Archive for the 'Billie' Category

Therapy Crap

Published
by
JAGA
on March 24, 2008
in B.J., Billie and Julie
. 3 Comments Tags: , , .

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

The Move and Its Storm

Published
by
JAGA
on January 27, 2008
in Billie, Jillie and Julie
. 3 Comments Tags: , .

Big Breath.

I can do this. It’s just like before, years ago. Just like when I began therapy due to flashbacks. Just like the first time at age 18 I tried to move out of the mother’s house and with a friend. I did move out, but only lasted a few months. The mother convinced me to return. It was a fine situation with friend, but I had moved in with her and her daughter and it was tight and cramped. The mother said she would pay and help me to go to college. She didn’t, because I wanted to go to a different community college than she wanted me to go to. The community college offered a better program for what I wanted to study. That’s why I wanted to go to the community college of my choice. No difference in cost; just I wouldn’t submit to going to a college that didn’t offer the same program of study. Yes, dumb me. So is life.

It’s also like before- when we began therapy with intent to stay, no matter the cost. It’s when J.I.P. (Julie In Pink) was created. She was there to withstand the family cost that happened as a result of speaking the truth and entering therapy. She took the backlash that followed us, although with the help of others inside. But she never lost her sight of healing and put it as her highest priority in life. Sometimes it seems that was to our detriment at times, but other times, we greatly appreciate and value what J.I.P. did for us as a system. She maintained the hope, the dreams, the vision of healing, and it took great courage for her to not back-down and submit to the mother or father or brother.  She stood her ground in the face of the mother despite living with her the majority of this body’s entire adult life.  She stood her ground in the face of the mother despite the fact this was ‘out of character’ for the body of the mother’s daughter to do– submission and passive was the cards routinely played for safety and survival.  Any attempts to do otherwise were quickly squashed and punished in a variety of ways.  Dissociation and silent protectors, like Billie, and others withstood the aftermath of doing anything that crossed the mother’s rules or disapproval and disgust.  Yes, silent.  Billie protected by taking the emotional and verbal abuse by the mother and bearing the brunt of it while remaining silent.  Billie knew that to do otherwise was actually more harmful to Julie and this system and not worth it.  Billie’s loyalty lied with helping Jillie and Julie and others in the system and not with the mother, or as Billie says, “Julie’s mother.”  If the slightest thing was said in defense of ourselves, if Billie or anyone else were to give the mother a “look” while silently taking the verbal lashing by the mother, this too would be added to the mother’s disapproval, disgust, and verbal beating into submission.  So J.I.P. standing her ground to remain in therapy and continue onward in spite of all of this is remarkable.  We also take credit for our system stance in this as well, for we had something to do with it as well.  Additionally, to be clear, Billie joined our system when the body was 17 and the mother went on her rampages during that year and thereafter- when the body was an adult.

Continue reading ‘The Move and Its Storm’

Inside, Outside, Near, Far Away

Published
by
JAGA
on January 25, 2008
in Billie, Julie and Julies
. 0 Comments Tags: .

There is stuff going on inside, albeit it is much further away from me now.  I think I’m grateful for that, but I’m not sure–even when things are so hard and crazy inside, at least I know what’s going on.  Hmm, well, I mean at least I have an inkling of what’s going on, even if it is foggy and hard to decipher what exactly is being said and going on. Like my senses are all diminished in capacity.  And of course now, I have no memory of what the hell I gathered from them earlier, other than the knowledge and sense that there are a lot struggling inside and it seemed like a lot were dealing with heavy flashbacks internally or something.  Just losing their grip on things.

I don’t know what was going on tonight in group.  Something was going on for sure inside.  L.J. ? or one of the kids who represents herself as L.J. but I think she is older than L.J. (and I’m beginning to notice the differences), mentioned something about it while we were taking our turn to share.  I definitely sensed a lot of chaos inside, a lot of hurt and pain, and I felt like I/we were doing everything we could to not have it explode externally, let alone with witnesses.  It sounds worse than maybe it was, but at the same time, I think it wasn’t as severe of a potential because we were doing everything we could to keep it in the distance, at bay, as far from the front as possible.  Sure there was leakage, but if it had gotten any closer, then it would have really been incredibly difficult to maintain a sense of appropriateness.  This was all happening before our sharing time.  Even though it wasn’t ultra close to the front and the potential wasn’t as strong as other times that we’ve encountered, it still felt intense and really difficult and just as bad as those times when the potential of it unleashing its madness externally was right at the surface about to blow.  Somehow it moved away and further back by the time we began sharing.  I think at least… not sure, but I know it was further away.

Continue reading ‘Inside, Outside, Near, Far Away’