I just gotta say
Fuck Therapy! Fuck Therapists! Fuck IT ALL!!!
Yah that freaking makes me feel better.
And no I ain’t explaining right now cuz I don’t fucking want people thinking and not saying or thinking and saying what freaking whiny ass people we are who want and need and expect too damn much from therapists and therapy. So when enough of us can deal with whatever people are gonna think or say then we’ll explain more.
I will say that I’m tired of this therapy crap. I’m tired of more or less getting screwed in some way. I’m tired of not having shit ass money to pay for therapy. I’m tired of it being the reason we get pushed the hell out the door of therapy when paying a low monthly fee towards accumulating therapy bill was cool for a lotta years. The latest–basically told stay away until you have money to give us or until you get the right insurance. This is basically told to us at the non profit agency place that won’t give us sliding scale because we have insurance but the co-pay is way too fucking much and they won’t slide scale the co-pay. They also won’t let us make a low monthly payment towards the growing co-pay debt that we’d pay off some fucking day in the future. But if we had insurance and lost our freaking ass insurance and had no insurance then they’d give us the sliding scale. And I don’t care what they say but I know damn well Medicare pays more than what we’d be charged for that sliding scale based on our income if we had no insurance. I saw their damn sliding scale chart a few weeks back. But if we had no insurance when we first came to them and asked for help, they’d say sorry, no room, no space for that, go fuck yourselves and have a nice day and good fucking luck with your mental health crap.
Yah yah yah I know that ain’t what they really say but they basically are saying that when they have to turn people away.
The best thing yet– we can get 30 minute sessions for a little bit more than what we asked to pay for our co-pay. And if we pay for two 30 minute sessions, it is less than one 50 minute session co-pay. It ain’t that big of a discount but it still is less. Go fucking figure and no you can’t have two 30 minute therapy sessions on the same day with our insurance.
So I don’t know, maybe we’ll go pay for a 30 minute session and I’ll bitch at Cec simply because I feel like bitching. Not like she has any control over any of it. I’d just like to explain to her why the fuck I’m saying fuck therapy and fuck therapists. Just fuck it all.
There’s this deal in our head that we always hear when shit like this happens:
“Oh, it’s Julie. She’ll be fine. She’s fine. It’s no big deal.” It doesn’t fucking matter that we aren’t doing well, that therapy helps us keep a grip on things in life, that we fucking hurt, and just crap like that. It always seems and feels like to us that they just “dismiss us” with a wave of their hand and just assume and decide that we’ll deal with it and we’ll be fine and it won’t be a fucking big deal to us. That they wouldn’t do that to some other client but they’d do it to us because “we’re fine and can deal with it.” Well, FUCK NO WE CAN’T FUCKING DEAL WITH IT!!!
And yah I know we’re asking and wanting and expecting too damn much. It takes money. You need too much and expect and hope for too damn much when you only pay shit.
I’m fucking frankly tired of the shit ass crap I’ve got to deal with inside when shit like this rolls down hill. I don’t know all the crap but I sure as hell know more than any of the Julies know about. IT SUCKS! It is FUCKING HARD. And ya know we’ve been sucking it up in a lot of ways, well like maybe not to other people, but I think so, with all the bullshit and jerking around of therapists in the agencies that we’ve gone through since we lost Wendy. So then we find Cec and we’re dealing with this crap. And there’s that list of crap that Cec can’t or won’t meet our needs on and well, again, we need and ask and expect and want too fucking much and especially when we pay shit.
The Julies called like well over a dozen therapists that are closer to us and so less of a commute and whatever. Of course like nearly all of them had full caseloads and only a few of them took our insurance. So we have a crap load more people to call. We’ve gone through the referred list. Now onto the damn phone book and just start asking the basic questions and creating a new list of names and numbers.
I frankly don’t fucking know that our system is ever really gonna trust another therapist again to any degree. We’ve been with Cec for over a year now and hardly anyone has really come out and talked with her. Yah so some of us have shown up, but like tons and tons of people who’ve shown up in therapy over the years with Wendy haven’t even come close to coming out. They don’t come close to the surface, it’s like just way deep and buried. They stay the fuck away or cause problems within but behind the Walls and other things and basically ya can’t find out a damn thing and info stays locked inside.
