hey. what's up? i'm, like, going through it these days. but also i think my baseline is Going Through It and the topic just changes, so.. lmao.
been thinking a lot about learning and more about my own cognitive processing n stuff. i work in mental health services and i'm noticing a lot of the Programs are starting to become a lot more oriented around 'make a goal and meet it' vs 'reach out for human connection when your options are limited'. which i hate. like it's meant to still be based in the person's own definition of wellness and not imposing what that 'should' look like, and unfortunately that's relatively progressive when so many mental health services and disability "supports" are based around, like, pure behaviourism and psych incarceration and limiting options for true self-determination so ppl fit into the collapsing state of capitalism nicely and quietly. but i digress ^_^
anyway i think part of what bugs me about this isn't even necessarily on an ethical 'this isn't meeting people's basic need for connection' standpoint. i think part of it is that i remember being a teenager and just starting to go to counselling after resisting it and struggling in silence for so many years. and because i wasn't presenting as A Danger To Myself Or Others(tm), i was put in the short-term low-intensity stream of care, so i was mostly seeing counsellors for a couple months who mostly wanted to give me worksheets on coping skills and breathing exercises.
which are all well & good tools to have and i do regularly use them, but... it was the only care available and it was explicitly about Not exploring why my baseline feelings towards myself and reactions to situations were so intensely negative in the first place. so to teen me it came across like 'have you tried Not freaking out about this', when what ended up actually helping me later on was being able to see a private counsellor who was like 'i wonder how being autistic and trans impacted how safe you've always felt socially and maybe that's why rejection feels like life or death'. and it wasn't until i had that baseline understanding of Why I Do These Things that i was motivated and able to meaningfully tell myself 'ok it makes sense that i'm freaking out but it's not helping so i'm going to approach the problem solving after i process the emotions'.
i know in short-term counseling there's kind of this general push for, like, 'you don't need to dig deeper into the client's story, just focus on building their empowerment and Skills in the present moment' - and it's framed as an ethical thing, like the short-term counseling is mutually exclusive from Digging Into The Trauma, and if you bring The Trauma into the short-term counseling then you're overstepping and encouraging the client to focus on their own trauma and that means they're Doing Worse.
i think what really gets to me on a deep emotional level is when i question The Way Things Are Done in public mental health services and suggest that maybe we're doing a lot of shallow short-term support and never offering the deeper long-term support that sustains and creates a foundation for the short-term stuff, and then i get told that the way i want to approach things is an Ethical Issue and Creates Dependence and is Unhealthy Bad Boundaries; and then when i hear that, sometimes my moral OCD has a field day with it, like 'oh fuck maybe i am just in this role to stroke my own ego and artificially feel significant in people's lives. and i'm doing that to VULNERABLE PEOPLE because i'm a SICKO'. and then i spiral because right now i'm constantly exposed to people who see me as a trans person working with young people in a healthcare setting, and i know they would absolutely froth at the opportunity to be like, 'YEAH you SICKO, you're trying to TEACH MY KIDS TO BE VICTIMS so they can be WOKE and go on BIG PHARMA'S HORMONES'.
idk i was going to go somewhere else with this, about how maybe part of this is that i'm processing the Healing Journey from the bottom up (start with the foundation of why u feel shitty, then into the skills and frameworks of How To Feel Less Shitty) and that's, like, me just having a different cognitive style than the neuromajority who creates and manages these systems. but i also feel like right now i am just Sensitive and feeling a lot of uhhhh
mainly putting this out into the world because this has been maybe the last month for me. and i feel like it takes me about a month to go from 'generally sad and grumpy and bad gut feelings and idk why i'm crying and my back is spasming' to 'this is the problem explained in words and coherent sentences'. i try to communicate There Is A Problem in the former stage and i'm being irrational and projecting my own Mental Illnesses onto a Neutral Situation, then i try to communicate the problem in the latter stage and i get pulled into a conversation where i feel like i'm talking this to DEATH and i feel like i'm rotating a cube of information in my mind but it's more lke a rock tumbler and all that'll be left of my actual thoughts/feelings/personality will be 'welp i have to pick up and carry on because the pros of this job (survival and basic needs met) outweigh the cons (bummed out and confused always, but I've been constantly bummed out and confused since i was like 5)'.