Posted by Raven on August 4, 2002, at 18:29:38
Sorry for not taking this to the therapy board, but I’ve noticed that more people hang around over here and I’m really hoping to generate a lot of your opinions.
Brief history: Outlived a terminal health diagnosis by two years, but I guess that husband of 30 years got tired of waiting for me to exit gracefully, and divorced me last year. Went into mega depression and have been in therapy ever since. Last November, I went into an IOP program for a month because I thought everything was rather hopeless. My hospital plan is a well known national HMO. I plan to end my therapy after my next visit because I believe my therapist is under pressure to end the therapy, because by HMO standards, I’ve probably been around too long.
I’m an illustrator and do graphic design. While in IOP, I grabbed a bunch of their outdated forms and brochures, re-did them to make them current, and created a series of posters on getting help for depression. The counselors and staff loved the stuff. This HMO has their own graphic department, but the IOP has some degree of autonomy because they work with public agencies so they can produce lots of their own joint material. While attending IOP, I thought it would be great if I could work for them a few days a week as a volunteer. Being there helping would be very gratifying for me because I so much appreciated all the help I had been given by my therapist, the IOP, and the psychiatric department in general. The head of IOP told me, on several different occasions, he would be very happy to have me as a volunteer.
The problem being that they never called me. I kept dropping off samples as gentle reminders of my availability, and when someone from IOP saw me in the hall or in a waiting room, they would come up to me and tell me my latest sample was, quote, awesome, cool, great, etc...but still no call.
Exit, stage left, and the regular psychiatry department is right across the hall from IOP...where my therapist is.
Now eight months later I have a new pdoc who happens to be the head of psychiatry! On my second appointment I gathered up all the stuff I had produced for IOP, gave it to him, implored him to let me volunteer to work a few days a week doing graphics or just grunt work or whatever...He admitted that I was good and that no one had ever volunteered to work in that department out of appreciation for their services before, and said he was very impressed. Then he told me that, unfortunately, they couldn’t use me because I was in therapy. Nor could they use me for a two year period after I left therapy. Geeeez...I just didn’t understand. I went into therapy because I was rejected, and now I’m being rejected because I was in therapy. Anyhow, I might not even be alive in two years.
So I went home and hopped on the internet and did a little research and think I discovered why they may have refused me. It seems to have something to do with protection from harm. Something else I don’t understand. They seem to want to protect me from my therapist, like we shouldn’t shoot the breeze in the break room if we’re there together...I might go berserk if I saw her as just another human being who might nurture her kids, sleep with her husband, burp, fart or sweat. Or maybe she has to be protected from me in case I’m a stalker.
I’m just so thoroughly disappointed that they can’t use me. After going through all the stuff with divorce and my health, I was so jazzed that there was something I felt strongly and positively about...then fizzle. Sometimes the system just doesn’t work and therapy gets in the way.
Does anybody have any creative ideas on how I could maybe convince them to change their mind and let me volunteer?
Thanks!
Raven
poster:Raven
thread:28080
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20020804/msgs/28080.html