I ain’t ever felt like this like I do now. I seriously am questioning what the fucking point of trying to do therapy is. WHY?!? Why the fuck bother when we basically get pushed out the door for some fucking reason or another. The first time was because we needed “a therapy break” of who knows how the fuck long– one day it was 2 weeks the next fucking time it was a month or several months and the next time “maybe we don’t ever return.” It kept fucking changing every damn time we turned around and she sure as hell knew we didn’t agree with her decision (yes, the therapist’s decision) we needed a therapy break. We fought with her and basically begged and pleaded for an extension to not have it happen in the spring on us. She agreed and extended the “deadline.” Well we spent at least 6 months almost constant every session trying to not be forced to have this therapy break of unknown fucking time and determined entirely by her as to when or if we return. Then some shit happened and we left and our therapist was pissed because we left her before she forced a “therapy break” on us. FUCK HER. She did a number of other fucked up things. That was our first major therapist that spent any time with our system and first time our system really opened up. We saw another therapist for a short time who first diagnosed us (so before that first therapist I told ya about) and so yah, she saw a few from our system, but we left her for varied reasons.
Then there was Wendy and our system over the years opened up to her and like tons of us showed up in some kind of way to communicate to her. She put up with a shit load of crap from us. But due to financial and insurance reasons we got referred out by her. Never mind what we had set up for years financially that was working and never mind that we had spent 8 1/2 years with her for therapy. Never mind we were being sent out to an agency with who knows what kind of therapist and what kind of knowledge they had on dealing with multiplicity. Okay, whatever. Bottom line: our system opened up to Wendy big time over the years, and some inside had just begun finally after years of trying to get them to share, they had finally begun to talk and tell. Then: leave me, go away. I don’t care what you say. It doesn’t matter enough. Leave me, go away.
So 2 long-term therapists our system opens up to and 2 therapists that basically tell us to leave and go away. Yah so first therapist we left before she totally ditched us and the second therapist we begged and pleaded and went out the door kicking and screaming emotionally. So now there’s Cec and the agency and we’ve basically been told the same thing. Our system has slightly opened up and has tried hard to trust and open up to Cec, even though no matter how hard we try, in some ways it just ain’t budging no where. Oh yah, I know, we just have to pay $200 a month for 4 regular 50-minute sessions. They didn’t really kick us out or force us to leave. You just can’t return and have an appointment until you can pay.
I fucking frankly figure that if we do go in and pay for one session that it’s gonna be a session towards saying good-bye to Cec, if and when we find another local therapist that we can arrange something with our insurance and co-pay amount.
And the big fucking fun ass thing about this– Well, you see…. we’ve been without our secondary insurance before… but we always do the paperwork and letters (eventually) and push to get that secondary insurance coverage. Not only that, we make sure to get it back-dated. So ya see, all of this co-pay shit becomes totally moot once that happens. The two other times we’ve been in this “space” of no secondary insurance, they let it slide or let me ride through it and still see Cec while I waited for it to get re-instated. But not this time.
I’m here now and need to go. I don’t feel like talking about it really; it is what it is and there isn’t really anything we can do about it. It’s exhausting trying to deal with it and it brings up so much for us.
Billie, B.J., and Julie at the end
I used to go into a real tail spin when anything messed with my therapy. If the billing got messed up or the copays got changed. I can definitely relate to how upset you are. I hope something settles out of this that works for you.
I can so relate. Sorry they are being so difficult. What happened to increased access in mental health coverage.
“And yah I know we’re asking and wanting and expecting too damn much.”
You’re not asking for too much.
I so know the feeling of “they think I’ll be just fine cause I’m….” I hate that. It’s the downside of showing strength. That’s the part of being strong that I always say leaves me hung out to dry. Austin’ll be able to handle it. She always makes it through, she’ll find a way, she’s strong, she has options. Well, Austin is tired and would like just once for someone to go, hey, you know there’s something we can do about this and we aren’t going to just push you out the door on your own.
It would be nice…very nice.
Austin