[245/365] so much work

[cosmolinguist]

Awesome name stuff nonwithstanding, I've had a frustrating time with trying to access health care lately.

I did refer myself for counseling, as the GP had asked me to. I had the assessment from the third party that this has been outsourced to a week ago. I have been through this process two or three times, but what I'd forgotten from the last time was that I hadn't actually gotten it from them; I'd had to be referred on to something else when I said "No more CBT please" because all they really do is CBT. (That time I'd ended up referred to this person. I never followed up on that entry but: we didn't talk about therapy goals the next week and the week after that I had to cancel because I was busy or sick or something, then I got discharged from the service because I couldn't bring myself to schedule another session; I didn't even get any kind of reply when I returned a consent form saying she could use a recording of one of our sessions in her supervision or whatever (she wasn't quite done with her degree and needed people to agree to this, so I feel like it deserved at least a perfunctory thanks!)).

So I went through this assessment -- anxiety, depression, blah blah -- and only when we got to the end did the guy ask if I'd tried this before and I said "No CBT" and then I remembered haha, oh shit, all he can offer me here is CBT. I also emphasized that...it's not so much that I'm requesting someone who knows about LGBT+ stuff and disability, just that if I don't get that it'll be a waste of time for both me and them. He said he had to meet with his supervisor and he'd be back in touch this Thursday. Which I completely forgot about until he rang yesterday. In his tortured circuitous way, he said I should get my counseling from the LGBT Foundation. Which I would've done months ago except when I checked their website they were like "We are not letting people refer right now," they clearly just didn't have the capacity. The LGBT Foundation is the source of the only useful therapy I've ever ever had so of course I'm totally fine with trying it again. It's just frustrating that, like I said there, it's such a short course. 8 or 10 weeks is not going to be enough for me.

So I did that referral last night, which is fine. It'll be at least a few months before I can even start that though.

And today the GP had planned to call me back. She's been updated on the counseling referrals, she seemed pleased about that. Asked how I was doig and I said I was not doing as well as when I talked to her three weeks ago, particularly my sleep is terrible again. She was sympathetic, apparently having had some of that kind of "waking up too early" stuff that I get -- sleep-maintenance insomnia, it's called. She was symnpathetic to my complaint that all the advice for how to deal with insomnia is about having trouble getting to sleep in the first place and I'm actually pretty good at that, that's not the problem I'm having.

But she said sleeping pills aren't actually great for this, they make people drowsy but they can lead to the same kind of early-waking problems I'm having, and you don't go through the sleep cycle in the same way so you don't get deep sleep... We talked about medication a bit and she was back on her "well long-term anxiety and depression is best treated with talking therapy so that should help your sleep..." shtick. She also acknowledged that she's telling me there to hang on for something that can be a while in the future (if indeed it helps at all, I thought but didn't say; I've just had such rotten luck with counseling). She thought if meds weren't working "there must be something else bubbling away under the surface" and I don't think that but I do think if someone's tried five anti-depressants and none of them did anything, another isn't likely to be much better.

So that's it! I've just had a lot of phone calls and rigamarole to get me to a webform that took me two or three minutes to fill out and which I would've done six months ago if I could. It's hard not to be a little discouraged, even though it's not like I've had any better luck other times that I have tried to access mental health care particularly.