Edited to add- I just realized that the post I linked below did talk about the therapist that didn’t believe me. I have been wanting to write this out in order to make sense of things and start setting my own goals regarding healing from “anxiety” and “C-PTSD”. I’m putting those in quotes because I’m not sure if the actual diagnoses apply. Back in May, I made this post detailing what I’ve gone through while trying to seek therapy. Since then, I have tried again. There was one lady that I saw for one “free 15 minutes session” and one actual hour long session. She didn’t believe my story. At least twice, she asked me if I was sure what I was saying happened and not something else. One of these had to do with what year. She asked if I was sure something that happened in 2013-2014 wasn’t “during the pandemic.” I didn’t appreciate that at all.
The next lady had a free 15 minute session and three hour long sessions with me. She was great until the middle of the third session, when she got this Jekyll and Hyde personality switch and started basically telling me to get over it and stop living in the past. That’s a very dumb thing for a therapist to say, because we can get over it and stop living in the past for free. We don’t need a therapist to help us do that. When I called her out on this personality switch mid-session, she said it never happened. That was even more of a punch in the face. Some people online said “report her”. I can’t if she’s saying it never happened. The session wasn’t being recorded. Whomever you’d report this to would believe her over me.
This last lady, the Jekyll and Hyde lady, also seemed to take away my diagnosis of c-ptsd (“complex” or “chronic” post traumatic stress disorder, depending on who you ask, but it all starts with C so it’s ok). 🙄 Her reasoning was based on the ACES test. ACES is a questionnaire you fill out answering which adverse childhood experiences you’ve had. It helps clinicians diagnose you with c-ptsd, but since it’s become more and more clear that it’s very incomplete and very unfair, a lot of them are backpeddling now saying “it’s just a tool” and all sorts of vague shit about what the ACES really is. They’ll say “it doesn’t matter” which of the adverse childhood experiences you’ve experienced or not, but it does matter enough for that to be the very first thing they give you. I actually spoke with a young man online who claimed to be a survivor of the Stoneman-Douglass school shooting in Parkland, Florida, who was told some BS because he couldn’t check any boxes on the ACES test. Perhaps surviving a school shooting should be on there, I don’t know! Also missing from ACES is bullying and medical trauma. It’s probably because the woman who developed it was a healthy bully.
Some of the ACES questions are asked in such a way that I am not sure if I can answer them with a yes or a no. One of these questions is, “Did you witness your mother being abused by your father?” Yes and no. My mother treated my father horribly, and he often reacted. A therapist wouldn’t recognize that as valid, though. It would specifically have to be the father abusing the mother one way.
Another question I’m not sure I can answer yes or no to is “Did you grow up in a home with a parent with mental illness?” My mother never went to a psychiatrist or a therapist, so she never got a diagnosis. She does, however, claim to have had postpartum depression for 15 years. As I’ve said before, this would only make sense to me if she kept having children but I was an only child. And does postpartum even count in what they’re describing there? As noted in the latest news story these days, postpartum is seen as a very valid excuse/reason for most if not all things. It seems to be used whenever women murder their kids. So am I justified in my trauma, or am I just a big uneducated meanie when it comes to postpartum?
The other questions are a definite no for me. Did your parents get divorced? No. Were they poor? No. Were they drug addicts? No. Were they ever incarcerated? No. Then, abuse questions come up. Were you physically abused? Were you emotionally abused? Were you sexually abused? I was physically assaulted by my aunt and two older cousins in my teen years. My mother often did as well, but a therapist might shrug it off as discipline, especially since she was not a single mother. Emotional abuse is written off by therapists as “You just took stuff wrong”. Especially since I could not answer positively to any of the four first questions about divorce, incarceration etc.
So when it comes to ACES, maybe I scored high and maybe I scored zero. The last therapist I saw said I didn’t have c-ptsd, even though I was diagnosed with it in 2025.
Whether or not I am someone who deserves to say they have something validating like c-ptsd, I still have the symptoms. You might think I’m just a bitch who isn’t grateful she got to grow up with two parents and doesn’t understand postpartum, and that’s fine, but I still suffer from almost all symptoms of c-ptsd. In addition to having what I consider (but you may not) to be a difficult childhood, I then grew up to take on very hard jobs for very low pay, working with children at risk and elderly and disabled adults. I believe this compounded my “c-ptsd”. I was forced to absorb the trauma of multiple children and adults. Again I’m putting my it in quotes because no one can agree on whether I “have” it.
This puts me in a situation where I have to come up with a game plan to get better, and no one is going to help me do it. I have to do it myself. Being in such a healthy environment in Austin now is a great foundation for beginning to do this. I live in a great place, have a great job, enough money, and my physical health. The only downside is that my husband isn’t here full time yet but he will be. Having a supportive partner is also an enormous plus when it comes to healing. It’s better than being single, but being single is better than having a shitty partner.
I have him to lean on, and my mother is 3-4 hours away now. I have minimal contact with her. I have a supportive friend or two, and my daughter is doing great. I really can’t complain. Therefore, I need to start working on goals to feel better. I have the perfect stage to do so.
Continuing to take a weight loss supplement so I’m not always hungry, and exercising every day is a start to physically feeling better. I get muscle symptoms in my arms and legs. It feels like spaghetti muscles when it gets really bad, and exercise helps work this out. Doctors will often ask if this feels like “pins and needles.” I really don’t know about that description. It’s not how I would think “pins and needles” would feel, but I can see how someone else would describe it that way? Something I can do every day is really make myself go out to the fitness center in my complex or the park two blocks away. I also need to keep Mitchell away from my earbuds, because I can’t exercise without them and he loves them! Since Mitchell came into my life, I’ve probably been through 20 pairs!
The next way to channel my anxiety is through my creativity. I have all of my 6 inch squares sorted into this shelving unit inside our massive closet in this apartment. I’m still working on an Etsy shop with quilts and wreaths. I also need to hit up Dollar Tree for more wreath frames. My sewing machine is set up on my desk.
I also have a spiral notebook for each writing project in my head. They are all chartreuse colored and college rule and were $1.47 right now during back to school days. I write a line and then skip about six lines. Then I go back through them and jot things down in the six empty lines that go between the thing above it and the thing below it. When that gets to be full, I start another notebook with five or six more lines between each thing that is now in the old one. The Child Advocate is now on its second spiral and I also have one for another book in my head, and my missing people who may be still alive writing advocacy project.
If I can just propose each day to do something for exercise and creativity, I will likely feel at least 20% better by the first cool front.
Physical things I can do besides take gabapentin (I can take it sometimes but not always)- bathe with bath bombs for athletes. These bombs are expensive, but they do wonders for the spaghetti leg/not really pins and needles feeling. Also if I find myself paralyzed in bed, just simply going out to my car to organize something or throw away a piece of trash will help the paralyzed panic feeling.
Cuddling with my cats also helps. Mitchell isn’t a big cuddler, but Jordan is starting to be. Alex is still with my husband in Hempstead and will go live with my daughter in San Marcos. (She asked for him). He used to be an instant therapy cat when he was younger but is now retired. Jordan can cuddle somewhat before he starts play biting.
If I can think of anything else, I will edit this and put them here. Ironically, this is the kind of list a therapist would help me make. And here I am making it for free. I’m just saying, why go through the hell of trying to convince them to help you when you can help yourself. For free! I have to adopt this mentality or else I will not survive! I hate being a person that cannot get therapy or mental health care, but on the other hand if I was a person who could get it then I might depend on them too much and have no autonomy.
