Sensitive situations and health professionals

[Xantippe]

Country Gal said:

“Telling someone to consult a professional on a discussion board is a way of letting them know that the person needs more up close and personal help than can be accomplished in an anonymous setting like this.”

I’ve had at least two posters on Catholic Answers get really offended when I suggested counseling or getting an evaluation.

And then there’s at least one poster who posts regularly about a horrible home situation and lack of friends and mental anguish and self-harm and doesn’t seem to have gone anywhere near a therapist (at least to judge by the posts I’ve seen) no matter how many times it is suggested.

At least from where I’m sitting, I think a lot of people need more help who aren’t getting it.

Prodigal_Son wrote:

“This person needs a wise friend they can trust, in most cases. Only rare cases require an actual specialist.”

1. How many people don’t have a wise friend they can trust? Those don’t grow on trees. A lot of people have nobody at all.
2. Figuring out who does and who doesn’t need professional help is in fact a job for a specialist. Some years back, my middle child was having persistent tummy pain. We eventually consulted a pediatric gastroenterologist and tried a few different things, but never really figured out what it was. However, by going to a specialist, we were able to rule out the most serious things it could have been. Likewise, when our oldest was 4, she was having 2 or 3 headaches every day for months and we took her to a neurologist and she had an MRI done and tried a change in diet. We also never figured out what the deal was with all those headaches, but with the help of the specialist, we were able to exclude the most dire possibilities. (On reflection, I suspect both were stress-related, as they seemed to strike at roughly the same age–right around the time both started full-day school.)

1. Even if you do have a wise friend, or lots of wise friends, there are lots of cases that are beyond the help of the merely friendly. And I wouldn’t call them rare, because I have encountered them more than once in fairly severe form. Most recently, a friend was having very severe postpartum symptoms with obsessive thoughts urging her to do bad stuff. This friend has a huge and very supportive social circle, but no matter how good her friends were, they couldn’t get into her head and make the thoughts go away. Likewise, we have an old friend in a city we used to live in. He used to have a large circle of friends, but as he started to spiral into bipolar, his behavior became more and more violent and erratic and one by one, he started losing decades worth of friendships. If we lived in the same city, I’d be scared to be around him, I’m sorry to say.

 

[Truth_Faith13]

I’m seeing a counsellor at the moment to work out what has caused my binge eating disorder. True, I can go to friends although there are things I have told him that I haven’t told friends. The good thing about counselling is that they are bound by confidentiality. Even a well meaning friend can slip up and tell others. It’s also nice to have someone who doesn’t know you, hear what you say about your life and come to a conclusion…in my case it was something no one (not even me) had considered because it involves a childhood I don’t remember! (Very well…)

When the counselling asked me to pretend to be the counsellor for a while and explained my childhood as if it was someone else’s. I was shocked! When he asked if I would be surprised if this person then had problems in an adult life…I said no.

In my case I have talked to my friends over no over about the same problems, I worry about driving them away so it was nice to have someone fresh as it were. True it is annoying you have to pay for a particular time slot.