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I "Fired" My Therapist

I "Fired" My Therapist2013-04-05T21:49:18+00:00

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  • #120015

    Blue Yugo
    Member
    Post count: 62

    My company has an Employee Assistance Program (EAP), which is great for those of us who are uninsured (and under-paid) and offer more services than I can list.  I found a therapist to help me – at no cost to me – with my ADD since I could no longer afford the one I’d been seeing who diagnosed me.  I was approved for 6 to 8 sessions.  Anyway…

    I had to fire the “free” therapist.  Okay, stop seeing her is more like it, but if I wasn’t getting anything aside from more frustration out of it, I shouldn’t feel guilty.  I TOLD her that I didn’t feel like we were addressing ADD…that ADD can’t just be “talked out of” or cured by making a few simple and neat little changes…and above all…well, if you haven’t read my profile post, I’ll elaborate:

    Session 1 – she spent much of the time fishing about my childhood, that I was bullied, and how I related to other family members.  Didn’t talk much about ADD, but I let it slide.

    Session 2 – she wanted me, after session 1, to bring in a list of positive and negative qualities of my immediate family members.  I did.  We spent the whole session talking about it.

    Session 3 – she wanted to talk more about the above, but I cut her off and asked what any of it has to do with helping me function better with ADD.  I mentioned, for example, that during the past week I’ve again had problems with my brain feeling hijacked when annoying noises are around, like barking dogs, hammering, bouncing basket balls, the tinny sound of people’s iPod ear buds turned up too loud…etc.  She then told me that I’m only CHOOSING to have those noises bother me and distract me, and what I have to do is acknowledge a noise is there and “let it go”.  Uh…if I COULD, I would have been doing that my whole life, but since I can remember, those things have bothered me and yet somehow ADD was missed until recently.  And that is not the only problem I have with ADD.  She just kept going on and on that being distracted is a choice I make and that it’s some flimsy excuse, and all I have to do is stop letting stuff bother me.  She did not at all listen when I tried talking over her that she’s missing the point, I”m bothered and others aren’t because my brain is working different, and if I had a choice I would certainly not choose to be annoyed instead of doing the miraculous ignoring of distractions like “normal” people can.

    You can probably see where this all went.  I found her unprofessional, ignorant, and insensitive.  Has anyone else had problems with therapists?  Was it of this general nature?  I don’t know if the EAP finds ADD specialists or merely therapists in your area, but they swung and missed on this wild pitch.  They may know what ADD is, but having the basis to help someone is another matter…and this one didn’t have it.

    The guy I talked to at the EAP the next morning was great.  I told him why I didn’t want to go back to this lady, why she wasn’t helping, etc.  He works with children with ADHD, and I briefed him on how ADD affects me (and yes, did a good job keeping it brief, yet informative).  He said I have a lot of issues commonly seen with ADD and that the therapist was not only not helping me but was making me more frustrated.  He thinks I should seek out someone to give meds a try just so my brain doesn’t feel so hijacked by distractions, wandering attention, and the whole gambit.

    I feel a bit free since the lady was angering me more.  I mean, I have co-existed with ADD and yeah, it bothered me even before it was diagnosed, but for a therapist to point the finger at me and implying that giving into ADD is merely a CHOICE…that’s just wrong, and I’m sure many here would agree.  Anyone else ever “fire” a therapist?  I don’t feel this was an impulsive jump but rather necessary since I was not getting any useful help.  Talking isn’t going to cure anything.  Dredging up parts of my past I’ve long overcome isn’t going to fix ADD.  Failing to acknowledge that ADD is a brain problem and instead calling it a choice is just angering and ignorant.  Would you have done the same and quit seeing this lady?  I’d rather go it alone than have to deal with that lack of professionalism again.

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    #120018

    Patte Rosebank
    Participant
    Post count: 1517

    @LittleBlueYugo, that’s part of the “fun” of having to take whatever therapist you’re sent to.

    It happens all the time, because of the severe shortage of ADHD specialists.

