Some months back I tried to find a psychoconsultant (my term-of-choice) at a mental health practice that was near my favorite breakfast place across town, figuring that I could reward myself with food whenever I had a session.
The breakfast place is closing, so it doesn’t matter now, but the reason I never pursued it is because the person reception directed me to was a mental health nurse practitioner (with some iffy reviews online) with a “behavioral” approach in which she looks at the cause of a circumstance and then determines its foundation.
All I could think was, well, the cause and foundation is that my brain literally is wired differently than the brains for which the world in which it must live is designed and for which and by which social customs are constructed. Behavioral that.
Today I’m confronted with a potential psychoconsultant elsewhere whose profile on the practice’s website is the least compelling out of everyone on staff, who primarily is a marriage and family therapist, and who is male, which is relevant mostly because I’m far more comfortable, generally, talking to female doctors and therapists than male ones.
I say I’m “confronted” here because I’m getting that same feeling I’ve gotten every time over the past two years where I feel pressured—even just by expectations if not by any actual person—to do something that I feel uncomfortable about, and every other time I’ve said “yes” it’s then blown up in my face.
My solution this time, I think, is that I am going to accept an appointment but I’m going to ask the front desk to pass along some version of the above paragraph to him, so at least this reitscence and its reasoning is communicated before I ever have to sit in an uncomfortable room under someone’s intent gaze, which always makes it not just more difficult but actually impossible to say anything about decisions my instincts tell me to avoid.
At any rate, within the hour I should have an appointment scheduled, but I need to remind myself that I’m not somehow required to stop looking.
Addenda
- Then again, they did not call me back, which I suppose makes my decision for me. I did also find a newly-listed provider and Yet Another Inquiry has been sent off into the ether.