Psychiatry as Never-Ending Oppression

I have pain in my body. I know why. My joints are hypermobile. I have suffered a great deal of physical and sexual abuse, giving me actual injuries. And due to the abuse and extreme stress I have lived with for decades of my life, my muscle tension is ridiculous. My whole body has worked hard on holding myself together.

I understand that my pain is partly physical and partly psychological.

Twenty-five years ago, I had surgery on my right jaw joint. Due to violence to my head, both discs in both jaw joints had moved and were causing me pain. At the time they only wanted to remove the disc on the worst side, my right side. The surgery was necessary as the disc displacement not only caused me pain but made it impossible for me to open my mouth more than a little. A couple of years ago the left side started to hurt a lot and again I could not open my mouth properly. I thought it would be an easy thing to get a referral for, as I had done the previous surgery on the right jaw joint.

Enter my psychiatric history and diagnoses . . .

After 2 years of evaluations, where they see a lot of problems in my left jaw joint, I am referred to surgery. The wait list for surgery is long; I have been waiting more than a year now. But since I also have hypermobile joints, I was referred to having that checked out. I ended up at a pain rehab center. Sounds good, right?

Well. They could not stop focusing on my psychiatric history . . . I am in a stressed situation, for many reasons, but I am actually doing quite well psychologically. They are outer stressors. I am nowadays quite brilliant at self-care.

But they cannot see me now when they have read my records. Now they can only see me through the lens of my diagnoses — that follow me around in these records that I have very little control over. Painting a picture of me that I do not recognize myself in (and never did. But as a younger person I had no words to describe my reality, and when I tried, I was not believed and just got more diagnoses added to the ones I already had).

Without much physical examination at this visit to the pain rehab clinic (no x-rays, e.g.) they conclude I have fibromyalgia, and that I need to be referred to psychiatry. And when I log into the online system to check my appointment for the bi-annual mammography all women are offered in Sweden, I see there is a new note in my record.

To my utter surprise (or not . . . but great frustration), I read so much crap about myself I want to scream. Their assumptions. Their conclusions. Their recommendations — and amongst those, they recommend two different kinds of psychiatric drugs. I have not been on any psychiatric drugs since the mid-90s, and I have no intention to start taking any now either. They are pure poison to me. Was back then, and still is, of course.

Some of their other suggestions are so insulting I cannot even find a way to write them down here. But they are all about seeing me as a “psychiatric patient” with no need for agency.

I fucking hate that they turn my external stressors into my personal psychiatric problems and want to fix me with drugs, patronizing suggestions, invalidation of my reality.

But they are totally discarding me and my capacity and capabilities just like that. After one visit. They seem to think they have me all figured out and know what I need.

I am in an interesting situation. I could use some support. Some humane, kind, and interested ears. But there is nothing wrong with me. And I would rather live with the pain I have than go through this utterly broken system in the hope of finding a decent person who can just listen.

I thought I was going to get a physio training program, to help with the pain, and perhaps learn some new training exercises. And be cleared to have the surgery. Now I will probably not ever get the surgery, as all my pain is put down as fibromyalgia (even if there are x-rays on my jaw joints showing huge changes to bones and cartilage that would cause the pain and dysfunction that I feel and experience). This also means that in the future, no matter what pain I show up with, it will be put down to this assumed fibromyalgia. How do they know I don’t have similar changes in my other joints? They don’t. I fit the picture for fibromyalgia — it goes well with my psychiatric history.

To be seen through the lens of psychiatry is to have my strengths turned into disease, as well as have my history fuck me up and over, and now once again.

I am not depressed. Not particularly anxious. I am not in any way self-destructive, on the contrary. I hardly dissociate anymore. I am utterly capable of both working more than full-time and studying. As well as taking care of myself.

I am tired and stressed because I made some dumb decisions a few years back that now have financial consequences for me. Which in turn makes other things complicated. They are external stressors.

I fucking hate that they turn my external stressors into my personal psychiatric problems and want to fix me with drugs, patronizing suggestions, invalidation of my reality. I get angry, frustrated. And also know I cannot fight them. Because if I do, will get stuck in their system. Any emotionality that I show would just confirm to them how dysfunctional I am. Any denial of needing their suggested help would confirm to them I lack insight.

So — for help. If you have had a lot of traumas, that have affected you on many levels, psychologically, socially, relationally, financially, and somatically, there is nowhere to turn. Because if you go to psychiatry they will go to great lengths to help you internalize it all. And call it chronic. My psychiatric history in the records is mainly from the last century but that doesn’t matter. It will follow me to the day I die.

And if there are private therapists, skilled and knowledgeable in trauma they cost a fortune. And then there are no other options. And to go and see one is like playing Russian roulette. It can be of great help, or further harm you.

And if you have had trauma, and just need a little bit of support, there is simply nothing.

I write this halfway through my own psychotherapy training. And employed in psychiatry as a peer supporter. I know I am NOT alone in this situation. I meet it daily in those I work with, the so-called “patients”.

