The Psychologists - Are we expecting too much?
After a lot of first interviews, a lot of applications and a lot more waiting, I finally have a psychologist who helps me with my issues. Now after the sessions are done I want to review how things were. It is always nice to see where you started and where you are now to see progress. In the case of a regress, it is good to reflect to see where things went wrong and how things need to change to achieve progress.
I have been meaning to write about this during the sessions as a midway reflection point but I unfortunately forgot about it or had too much on my plate so I couldn’t find the time to write and reflect. So here I am now writing about the therapy sessions I have been to.
Since my rather complicated university schedule does not quite allow it, I am not seeing the psychologist in person but rather using the web meeting tools we grew familiar with over the pandemic. Personally, I found the online meeting format quite practical for obvious reasons but I believe it was missing the human element. I mean you are talking to a real human but as we learned during the pandemic, it is still different.
But before I get into that, let’s start from the very beginning, shall we? Let’s start with a question that started the whole conversation around mental health. Do you need psychological support? Back then I probably would have answered that question with a resounding yes but now I am not too sure anymore. Maybe that is the effect of the therapy but I can’t conclusively say.
So why did I believe that I needed to go to therapy? Well, I had severe anxiety especially when it came to the future which led to failure anxiety and exam anxiety. It was a whole thing. Back then my parents wanted to divorce which I did not know how to deal with. Writing about it most certainly did not help as much as I thought it would.
On top of that, I was dealing with identity issues. It was during corona that we had way too much time to reflect on life. I didn’t quite know where to go from now since school ended, I didn’t know who I was, and who I wanted to become, and I didn’t know where I belonged being a multiracial kid who was so confused.
To be honest, I believe every kid suffers to a certain degree from childhood trauma in adulthood. Some parents are just better at dealing with the effects than others. For the record I don’t believe my parents are bad, I am trying to say is no one’s parents are perfect as humans shouldn’t be. And once those kids are in adulthood, adulting becomes too much and is too scary and you want to go back to that imperfect childhood again.
So back then it was a whole lot of stress which I believe I needed help with since it all felt too big for me to deal with all alone with no one who understood me at that time. And I heard good things about therapy since some people actually benefit from going to therapy and actually spending time to talk with someone about issues they are dealing with, without feeling judged or bad about their actions or feelings.
Therefore I thought why not give it a try, how hard can it really be to get a therapist? And if you find yourself ever asking these kinds of questions in which you are questioning longstanding institutional principles of a society, the universe likes to play a very cruel trick on you just because it can. Because oh boy was I wrong. It was bloody hard to find a therapist in a world where their capacity is already stretched very thin.
It all started when I started uni and started seeking help. Luckily for me, my mother’s company offers counselling services for their employees and their families. But that was all it was. Counselling. It may have felt like a therapy session since they listened to your issues and tried to help you with them. But they were not trained psychologists.
For what it was worth, they did help. Especially since they are also there to help you look for therapists if you are in dire need of one. They talk to you and determine in their point of view if you need therapy or something else. If it turns out you need one, they help you look for one which your health insurance covers, which works within a certain range of your house and which suits your needs best since as it turns out there are different kinds of psychologists.
From there they just try their best to get you a therapist. It is a really helpful stress-free way of looking for a therapist. Since looking around myself I just felt overwhelmed and stressed out by everything really. There were certain criteria they consider before taking a new patient and they don’t take every health insurance so you have to look out for that. So having all that stress taken away from you was great especially if you are starting uni and already are under enough pressure as it is.
Since I was studying at a university which offer free therapy sessions for students who need it, they suggested I go there. But the uni psychologist couldn’t offer long-term therapy sessions just 1 or 2 sessions per month. So for anything urgent, the uni psychologist would be a great fit. However, since plenty of therapists agreed, that did not fit my needs. So they continued looking.
After a few weeks, I completely forgot about the counsellor and only realised I had one when something bad happened in my life which caused plenty of mental stress. So after a while, I got a new counsellor since the one I had at that time was unexplained to me absent. So it started all over again. Getting to know the new counsellor and feeling comfortable to talk with them about issues et cetera et cetera.