    Under the socialized medical systems in Canada and the UK, the good news is, your treatment won’t bankrupt you.  The bad news is, you’ll wait for ages to get a referral, and you’ll take whichever specialist they give you.

    When my old psychiatrist retired, I waited 4 months to get a new one (and this was before I even suspected I had ADHD).  Then, when the new one had to drop half of his patients, I decided to be smart and specifically request a referral to a psychiatrist who specializes in treating ADHD in Adults.

    After 18 months of waiting, I’d had enough, and talked the Bank of Mom & Dad into helping me cover the cost of treatment at a proper ADHD clinic, which was only partially funded by OHIP (my provincial medical system).  In less than a month, I was being treated by an ADHD specialist and I had an ADHD coach.  Since then, I’ve been thriving!

    You’ve done exactly the right thing by speaking up, and advocating for yourself.  That deserves a big high-five!

    Since that EAP rep you spoke with works with ADHD children, maybe he can suggest an ADHD specialist for you, and write a letter to the powers that be, explaining why you need to see an ADHD specialist, instead of just “any old therapist”.

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    #120027

    Blue Yugo
    Member
    Post count: 62

    @Larynxa – The EAP rep was great, but they’re located in California…a good 3,000 mile drive.  However, it’s nice to know that the counselors who field phone calls are actually licensed in their field and are real doctors and such who do the phone consultations as extra / volunteer work.  I guess the oh-so-elusive “patience” is in order for me to find someone both affordable and worth the price.  “Obamacare” is not the same as socialized medicine…and I won’t be able to afford the base-rate Obamacare plan when it becomes required next year.  (Base is $8000 per year…and I only make $30,000 so more than 1/4 of my income cannot be allocated to paying off some insurance company.)

    But that aside, I feel both good and bad about leaving the situation with the therapist that was not working out.  I was looking at my “notes” from the 2nd session.  It was all stuff about “Mom and dad fear change.  My sister is controlling and jealous.  Mom is passive and gives in too easily.”  At the bottom of the paper in big letters I wrote “ADD” and circled it because by the end of that session, I realized we were not in the slightest addressing ME or my need to compensate for ADD.  So?  Mom’s passive…sister’s controlling…  I mean, what’s that got to do with me and ADD!?  I don’t live with any of them, and hiding in my room at age 14 while my sister and dad yelled and screamed at each other has nothing to do with why I have ADD.

    Patience and “waiting for the pay out” is not something I’m good at…and I’m not alone.  But the one good thing that came out of it is that it’s made me double my efforts in places like this.  This weekend, I’m going to rewatch the 3 videos I got from Totally ADD.  I may have to combine “going it alone” with my books, videos, and this forum, but a bad therapist experience helped push me a little bit.  (It’s just too bad no book, video, online resource, etc. can help with how barking, music, hammering, and the like hijacks my brain.)

    It’s hard to sustain special effort I put forth when I do have moments of brilliance and control to push myself to finish a task…or even start one.  I can do it, but it takes double the effort and is not something that challenges most people.  Even when I do succeed in pushing myself, my mind disengages on its own, gets distracted, decides that doing something else is suddenly more important or desirable.  I mean…you know the drill.  It’s not just motivation, or an easy kick-start, or just buckling down.

    Last weekend I super-cleaned my kitchen and reorganized stuff.  Today I got computer tasks done and shredded my junk mail.  Easy for others…monumental for me.  High-five!  Life’s not impossible.  It just takes me extra work, and the ordinary for others is sometimes extraordinary for me.  Oh well!

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    #120032

    Patte Rosebank
    Participant
    Post count: 1517

    @LittleBlueYugo, no-one would think of sending you to a brain surgeon for a triple-bypass, but they’ll send someone with ADHD to a psych. who specializes in family counselling…  (shakes head)

    It sounds like you and I might have something in common.  We “get” the science of our ADHD, and how it affects us, but we’re not so successful at figuring out what things we need to do, in order to work with it in day-to-day life…and at actually DOING those things, once we know what they are.  (Does that sound right?)