Some days I don’t know if I should scream, cry or laugh and often end up doing all of it because it is such a Kafkaesque situation, for each and every person. And they all think it is because of them — as they are not organized in any way and do not know they are all treated the same. That they are all told they are sick, disordered, disturbed and that they need medication. And they end up alone, outside of society, frustrated and angry, with no future.

I don’t doubt that people in psychiatry want to help, have the best intentions. But the way they see people and the “help” they offer just make people get more stuck, more passive, more helpless, more powerless and usually they start to deteriorate. And often they have learned to speak about themselves in a psychiatric language. And, that deterioration is blamed on the person seeking help. In the end, they are written off as chronic and treatment-resistant (for women with the added label of “attention seeking”).

I know there are more people out there seeing the same things as I see. They want to offer alternatives. Now, with my own recent experiences, I am more determined than ever to be part of that change.

It is not black or white. There are the loveliest people working in psychiatry, who can see all this clearly in their clinics as well as elsewhere in our mental health and somatic health care system and I know they are frustrated too.

It is good for me to have these experiences now again. It really makes me understand the ones I meet in my work. I can see that I, despite how I am met, do not internalize it anymore. I speak about it out loud. I do not blame myself or beat myself up for it. I know there is nothing wrong with me.

I will never again internalize someone else’s lack of knowledge and skills as my disorders and problems. My anger is healthy and I will not turn it against myself ever again. I will own my part of any interaction — but no more.

But my frustration is real. What more can I do? I am not done yet with my training in psychotherapy and I am not sure how to finance my last two years. But I feel I have so much experience and knowledge, on severe trauma, on how to work alternatively; I wish to find contexts with others who also work to change the current system. I do feel a bit alone over here in my tiny country that is so wayward and behind in their approaches to working with trauma. And the “user-organizations” are also stuck in the psychiatric system. To come out of it and not have internalized its picture of you — of who and how you are — I see is quite uncommon.

Well. I am here. I know there is nothing wrong with me. I live with consequences from my life history (like pain, e.g.), I am more stress-sensitive. But I am also resilient as fuck. And I have learned what works and what does not work for me. I would say I do quite well (apart from these outer stressors that well, stress me).

Reach out to me — or invite me to whatever you have going on that resonates with this. I am so ready to be part of any initiative moving towards a more humane view on people who suffer from first years of abuse, violence and neglect growing up, and potentially later DV, and then the oppression of psychiatry and other mental health interventions, as well as legal systems, educational systems, social welfare systems and so on.

I will never again internalize someone else’s lack of knowledge and skills as my disorders and problems. My anger is healthy and I will not turn it against myself ever again. I will own my part of any interaction — but no more.

Where are you people who feel called to be part of this much-needed change?

This piece was originally written in the summer of 2024 and published on my Medium page. I don’t work as a peer support worker in psychiatry anymore. I quit in September last year. I could not stay as they only wanted me to adapt to their “knowledge” and ways of doing things, and where not the slightest interested in my lived experience of anything.

My enthusiasm for what I thought was a chance to contribute to change, became a trap where I slowly burned out. I concluded that staying in the system would only keep on hurting me, and not give me much opportunity to help others, more than listen to them. At times that helped, people felt supported. But when it came to changing anything more long-term, there was a full stop. All I worked with, that was progressive and actually person-centered, I had to do so to speak, undercover. I had no one in the organization I could talk to and trust. I did talk to some of my “professional colleagues”, and some liked what I talked about, but in the end, they were not ready to risk anything to promote what I said, “higher up”.

I have NOT internalized this experience. I don’t see myself as a failure for not being able to stay working as a peer supporter in psychiatry. I feel sad because I had to leave a lot of people behind, people who were so used to being left, they certainly did not deserve one more abandonment.

But when in stressful situation I have finally learned to listen to my body before it totally crashes. I had to leave, to preserve and protect myself.

And well. I never got that operation for my jaw. I was just quietly cancelled, since well, a person with a psychiatric history that has had fibromyalgia written into her records will never be heard about pain ever again. And I am done humiliating myself trying to be heard.

And I have had to take a break from my psychotherapy licensing studies since the beginning of this year. I cannot afford to pursue them right now.

Now, I don’t mope around much, instead I do what I can, to advocate and drive activism. In September I have an e-poster accepted at the World Congress of Psychiatry in Stockholm with the title “PSYCHIATRY AND IATROGENIC HARM: WOMEN SURVIVORS OF ABUSE AND VIOLENCE AND THE DENIAL OF THEIR HUMAN RIGHTS”. And I will be at the congress and do as much as I can to talk about psychiatrization and pathologization of human stress and trauma and what can be done to support people instead of medication, control, and more violence.

I have sent in three more abstracts, and we will see if any of them get accepted. Keep your fingers crossed!

If you want to support my work, you can either become a paid subscriber here, or donate a sum chosen by you at my Buy Me a Coffee page. I am paying for the congress and all the expenses around it out of pocket. A very shallow pocket, so all contributions are highly appreciated. And I promise to report from the congress and my Pippi Longstocking activism!