Social workers are ALL I find. I've been looking for psychiatrists and psychologists but all I get are social workers who intentionally obscure that that's what they are. psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers all use the label "therapist" and the whole industry is so obtuse about it that I can only imagine it's on purpose. Three of the four therapists i've seen, I didn't even know they where social workers until I met with them even though I made sure to look them up before hand. I had to be sitting in front of them, asking probing questions before I got any sort of answers as to what they actually are and what their qualifications are. Their answers are also never straight forward. I just feel like they're trying to sell me on their services above psychiatrists and psychologists rather than just giving me a straight answer.
I admit that I'm jaded and deeply mistrustful of the mental health industry but it's not for no reason. My own shitty experiences aside, ultimately we're talking about an industry that profits from the suffering of others and has a built in conflict of interest. They have financial motivation to keep you in therapy as long as they can which is in direct conflict with actually getting you to a point where you can be self sufficient.
Hmm, honestly my experience with social workers has not been the same, and we don't call them therapists here that's why I suggested it, since they aren't qualified therapists where I live. They're social workers. I think we say they're counsellors? And therapists are psychologist and psychiatrists here. Sorry for the mix up.
One of mine, I saw him for 2 years through a free AOD outpatient rehab, and I did another intake for myself after I'd relapsed for 8 months after exiting the program and asked if I could see him again as I'd disclosed to him (a lot of trauma) and they said they could put it down on my intake the reason why (I was struggling with my last AOD guy I got, who was only on a strict 3 month treatment schedule and I couldn't ever trust him enough to disclose in that period of time so never made much progress cause my drug use and trauma are so heavily connected I needed to be able to talk about that and k never felt comfortable) cause they said it made sense. Said he was the senior Practitioner now and didn't do counselling anymore but he saw all the intakes, so they put that down. Couple weeks later got a random call not from them but him, and he said he agreed with my reasons and would make an exception for me.
The next guy, was a specialist counsellor as I mentioned and I was only meant to have 12 sessions with him. Now I think I'm up to around 16. He's indicated that at some point he'll give me a 6 month warning for when we'll need to move to seeing eachother once every 3 months instead of per month, then once every 6 months until I feel comfortable exiting on my own.
The third guy is my behaviour support practitioner who is a person who helps with really high risk behaviours of concern (self harm) and this type of therapy is generally seen as requiring a couple of years to be effective, depending on the person. He's probably been the one I have trusted the fastest because of how he responded to one of my behaviours I thought would be an issue.
To be fair, when you have a cPTSD background like I do, continuity in care is the key factor of recovery. You cannot recover from serious trauma, with ever rotating therapists or social workers or counsellors as one cannot develop trust with them.
It took me 6-8 years to tell. My psychologist, Psychiatrist and GP about my full CSA history. I just hadn't done enough therapy before then to do it until I did a free trauma group with other survivors and they heard me disclose and believed me then I realised people believed me.
The social workers I've had have just been so incredibly well trauma informed that they get disclosed to faster. The first guy was 8 months, the second guy 1.5 years, the third guy is almost at that point after 2 months, but I see him weekly for 2 hours.
The point with all the social workers I've had is to gradually stop seeing me, but not too early that it triggers me and causes a breakdown in trust. Even the other day the BSP emailed me saying my funding was out, so he couldn't keep seeing me on Friday mornings and I had a panic attack thinking I couldn't contact him at all, and barely read that he asked me to call him. So I asked to call and he did and told me he had good news and was trying to use a different area of my funding. But he was still going to do work for free to help me, so I know he isn't in it for the money, he's already been working for free for like 2-3 weeks.
My psychologist has told me that he will view himself as failing me if I'm still seeing him in another 5-10 years. The goal for him is for me to not need therapy.
My psychiatrist is the only one who I'll continue to need to see for medication review for bipolar, ADHD, and cPTSD stuff.
If you want a psychologist or psychiatrist bear in mind psychiatrists are pretty heavy handed with prescribing medication. If that's what you want, then great, but I did get the impression you weren't totally wanting AP or anything like that. They're essentially imo worse therapists than psychologists who throw medicine at you in most situations unless you get lucky with a good one. With a psychologist, I would really suggest trying to find someone who specialises in your area of need - my guy does developmental trauma and addiction, which was very lucky for me. He's my first and only one and Ive seen him since 2016. Had another guy through rehab the place run but he was nice to me and gave me free trauma therapy for a year or so however I wasn't referred to him. But yeah, if you have a certain diagnosis, you want someone who works with that otherwise it's a total waste of your time.
Looking for someone like my psychologist who doesn't really 'do' diagnoses could be good to, like he just views disorders as names for clusters of symptoms and will just treat people for what they come in presenting with what they wanna talk about, not a work their way through the symptoms. Plus, obviously his view to have me leave therapy.
Maybe phrase it as asking about what their view on diagnostic labels is, and whether or not their end goal of therapy is to have you able to be sufficient to support yourself without them within a time period acceptable to you, when you meet them. If you don't get the answers you want, move on.
Unfortunately, it can take ages to get a good fit. I've had some fucking shocking social workers too. One forced me to disclose my CSA to him by pressuring me even though I was only seeing him 3 months and didn't want to. Hated that guy.
I really hope you can find someone because there are good people out there.