    I’ve only been seeing an ADHD Coach since October, and she’s helped me a lot with that.  (And I’d already figured out a lot of stuff before I started seeing her!)

    She sees things I miss, and helps me see things from a different angle so I can understand them better.  And she keeps me motivated—which I often need more than anything else.  Especially now that I’ve taken the plunge, and started the *long* learning & certification process to become an ADHD Coach, myself.

    If you can only afford one ADHD professional, maybe a Coach would be the most helpful one for you, too.  Most of them offer coaching by phone or Skype Video Chat, so they can help clients who are thousands of miles away!

    There’s a coaching directory here:  http://totallyadd.com/coaching-directory-search.  It’s a pretty good place to start!

    What do you think?

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    #120034

    Blue Yugo
    Member
    Post count: 62

    @Larynxa Hmm, the link goes to a “page not found”, but I’ll look into finding such a resource…you know, I could say “after I type this reply”, but I can’t make any promises I’ll remember or not find something else that “must be done now”.  Sigh…  Yeah, it seems I find new ways every week that my so-called “normal” life is actually an ADD life.  Now that I’m homed in on “what’s wrong” I now find myself often saying, “You know what!  That’s a ‘me’ thing and it’s common among folks with ADD!”  It’s one thing to recognize and notice that it’s happening and it’s an ADD thing, but it’s another to actually have the ability to make things work the right way in the right time.  Rationally you KNOW what needs to be done…but the message that is apparent in one half of the brain gets put on some indefinite “hold” by the other half of the brain until both halves simply forget.

    Coaching tailored to ADD would help me.  I haven’t looked into meds yet because first I’d need a coach / therapist, and I’d have to get their opinion and knowledge of what med might hook up well with how it affects me…assuming the way it affects me has one compatible.  I take enough between Metoprolol and all my OTC supplements for other stuff…I’m really not looking to add another pill.  But if I try it and it works….  Well, what’s the worse?  If I’m given one and it doesn’t work…??  (Which reminds me, I meant to ask yesterday about taking Rx meds over the border…darn!  If you have an Rx, border patrol is okay with that, no?)  Anyway, it would help if ADD meds out here are on the “$4 Walmart List”.

    I’m having luck today with the “patience” thing.  It’s Saturday…I got other things grabbing my attention (like drawing a picture instead of doing laundry…wunderbar…)  The mental effort towards searching for a coach / new therapist is “off” right now, but once it turns itself on and becomes THE thing I’m doing, I just hope I don’t make too quick of decisions or jump at the first thing without patience to consider other options.

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    #120036

    ashockley55
    Participant
    Post count: 229

    I’ve been to therapists off and on for years, before realizing that I have ADHD.

    When I did realize that ADHD was (one of) my issue(s), I went back to try and find someone to help me.  I talked to a therapist, or social worker, or something, I don’t even remember now.

    I very explicitly stated that I wanted to be evaluated for ADHD.  The woman had to go through her intake process, though, which involves asking a bunch of questions about my family, history, etc.  I answered all her questions.  I brought up ADHD again.  She looked at me, stated, “You seem calm,” and moved on.

    Sure.  I seemed calm.  What I should have done is let loose the series of curse words, blasphemes and insults I had racing through my mind through the entire intake interview.  I should have told her that I could tell her that the clock to her right did a weird ticking thing where the second hand seemed to go backward just before it went forward.  I should have told her all about the random items on her desk that I had observed and considered, my brain desperately trying to entertain itself during the intake interview so that I wouldn’t jump up and slap her, or myself, or the walls.

    Sure, it’s called “calm.”  It’s also called “adulthood.”  It’s also called years and years of social training, to which I have responded to rather nicely, despite a few slips here and there.

    And then I should’ve told her that she is an ugly, brittle-haired waste of my time.

    And then I should have got up, walked out, and left, just after I looked over my shoulder and told her, “How do you feel now?  Calm?”

    But I didn’t do any of that.

    So I guess I don’t have ADHD.

