In Roxanne's defense, Marta takes things a bit too far.
But Cat S, I can see where you're coming from.
I saw Roxanne for 1 year as was mandated by the courts. So in Roxanne's defense, perhaps I wasn't the most eager of clients.
Also, in Roxanne's defense, I'm an exceptionally opinionated mofo who is difficult to "treat."
But still.
Here I was at absolute zero, the rock bottom of all rock bottoms as far as my life is concerned, a newly minted felon with no job and a future in shambles, and yet I would stare across the room and think to myself, "welp, could be a lot worse! I could end up like Dr. Mossman."
I'm not sure if she herself self-medicates with high levels of valium, or just has a weak pulse and blood is not getting to where it must reach to sustain basic functioning ... but wow.
Cold and exceptionally out of touch, not really possessing innate or learned abilities to make meaningful connections to people, she immediately stands out as being not quite within the normal range as affect and social acuity are concerned. Over time I came to believe that maybe the roles were reversed, that it was my job to kind of step up and bring her up out of the malaise.
This got harder when I was eventually ordered to take hardcore psych meds, which rendered me in a highly vegetative state for the duration of our sessions. This was fine in context of the sessions as it made them bearable, but problematic in terms of real life where I was a 25% functional zombie who could scarcely tie his own shoes. According to all of the "experts" watching over me including Mossman, this was the period during which I was showing the most progress. I think that in and of itself reveals the level of ineptitude I was dealing with. I've literally never felt worse in my life than I did under the influence of these poorly understood and unnecessary chemical treatments. When I brought it up, the rebuttal was always "you need to up the dose," so I learned to report that the drugs were just great.
I believe my biggest mistake was hanging in there too long with Dr. M, which I did due to the belief that, on felony probation, I had no choice and it would look bad if I made the jump to a new person.
Anyway, the fallout here was that as I kept coming week after week, it became harder to mask my frustrations. I felt I was leaving the appointments much worse than I arrived, and that all she would do is ask me low-hanging-fruit "trigger" questions on topics that would quite predictably conjure negative emotions about a horrible situation I was powerless to change. It was the equivalent of picking at scabs, and while surely unintentional, the "treatment" was really just exacerbating my already sh**ty sitch. It irritated me very much to have to keep bringing up the same old very negative topics, while on the other side of the table no tangible solutions were offered, and this was then relayed to my P.O. as me regressing and becoming a very high risk patient.
When ultimately it became apparent that I was planning to jump ship to a new counselor - as evidenced by my growing irreverence and sarcasm - I was slapped with a retaliatory Narcisssistic Personality Disorder diagnosis.
Who knows? Perhaps sarcasm and irreverence are the tell-tale symptoms and she's right! But either way, I just felt that wrong or right, formally slapping me with the NPD diagnosis in her last billable hour was such a petty and unprofessional way to say "You think you're breaking up with me, but actually I'm breaking up with YOU!"
As with Cat, my final appointment resulted in a defensive tantrum from Mossman (which of course was reflected in the meeting notes as ME throwing a defensive tantrum), I was aggressively ordered to leave (like a dog trainer commanding me off the couch) and she made sure to document that "I took almost half the candy out of her complementary jar when I walked out," which I definitely did do. They were soooooo good.
I'm not saying that Mossman went out of her way to cause harm. She didn't. But through her incompetence and pride that seemed to be the net effect.
I will again throw in all the disclaimers - I'm a difficult person to treat. I'm a criminal. I'm dealing with some real s**t in my life right now. I'm a sarcastic little man. My paranoia rivals that of Bobby Fischer. I'm allegedly a malignant narcissist now. It is feasible that I really AM the problem.
But I'm wiling to bet that even if you're the awesome and perfect person that I am not, that Mossman is highly unlikely to bring you closer to self-actualization and personal fulfillment. If nothing else she reinforced my belief that noone's going to make me better but me, and that even professional therapists and doctors can be just as petty as the uppity miscreant doing the Yelp-shaming right now. read more