new therapist.  The new therapist was nice but I felt brushed aside.

I moved. You guys know the shitty neighbors I ended up with here.  It all kinda makes sense that my eating disorder would get 10 times worse after moving and after getting completely brushed aside, the rape invalidated and getting invalidated for having done the right thing, firing an irresponsible therapist.

My psychiatrist continued to not listen. She claimed I had a “growing up problem” and that my anorexia had to do with impending graduation from grad school.  In this manner, she completely denied that her own actions had anything to do with it.

She downplayed the whole problem with the drug, Seroquel.  That drug had caused my weight to double. For years, she denied that the drug caused weight gain, then finally agreed that it was possible that Seroquel could cause this and allowed me to go off of it. She threatened me with all kinds of nonsense, telling me, “You’ll be unstable if you go off of it!” but I had had enough of hating my body and the unwanted, unnecessary weight gain.  I felt terrific when I finally lost that weight. I was able to return to school and I had much better self esteem. However, she acted like it was all “nothing.” All I wanted was validation.  An apology, maybe. It felt like I’d gone through the wringer with weight gain.  It was a financial burden, too.  All those ugly polyester clothes I had to buy, just thinking of it makes me cringe.  I had been been bullied and discriminated against due to my weight and even had a debilitating knee injury from rapid weight gain that ended up a huge inconvenience and expense as well.  I had no clue if I’d be able to walk again, or if I’d be a wheelchair user for life.  And my body was bursting out of the sides of the wheelchair…I wanted to cry.  I remember when those screws came out of the wheelchair sides.  It wasn’t my wheelchair and the day I returned it I was so embarrassed!

So into 2009 and “eating disorders care.”  I found out the BS it is.  2010 and my therapist and PCP were trying to do forced weigh-ins and I found out that’s such BS as well.  I was so shocked because I had never had “eating disorders care” after 30 years, and it was so Dark Ages!  I found that this “treatment” place didn’t really know much about the disorder and didn’t do a good job of listening to the patients.

Dr. P started to tell me I was delusional. However, the things I was telling her were true.  I knew these things were true because the other patients and I joked about everything I spoke of, but Dr.P told me I needed to take her drugs so that I wouldn’t believe the things I was reporting to her.

I ended up with a new therapist…again. This new one was named Maria.  (I am not ashamed to reveal this name anymore, however I cringe, actually, because she was such an abuser.)  Again, the first session was great but after that, she was manipulative and controlling.  It’s not something you notice cuz it’s so gradual and it descends on you slowly. That’s how abusers work.

So more and more, I was invalidated.  Not listened to. My psychiatrist appointments were a complete waste.  I knew she had over 100 patients and I was nothing but a number.  I knew I should have gone elsewhere but knew nowhere to turn.

Never mind the drugs. The drugs were a minor issue at that point compared to the control and manipulation.  She continued to claim that I was paranoid and lying about everything, when I wasn’t. This is not an ally.  I should have realized this.

I tried getting other therapists, finally dumped Dr. P, but it was all getting tough.  I never realized that she was the root of it all. She should have validated that I had been raped. She should have spoken up against the bad therapist I had at the time who was sleeping through my sessions. She should have come to my defense and even spoken out against her own facility when they abused me in 2011 instead of claiming that I was paranoid and delusional.

I told her that the psych ward on her own hospital had an “inner unit.” She claimed I was delusional about this and making it up. This makes no sense because she could have easily walked over there and seen for herself or made a call or asked one of her colleagues. I know they keep that “inner unit” hush hush over there at Blake Eleven, however, I have spoken to other patients who have been incarcerated in that section of Blake Eleven as well and I was also there in 2000. Sure, it’s real and that architectural structure has been there for years.  She could have seen the peepholes herself.

Other patients have told me the same thing has happened to them, that their own doctors have tried to shut them up about the reality of the abuse that had been done to them in hospitals. Their own doctors want them drugged afterward, silenced.  What the heck?  What’s going on with the medical profession? No wonder I was forced to leave the mental health system. Do you think I really had a choice?

I need validation, not to be told over and over that it never happened. The more I am invalidated the more I cry and cry and relive the abuse like it’s happening all over again. I feel scared and all I do is cry.  I ask myself how the hospitals and doctors could be so cruel to me.  I can no longer be with people who deny that I was abused.  I refuse.  This only perpetuates the trauma.  I apologize to those that I don’t hang out with anymore.  I can’t do this because I’m so exhausted. I want peace.