Help, in Theory.

Getting help is an extremely hard first step. The typical saying goes: you can't truly get help until you want it. I wasn’t sure I wanted it to bring up so much pain to the surface beyond what I was already feeling. However, I did know it was what I NEEDED. After freaking out a few friends and myself, I had to get professional help. There was no way to handle the idea of an upcoming hip surgery, much less actually mentally handle the surgery and recovery time in itself. I reached out to the only option I had with my horrible insurance: the free county mental health clinic.

This clinic typically works with unhoused people, people in halfway homes, or those just out of inpatient care. I hoped I would at least be able to get a little luck as to who could help me based on the fact that the clinic normally sees much more extreme cases than mine, with much more complex mental illness and additional addiction issues too. I was able to call and make an appointment for the beginning of the intake process that was scheduled for only a few days out. I was told to show up a full 30 minutes early for paperwork that I was warned would be quite long.

When I got there, I was handed a FULL stack of papers to fill out. I swear it was 30–40 pages long… By the time of my appointment, I still was not done with it all and was called back anyway. I was then met by an intake coordinator who walked me back to her office. I had my cane, and I had heavily wrapped my messed-up foot that day, but I was NOT prepared for the amount of walking I had to do through a maze of hallways all the way back to this lady’s office. She was a fast walker too, and I was struggling to even kind of keep up…

Once in her office, she took my forms and opened a program on her computer to start filling it out. Instead of reading anything I had spent the last 30 minutes detailing on my intake forms, she asked me each question and had me speak my answer while she struggled to keep up with notes regarding my answers… These questions were deep psychological-history-detail-focused as well, going back through my entire life. After each painful question that reopened major trauma, she would turn it around and tell me a PERSONAL story about how she feels or how she related either to my answer or her own life experience on the matter. Many, many times, basically telling me she beat anxiety and depression so I could too.

Near the end of the questions, we finally got to the part I hadn’t finished on the paperwork yet, and it was all the heaviest of topics: assault/abuse, violence, suicide attempts, etc... I swear she said suicide a dozen times over those last 15 minutes. Then she followed up the section by stating, “Did you know that even saying the word ‘suicide’ makes people instantly start thinking about suicide?” YEAH NO SHIT SHERLOCK… THIS IS WHY I AM HERE PLEASE STOP. She then proceeded to tell me that this was also only her second week on the job…

By the end, it is safe to say I was beyond rattled and felt in complete numb shock. I was then told my next step was to pick my services. They force you to get help from them in a minimum of three different forms. Since I wasn’t there for drugs or addiction, I really only had the option of being assigned a case manager, a therapist, and a psychiatrist. I was told to walk across this large court to one of the clinic’s other buildings to get a quick intake with the medical side of things and to set up a request for a therapist. I was told they have walk-in appointments for day-one intake so that I might even be seen right away!

Once I finally waddled up to the front again, I got a look at how far away the next building was and almost turned around right then. However, I was desperate. I had just gone through an hour and a half of painful interrogation combined with self-help-cult-leader-style motivational speech. My brain was completely warped, and the idea I might get to talk through it all right now with a real professional seemed worth the pain. I continued to limp and waddle my way around and over to the medical side and was completely out of breath but impressed I had made it.

The receptionist was very kind, but the look she gave me when I told her I had been sent over for same-day therapy walk-in post intake only carved further daggers into my soul… She scoffed and said they haven't had a free walk-in slot open in 3 months. She said she would get me on the list, but all she could do was have a nurse take my vitals and get an appointment scheduled to see a psychiatrist for medications the following week. I felt so beat down and beat up. By the time I got back to my car, I did not feel like I had made progress and was only beaten down every step of the way.

The following week, I met with my new psychiatrist, and he ended up being very smart, very kind, and very easy to work with. He always wanted my opinion and over-explained anything I asked down to the fine points on how the molecules of certain chemicals are metabolized. He seemed to appreciate that I actually understood everything he was saying as well. We only messed with my current med dosage so as not to mess things up too much. I even convinced him to give me a children’s dose, as I was nervous about doubling my prescription since I’m typically super sensitive to side effects and symptoms.

When I first started Cymbalta, I was sick for 2 weeks with flu-like symptoms. The only reason I kept taking it was because I read everywhere that it was a normal reaction and would subside after two weeks, and they were right. Plus, at the time, I was having uncontrolled and unknown-triggered panic attacks daily. I could barely function for 2–3 hours a day due to crippling, overwhelming nerves. The sickness for two weeks straight definitely snapped me out of it, as I was just struggling to eat and survive. After those two weeks, I was feeling much more mellow, and my attacks were all known triggers and reduced to anxiety attacks. I was able to gain better control of the overwhelming thoughts too. We upped the dose a tiny bit since the signs seemed to point to it working, at least moderately, before.

He also wanted to change my headache medicine to a form that was able to fully cross the blood brain barrier. Hydroxyzine HCL (aka Atarax) is something that had been helping me with migraines/headaches, nausea, allergies, and anxiety a bit too. I had started taking it as needed, then discovered it was good for anxiety and allergies too and began taking it daily. The psychiatrist said this form did not pass through the blood brain barrier and that I would see better anxiety relief results from the alternative version, Hydroxyzine pamoate (aka Vistaril). So those two small switches to my current meds seemed like a perfect start and compromise to being nervous about starting something brand new.

The next day, I had a meeting with my new case manager for further assistance needs intake. She was incredibly and uncannily similar to the original intake lady. This one seemed a bit more hippie and eccentric, but she still could not help but interject her own personal stories about her incredibly tough and triggering life. It was beyond hard for me to pay attention, as I was having such a deja vu and dissociated feeling all at once. I did not relate to her struggles and personal battles at all. She was trauma dumping on me, and she really didn’t even have that much she was REQUIRED to tell me or work with me. In fact, the case manager paperwork is a total of one page and about 10 questions total. Pretty general and supposedly simple questions like “Who is your direct support system?” “What are your personal strengths?” blah blah blah… She caused the meeting to be over twice as long with all her storytelling and personal coach lectures about her deeply difficult life. I typically love hearing strangers life stories, I'm very accepting and always interested. This moment in the middle of a mental health crisis? I wasn't sure how much more mental load I could actually take...