- So my psychiatrist has never actually said as much,
but I'm pretty sure he thinks I'm an idiot.
(soft music)
To back this up a little bit,
every time I have a psychiatry appointment,
I come up with a list of things
that I want to talk to my psychiatrist about
and I have a bunch of concerns that I want to bring up
or things to talk about with them.
And then the second I walk into the office
or answer the call now, during the time of COVID,
everything just goes flying out of my brain and I clam up.
I don't know what to say.
I don't know what I wanted to talk about.
And I just kind of forget everything
and just kind of go silent.
I think for a long time, I thought I was an idiot
because why can't I communicate with this person
who's trying to help me?
But talking to other people who visit psychiatrists
regularly or not regularly,
I think this is a very common thing that happens.
It's because, I don't know,
there's a degree of power imbalance
involved with a patient and a psychiatrist where,
I don't know, there's just not a great deal of understanding
that the patient is really the one who kind of directs care
in terms of how much they offer,
in terms of giving information
about what they're experiencing,
as well as kind of guiding what their goals are
for care and stuff.
And so it's very important to be able
to communicate effectively with your psychiatrist,
but I think that having difficulties with this
is something that a lot of people struggle with.
And to kind of further explain this power imbalance,
I think that it's often seen as,
oh, the psychiatrist is the one
who's going to slap a diagnosis on me
and I don't want to like misguide them in that.
I don't want to get a stigmatized diagnosis.
And there's a lot of shame wrapped up
in the things that you're supposed to be talking about
and sometimes it's embarrassing to bring up
some of the stuff that you should be talking about,
which probably further creates a problem in this regard.
And it's not just psychiatrists that this happens with.
It's kind of all professionals
that deal with mental health for a patient.
So it happens with my therapist sometimes, too,
where I just completely forget everything
that I needed to talk to them about, or I become embarrassed
and kind of just go quiet instead of talking to them
about the things that I had wanted to talk to them about.
This happens to me, too, when I go to the doctor
and there's this like urge to minimize whatever it is
I'm experiencing or struggling with.
An example of doing this with my psychiatrist
is I can be experiencing like a devastating low,
constant thoughts of suicide, and crying all the time.
And my psychiatrist asks me how I'm doing
and I'm like, oh, I'm doing okay.
You know, and it could be a clearly I'm not doing okay
or they ask, you know, how's your mood?
And I'm like, it's kinda low.
It's a little low right now.
And just like trying to minimize what's going on with you
because you don't want it to be a serious issue
and also because you don't want to divulge
that you're in a vulnerable, compromised state like that.
So before I get into how to address this
and how to work through this,
I just want to say that if you're new here,
my name is Lauren and I make videos about what it's like
to live with mental illness,
particularly schizoaffective disorder or schizophrenia.
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All right, so what do you do if you clam up frequently
when you go to the psychiatrist or speak with a therapist
or that kind of thing?
So some strategies that I've employed before are
writing is a really, it's a better way for me personally
to communicate than verbally typically.
And so what I would do is I would send my therapist emails
between our sessions with whatever was going on with me,
whatever it was that I felt I needed to talk to them about.
I would send them an email
and they didn't need to read it right away.
I would say that this is just for our next session
and then they would read it either before a session
or during our session
and that would kind of facilitate conversation
about what it was that I really wanted to talk about
and that kind of eliminates the face-to-face embarrassment
or tendency to minimize what I was talking about
because you're just writing it down, basically,
and then hitting send.
So it's a lot easier for me personally.
Now, you don't need to email.
You can also just write it down
and you can bring the piece of paper to your appointment
or you can write it in your notes on your phone
and bring that to your appointment.
You can read it to your therapist or psychiatrist,
or if that feels like too much, too,
you can just hand your phone or hand the piece of paper
to them and they can read it.
These are just kind of some strategies
to help facilitate this kind of not embarrassing,
'cause it shouldn't be embarrassing,
but more vulnerable communication.
Now, there's also the issue
of just really forgetting everything
the second you step into the psychiatrist's office
or the second you start speaking to them.
This happens to me all the time,
where I just can't really remember
what I've been struggling with
and my mind just kind of goes blank.
And so what's helped with this in the past
is keeping kind of a symptom diary or symptom journal
where at the end of the day,
I will write down the symptoms that I experienced that day.
I will rate my mood on a scale of zero to 10
and give any descriptors I can
about how I was feeling that day.
And then that's helpful to kind of reference back
when you're talking with your psychiatrist and go,
yeah, I noticed I had a dip these days
or I was doing really well these days
or I was having some paranoia
or whatever it may be these days.
Something else that helps me kind of jog my memory
before I have my appointment
is to talk about what I want to talk about
in the appointment with my partner.
This kind of helps to just bring things
back to the forefront of my brain
and to kind of practice communicating about it as well.
Now, you can also take this a step further
and actually bring a loved one
to support you in your appointment.
So that can help if they've bared witness to you
throughout the last,
however long it's been since you've seen your practitioner,
to kind of help you communicate how you've been
or to help you communicate for things you need to talk about
or to help you advocate for yourself and that kind of thing.
It can just be kind of not only helpful for them
to bring stuff up, but it can also create a safer space
for you to bring stuff up, too.
Something that also I find really helpful is
when my psychiatrist kind of notices that I'm clamming up
or having difficulties communicating,
he kind of knows the probing questions to ask me,
things that I typically struggle with
or things that I could be struggling with,
and kind of directly hits upon those things
so that I can kind of just answer briefly
whatever he's focused on in that moment.
And to facilitate this with your psychiatrist,
you can absolutely say,
hey, I'm having a hard time remembering things,
or I'm having a hard time communicating with you.
And so just kind of letting them know
that you're struggling with this a little bit
will help them to know to probe a little bit further.
All right, so those are my tips for when you just clam up
with your psychiatrist.
I also want to just let you know that I highly doubt
your psychiatrist thinks you're an idiot.
I said that because that's how I feel sometimes
when I'm going to see my psychiatrist
and I can't remember anything, but I'm fairly sure deep down
that my psychiatrist doesn't actually think I'm an idiot
and I don't think your psychiatrist is judging you
if you're having a hard time communicating, either.
It can be really helpful to just let them know
that you're having a hard time
or to work on using any of the strategies
that I talked about in this video.
If you have any other strategies that I didn't mention,
I would love to hear from you.
Feel free to leave it in the comments below.
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We absolutely could not be doing this without you.
Thank you so much for watching and as always,
wishing you and your loved ones good health.
We'll see you in the next video. Bye.