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    #120042

    Blue Yugo
    Member
    Post count: 62

    @ashockley55 – ah, the “intake”… Well, part of the “longer story” I spared my first post, the deal with going through the EAP is that at first, they only approved me for 2 sessions.  It wasn’t until between the 2nd and 3rd sessions that the therapist had called the EAP and requested an extension for more sessions.  I didn’t know until the day before the 3rd session if additional ones were approved.

    Now, what if they didn’t grant an extension?  Then she clearly wasted BOTH original sessions BS’ing about anything.  (Or is she clever and wasted 2 so she could get paid for those PLUS an extension?)  Either way, don’t toy with me!  Don’t waste my time!  Many years ago I’d used the EAP for a different concern, and that time I got 5 sessions.  The first was intake and 4 were productive on the topic at the time.

    This current go-round, I guess I’d let the first session slide figuring “intake”.  Though with only 2 sessions originally approved, wasting one on intake seemed a bit much.  (And approving only 2 for someone with ADD is a bit few!)  I got wrapped up in the moment of the 2nd, divulging for an hour all the traits she’d asked me to list about close friends and relatives…but at the end I wrote “ADD” on my paper and addressed it as I was getting up to leave that, “When are we going to talk about my ADD?”  Well, first she said she had to get the EAP to approve more sessions.  Yeah…I left session 2 with a big “What the–?” running through my mind, mentally beating myself up for not forcing the issue at the start of the session.

    I just got done watching my download of the TotallyADD Tips 20-minute video.  I got WAY more useful stuff out of that than 3 hours with the Baby Boomer therapist who really doesn’t understand ADD…nor a Gen-X’er I guess.  What it’s telling me is that the TotallyADD gang here is fully vested in helping people like us and know what works and how to present it to an ADD’er.  Too bad the EAP can’t fund this stuff instead of a know-nothing therapist who wasn’t willing to listen to me or validate my testimony of how ADD affects me.  (Speaking of which, I’m craving a new “Bill’s ADDventure”…I hope they got a new one or two in the works…)

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    #120067

    Patte Rosebank
    Participant
    Post count: 1517

    @LittleBlueYugo, it sounds like an ADD Coach really would be the most help to you.

    Many ADD Coaches (including my own) are also registered Psychologists, using CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) as well as their ADHD-specific coaching expertise, to help patients.

    If you were to find such a Coach, and to present the matter to your EAP as, “I really need a highly specialized Psychologist—and such highly specialized Psychologists are hard to find, so I did the searching myself, to spare the EAP the trouble of having to do so”, maybe then your EAP would cover the cost.

    If you need documentation to support how much more effective ADHD-specific CBT is in treating ADHD in adults, than just treating it with medication or with non-ADHD-specific CBT, here’s some:  http://db.tt/7glxkPcs.

    When your EAP says the inevitable, “Why should we pay for this?”, you can give them some concrete data.

     

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    #120151

    darktendril
    Member
    Post count: 30

    I had a EAP therapist briefly, it did not really work out for me either.  She ignored the meat of any issues I had, and instead wanted to talk about “fluffy” things, like metaphors on how I can relate my life to various bugs or animals… when she asked me to write a list of everything that I had control over in life, things like “getting dressed” and “brushing my teeth”, I drew the line and quit going. lol

    That said, I do currently have a therapist who specializes in ADHD.  I don’t feel like she really listens to me either, and she doesn’t really seem to get some of the things that I say, but she does give some good concrete tips.  Probably similar to a coach.

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    #120159

    Blue Yugo
    Member
    Post count: 62

    EAP can be good or bad…and the therapists they connect people with are sometimes just not a good fit.  You’d expect therapists to home in on how a person can best process stuff, but they miss the mark sometimes and don’t have it in them to treat the case differently.  If there’s one thing that drives me crazy, it’s the “one size fits all” approach.  It takes me 2 to 3 visits to detect it, but once it shows up, it’s time to find a new therapist, coach, etc.

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    #124170

    helenboll
    Member
    Post count: 29

    I have decided to never ever go to therapy again, unless the therapist is an ADHD-expert of some kind.

