cyclomaniac

so, after two sessions with my tdoc and not liking her much, i brought my hubby, and he seems to be on the same page. i want to know from some other patients, though, what i should expect from a good tdooc. maybe we're being to demanding. i don't think so, but maybe.

the first appt she was okay, but that was mostly because i spent a lot of it crying and just explaining why i was so depressed. the only thing that bothered me this time was that she wasn't very emotionally responsive to any of what i said, but i thought maybe that was because she just didn't want to feed into my emotions any more because it might just make me worse. she referred me to a pdoc, though i was hesitant at first because i did not feel that my mom and sister have been helped much by their medications. she encouraged me to go, though, so i went along with it.

(then i met with my pdoc who so far i get along great with. only one appt so far, but two phone conversations and we seem to be communicating very well)

the second appt was crappy. i was on my second week of the AD and was feeling very hypomanic. at this point i was convinced i needed to quit my job, that my boss was making me worse (which he may be, who knows, but it's definitely not all because of him!! i've got enough causes without him...but i was convinced it was his fault!), started telling the tdoc ridiculous things about him (that the guy doesn't know anything, passed on a comment that a co-worker made about every product he makes coming out looking like "hammered dog s***"...just basically acting way out of the ordinary for myself, which i realized a couple of days later. i even thought she recognized it because she asked me if my boss was good at what he does, and when i laughed a big "HA!" and said "NO!" she said "oh really?" and basically that prompted me to talk more! i was also pretty irritated about how we kept talking about some issues that i didn't think we needed to. i felt like it was wasting my session time and that we should be talking about more valuable things, like ideas for me to cope with him. the only ideas she came up with were "deep breathing" and giving neutral comments back to him when he started insulting me and going off the deep end. uhhhh...duh. one of my whole entire GOALS in treatment is to be able to be unaffected by him and give him neutral comments instead of going off the deep end myself. i need ideas on how to control things enough to get to that point!! so, i left feeling ticked off but later attributed it to my hypomania. oh, again, she was very emotionally empty.

third appt was yesterday and i brought the hubby so he could give a clear-headed person's opinion of her to me....

---first off, she basically told me i could be worse (said that other people are homeless and take their clothes off in the street). no s*** sherlock, my cousin is one of those people. what i want from her is some emotional support...i already beat myself up enough as it is to be asking for help when i know other people have it so much worse than me. she points out that since i went to college and have a career i am not doing too bad. too bad i feel like my brain is rotting out of my head...which she would have realized if she even skimmed the 10 page mood journal i gave her last week.

---secondly, and related to that topic, she told me she didn't think i behaved that strangely in the office last week...that i am coming to a tdoc office and it would be expected that i would be more "open" than with other people...uh, maybe for other people, but not in my case! i responded by telling her that the way i can tell it was weird was that i wouldn't feel right repeating those things again at this appt. she had no response.

---thirdly, my hubby asked about the traumatic events that happened around this time last year, wanting to know how they might have affected me and how to deal with future ones since those are inevitable in life...and she just said that traumatic events don't cause bp, but bp makes it harder to deal with events like that. uh, not what we asked! of course, we got sidetracked because she distracted us from the original question with this weirdo answer. this happened over and over again yesterday.

---fourth, just her emotional emptiness is a problem. just no response to anything at all. no telling me that what i feel is normal for my condition, no sympathy, no nothing.

---fifth, i feel like i have to convince her that something is wrong with me. i also feel like i have to lead the session and come up with all the solutions. i have to convince her because when i tell her something that i think i do that is weird she tries to make excuses for it. i have to lead the sessions because all she does is ask me how things are going, i tell her about something, then she does the thing about making up excuses for why i do it. then, about the solutions, my hubby asked about what he should do with my moods...should he try to let me go through them, or should he try to get me out of them...and then her answer was "well, what would you like him to do?" what the heck?!?! i don't know!! that's why we're asking!! what is generally a better idea? i can't exactly give a good answer, anyway, because i'm not in one of those moods....and i tend to be totally disconnected from them when i'm in a normal mood, so how can i answer that?? and if i am asked when i'm IN a mood, then i'm irrational and what i say won't actually work...we've tried that before i even started going to the docs!!

finally, we asked what the goal is right now and she said to get my mood stabilized with meds. ooooookay, so why am i even seeing the tdoc? according to her we can't really work on any of my major issues until i'm stable...so why am i there?? i would think the solution would be learning some coping strategies, but if that were the case shouldn't i be getting something suggested other than "deep breathing" and basically being told to just "try harder"??? clearly that's not working when i get urges to do things like key some guy's car because he stole my parking space and the only thing that is stopping me is that my husband is there to tell me no.

so, what do you think? what should i be expecting from a tdoc at this point? is going to a tdoc even helpful at this point?