This time they found me two different options. First was a government-funded program for psychological help and another one was a private one which the health insurance would cover. I didn’t know back then but I know now that both options are really annoying in their very own bureaucratic burdens.
The first one included a diagnostic therapy session and from there on out it was just waiting for a spot to open up. Since the therapist at the diagnostic session knew the therapist system better than any random stranger, she suggested I look into the therapist-to-be. The ones who are still in uni and who are trained by psychologists to become psychologists. They need patients too and spots free up quicker at those institutions than in clinics. So I looked into that and just like any clinic, half a year wait time is normal.
And can I just say if you are not in a serious psychological crisis or condition, you can wait a long time. In that program or at that institution, I waited for about a year and during that year I didn’t get any feedback or updates which felt off so I completely forgot about this program until exactly a year later they asked if I was still looking for therapy or if I already found something.
By then it didn’t matter if I already found something or not, if the waitlist was that long and there was zero to no communication or support until then I didn’t see a point in asking them for further assistance since up until that point they have given none. Luckily for me, I found a therapist really quick by comparison but that is no thanks to the first program.
The second program was a short-term therapy session online and just like the first program, it came with a mandatory diagnostic session. It took me a while to find the diagnostic session since they are in person and even though there were plenty of therapists in the city, most of them are still stretched thin.
After that first session, they quickly found a therapist who has time when you have time. I waited two weeks tops before I got assigned a therapist which surprised me very much but given that those are short-term sessions, it makes sense how therapists can be assigned so quickly since they free up just as quickly.
As for me, I got a therapist from Bavaria, on the other end of Germany, but luckily for me, she didn’t have an accent which makes communication even so much easier. However, what annoyed me was that I had to discuss my situation with another person from the beginning sixth time now. The first two were the counsellors, the next was the uni therapist, the fourth was the diagnostic therapist from the government-funded program and the fifth was the diagnostic therapist from the private program. You may wonder why I said six and the reason for that is simply that I had to talk to a doctor about everything so I had all the documents for the private program which make zero sense to me because a doctor is not a psychologist who can properly diagnose but I had to go anyways because of unexplainable reasons.
The temporary therapy sessions were in place to help you while you get a long term treatment. For me that was not the case since I didn’t get a spot at any psychologist because of the streched thinnly reason I mentioned earlier. But after those therapy sessions I realized I was not in dire need of therapy sessions anyways. It felt nice to talk to an unbiased third party but I don’t think I need that long term since I just need to decompress once a month and not every week even the weeks I am stressed out.
So that is my story about being in a broken system I didn’t quite need to be in the first place now in retrospect. Nothing against the wonderful people who tried their level best to help me but in the end I just needed a nudge in the right direction so I could help myself and I don’t quite need help along the whole way of the process of me helping myself. But I could have never realized that if I didn’t at the very least try.
As for the reason why I called this a broken system should be quite obvious now after reading this article but in summary it is just a broke system because the people who are trying their best to help are streched out too thin, the programs in general can’t do anything about it and just help look for anything available and the fact that you have so much bureaucracy is just suffocating. I had to talk to at least 6 people before I could properly get help. I guess the solution to fix this system is obvious as in train more psychologist but training psychologist actual psychologist are necessary and they are already streched too thing. So I guess there is no solution to this issue.
Nevertheless, now I am feeling better about myself as a person and I am dealing with my identity crisis since I figured I am not alone. My anxiety issues have not been resolved fully but I am on my way to recovery. I just needed to put less stress on myself since as I have proven to myself time and time again, things have a funny way of working out for me therefore I just need to trust myself more and trust in the process that everything will work out. Due to the anxiety, I have the tendency to plan backup plans as well so if things don’t work out and the process fails me, I have a backup plan.
So all in all I think I have changed a lot as a person since the start of the mental health journey and I believe it would only get better from here on out since I have the necessary tactics to help me and I have surrounded myself with people who would support me on my journey.