    In early 2012, I was diagnosed with depression. (This was before the ADD-realisation.) The first counselor (not sure how to translate the Swedish word “kurator”) I met told me to take a walk outside between 10-2 in the day and to immediately stop writing about my depression online.

    Called her answering machine and asked to be transfered to someone else the same night.

    Counselor number two was into codependency, and decided that that was my problem. It really wasn’t. I went a few times, but the last time I didn’t have the energy to engage, and he was kind of put off byt that. When the next appointment came I cancelled due to a migraine or something and never got a new one. Which was just as well.

    After that, I was put into group counceling. That was kind of nice, but only because I got interested in some of the other participants’ problems. Some others bored me to death. This one man kept whining about how the roof of his house needed to be fixed, which drove me mad.

    Right now in Sweden, CBT (Cognitive behavioral therapy) is the magical answer to every imaginable mental health issue. I don’t believe in it, and especially not for me. On my angrier days I think of CBT as therapy for the large masses who cannot think for themselves. (Hope I don’t offend anyone now!)

     

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    #124175

    blackdog
    Member
    Post count: 906

    @helenboll

    The problem with a lot of therapists is that they are one trick ponies. They have a set routine that they follow, a one-size-fits-all cure for everyone and everything.  I find that especially true with CBT.

    The therapist I was sent to last year just kept going over the same things over and over again, which basically added up to “hey, the sun is shining today, let’s all be happy!”. I tried to talk to him about serious issues that are very real problems for me and he treated it like “negative cognitions” that had to be replaced by “positive cognitions.”

    Then I went to a self esteem group because he kept pestering me to go. And sat through six sessions of him repeating exactly, word for word, what he said in our individual sessions. The whole time was just sitting and listening to him and another therapist go on, and on, and on, and on……That is, it would have been if I had actually listened.

    I don’t think you will offend anyone here. The opinion I formed from my experience with CBT was pretty much the same. Though some people have mentioned here that they had positive results from CBT, others have said that it doesn’t work for people with ADHD.

    I think it depends on what you need at the time. If it’s a simple problem of not feeling good about yourself and your life, then it can help to have someone point out some positive things to make you feel better and give you a boost. but if you have more serious, deeper issues, then CBT won’t do anything for you, despite what the behaviourists believe. You can choose to have “positive cognitions” and be happy on the surface but you will still have the same problem you had before. It’s like spraying air fresheners to cover up the smell from the garbage pail. If you don’t take the garbage out, the smell will still be there after the air freshener is gone.

     

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    #124221

    sdwa
    Participant
    Post count: 363

    @Blue Yugo

    I probably saw 20 therapists over a period of 20 years before I got my diagnosis. Twenty percent were marginally helpful. Most were a waste of time. About ten percent were harmful and made things worse.

    If they don’t have training in working with people who have ADHD, they are not worth talking to.

    I second what Larynxa is saying about talking to an ADHD coach. I started working with a coach about a month and a half ago – ? A coach in training, actually, from ADDCA, who is cheaper than a fully certified coach (which is fine, because I had worked with a certified coach before and felt like I knew what to expect). It just makes me feel better. I feel like I’m not alone, and it’s good to be able to talk to someone who gets it and can provide new ways to think about what I’m going through.

    I didn’t realize there is such a thing as “ADHD-specific CBT.” My experience with therapists has totally soured me on the entire concept of therapy, although I did attend a support group at one point run by an M.A. in Psych who has ADHD and only works with ADHD patients, and that helped. It was one of my first experiences in seeing and really understanding ADHD is “real” – because of how similar everyone’s challenges were. I learned a little about the ADHD brain, and more about the behavioral issues.

    It’s funny, because I’ve been at this for five years and I think I know stuff, but I keep reaching levels of new information or new perspectives that show me, once again, how deeply my self-esteem has been affected and how prone I am to blaming myself. I listened to David Giwerc’s introductory talk about becoming an ADHD coach and cried during the entire call.

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